|
[ by Nate Anderson via Ars Technica. Thanks to Sky for the heads up! ]
 BitTorrent has always had its legal uses—one popular application is
distributing Linux ISOs—but legal uses of the software have become
increasingly common over the last year. BitTorrent (the company) has
announced its own plans to go legit, offering DRMed Hollywood movies
from major studios. The company has already raised almost $9 million in venture capital and has signed deals with several of the major studios. Its service should launch sometime in February.
Now that BitTorrent is all grown up and has been given the keys to its parents' car, ISPs are faced with the difficult decision about how to handle the protocol. Companies from around the world have been throttling the service,
which can sometimes eat up three-quarters of a provider's total
bandwidth. Throttling could be seen as a legitimate response to this
bandwidth crunch if all BitTorrent content were illegal, but of course,
it's not. So what's an ISP to do—especially if they have agreed to run
a neutral network?
Or consider Zudeo,
the BitTorrent-based service from Azureus, which is trying to do much
the same thing, but in high-definition. It is also poised to send
massive amounts of traffic through the 'Net, but ISPs won't be able to
tell simply by looking at a packet whether it's legitimate or not.
The protocol has become popular enough that Opera has built-in support for BitTorrent downloads, and Blizzard's own World of Warcraft update program is built on open-source BitTorrent technology.
While this litany of legal services can lead to cries for ISPs to
stop shaping BitTorrent traffic, the reality remains that a large
percentage of this traffic is still illicit file-swapping. And whether
it's legal or not, no ISP is thrilled to have 80 percent of their
network capacity given over to serving BitTorrent downloads.
What's an ISP to do? That question is made even more difficult for
companies that have agreed to abide by network neutrality provisions.
So far, the only US company to do so in a binding way has been
AT&T, which agreed to provide a neutral network for several years as part of its merger agreement with BellSouth.
[ article continues... ]
Such agreements could prevent companies from shaping BitTorrent traffic on their networks, which would be great for World of Warcraft players, Linux users, and fans of Lost, but could have a negative effect on the speeds of those just out to surf the web for business or pleasure.
ISPs that have made no such agreements may not need to worry about
BitTorrent taking over their networks, but they do need to wrestle with
the issue of how to handle it now that so many legal uses of the
protocol are available. Do they want to irritate their BitTorrent-using
contingent, or let BitTorrent flow unhindered at the risk degrading the
experience of those who don't download torrents?
Comments
Comment on this article
|
my advice to 'those who don't download torrents', save some money and go back to dial up.
i agree with calvin..8 am till 4 pm off torrent...(but no good...rugi oo bayar stimix sebulan tp pakai mlm jerk..)suddently im disagree..!!!!
