Surely one ISP out there has to have investigated ways that p2p could
co-exist with their network..
Some ideas from one small ISP.
First, fileshare networks drive the need for bandwidth, and since an ISP
sells bandwidth that should be viewed as good for business because you
aren't going to sell many 6mb dsl lines to home users if they just want to
do email and browse.
Second, the more people on your network running fileshare network software
and sharing, the less backbone bandwidth your users are going to use when
downloading from a fileshare network because those on your network are going
to supply full bandwidth to them. This means that while your internal
network may see the traffic your expensive backbone connections won't (at
least for the download). Blocking the uploading is a stupid idea because now
all downloading has to come across your backbone connection.
Uploads from your users are good, this is the traffic that everyone looks
for when looking for peering partners.
Ok now all that said, the users are going to do what they are going to do.
If it takes them 20 minutes or 3 days to download a file they are still
going to download that file. So it's like the way people thought back in the
old dialup days when everyone said you can't build megabit pipes on the last
mile because the network won't support it. People download what they want
then the bandwidth sits idle. Nothing you do is going to stop them from
using the internet as they see fit so either they get it fast or they get it
slow but the bandwidth usage is still going to be there and as an ISP your
job is to make sure supply meets demand.
If you expect them to pay for 6mb pipes, they better see it run faster than
it does on a 1.5mb pipe or they are going to head to your competition.
Geo.
George Roettger
Netlink Services
