Comments on: FCC bandwidth subsidy doesn’t help BitTorrent, Inc. http://bennett.com/blog/2008/08/fcc-bandwidth-subsidy-doesnt-help-bittorrent-inc/ A regular old blog Fri, 04 Sep 2009 23:51:11 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: George Ou http://bennett.com/blog/2008/08/fcc-bandwidth-subsidy-doesnt-help-bittorrent-inc/comment-page-1/#comment-427100 George Ou Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:23:34 +0000 http://bennett.com/blog/2008/08/fcc-bandwidth-subsidy-doesnt-help-bittorrent-inc/#comment-427100 CDNs can deliver your data in order for video on demand with some measure of predictability. P2P can't deliver data in order and it's not always predictable. There's no way that someone paying $5 for a movie download is going to put up with a P2P download. People are ok with out-of-order downloads with variable predictability when they’re paying nothing for the content; especially when it’s copyrighted content. CDNs can deliver your data in order for video on demand with some measure of predictability. P2P can’t deliver data in order and it’s not always predictable. There’s no way that someone paying $5 for a movie download is going to put up with a P2P download. People are ok with out-of-order downloads with variable predictability when they’re paying nothing for the content; especially when it’s copyrighted content.

]]> By: Brett Glass http://bennett.com/blog/2008/08/fcc-bandwidth-subsidy-doesnt-help-bittorrent-inc/comment-page-1/#comment-427099 Brett Glass Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:45:23 +0000 http://bennett.com/blog/2008/08/fcc-bandwidth-subsidy-doesnt-help-bittorrent-inc/#comment-427099 Interesting. Why would BitTorrent's deal to sell its network to Best Buy fall through in the wake of an FCC ruling that favored BitTorrent by preventing ISPs from targeting BitTorrent's bandwidth-hogging software for throttling... no matter how deserving it was of such treatment? Because, in the ruling, the FCC gave tacit approval to ISP pricing schemes which meter data by the bit and/or cap users' total bandwidth consumption in a so-called "protocol-agnostic" way. (It's a shame that the FCC did not allow equipment to use the most effective throttling method for each abusive application, because this optimizes the experience. But if it had done that, it wouldn't have had anything to slam Comcast for.) In any event, it appears that any ruling which did not allow BitTorrent to shift absolutely unlimited costs from content providers to ISPs was sufficient to sink the deal. Which only goes to show that (a) cost shifting is BitTorrent's only use for non-pirates, and (b) more traditional CDNs are better if you're a content provider who is actually paying for your own bandwidth. Interesting. Why would BitTorrent’s deal to sell its network to Best Buy fall through in the wake of an FCC ruling that favored BitTorrent by preventing ISPs from targeting BitTorrent’s bandwidth-hogging software for throttling… no matter how deserving it was of such treatment?

Because, in the ruling, the FCC gave tacit approval to ISP pricing schemes which meter data by the bit and/or cap users’ total bandwidth consumption in a so-called “protocol-agnostic” way. (It’s a shame that the FCC did not allow equipment to use the most effective throttling method for each abusive application, because this optimizes the experience. But if it had done that, it wouldn’t have had anything to slam Comcast for.)

In any event, it appears that any ruling which did not allow BitTorrent to shift absolutely unlimited costs from content providers to ISPs was sufficient to sink the deal. Which only goes to show that (a) cost shifting is BitTorrent’s only use for non-pirates, and (b) more traditional CDNs are better if you’re a content provider who is actually paying for your own bandwidth.

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