Does p2p Really Have Any Traction In The States?

A few days ago, I added a new session to the upcoming Streaming Media East show in May that's going to talk to p2p distribution and whether or not it will ever have any mass-market adoption in the U.S. I'd love to hear in the comments section what you think the session should focus on. What are the p2p topics that people need to know about?

Here's my thinking. I don't know of any company besides the movie studios who use p2p to distribute content. And the only sales pitch I ever get from p2p vendors is that it "reduces the cost of bandwidth". Is that really all they have to sell? Reducing cost? And if so, why haven't more companies adopted it? What is reporting like when it comes to p2p delivery? Does it support live streaming? I'm no p2p expert, but for all the talk I hear of p2p, I still can't name any customers who actually use it. And no matter who I ask, they don't know of any companies either besides the movie industry using BitTorrent, which launches it's legit video store when?

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Update: Christopher Levy from the Distributed Computing Industry Association (DCIA) just let me know about the organization and what they are up to. The DCIA is a voluntary organization representing all sectors of the distributed computing industry. This includes content providers, software developers and distributors, and service-and-support companies. The DCIA is engaged in developing standards-and-practices to advance this innovative consumer-based distribution channel. Good to see, I didn't know they existed.

Comments

[Christopher Levy]

Great lead Dan.

I think that we need to not rush into pushing BitTorrent as a solution that people should build their business around given the product has a limited codebase and sure it's part of the GPL but it's unsupported and anybody who is using it will soon find themselves competing against BitTorrent for the CDN business. In fact that is part of BitTorrent's plan.

There are a wide variety of technologies available in the market based on p2p technology that are driving businesses big and small. Many of these technologies are available to the open marketplace and should be considered.

At the DCIA P2P Media Summit in New York last week we had a very thorough overview of all of these technologies and we are looking forward to bringing this info to the forefront of the business at SME and SMW.

[Ian Blaine]

Dan,
I think it could be interesting to cover some of these areas:

- Impact of P2P on ISPs(and their customers)who have upload caps. This seems especially relevant for streaming plays like Joost.

- Cost comparison of managed p2p services vs. traditional CDN pricing (assuming large commitment). Is it significant enough to enable new business models?

- At what scale does P2P provide a meaningful benefit? How many nodes + what concentration of content consumption is required?

Cheers,
Ian

[patrick gregston]

P2P needs to first differentiate itself from piracy. The DCIA is doing well articulating that. Second, it does offer efficiency, as long as the participants understand that this efficiency is on their resources- cycles and storage and bandwidth.
Third, the efficiency is more than cost, it also offers faster delivery, more choice, and most importantly, depending on the implementation, self balancing ( a good P2P scheme will make more, and spread more, of what people are asking for most. No amount of central storage model scaling can match this.
Fourth, and this is something really big but only my NeoPixSys partner and I seem to be talking about it- it offers security to both the content distributor and the customer. If you never have a complete file, and you do something clever to keep the index from being assembled, only people who get authorized get the complete file. For the customer, they can be given the control of thier identity independent of any vendor, as they can be the only holder of the integrated identity file.
The flip side of P2P that seems not to be getting discussed:
1) bandwidth and cycle erosion of the users resources. did you know how much Skype uses your computer to delivery other people's calls?
2)sludge in the system. lots of bits get lost and left in every participants drive.
3)scale- the amount of video being moved around on the net is nothing compared to the amount that is on other conventional networks. When you try to match what comes down a cable connection, even if it is only one show to every home, the system will fall over, even with P2P, and this is before we talk about HD. Despite all the hype, the size of the internet video delivery is miniscule compared to cable and broadcast, to say nothing of physical delivery ala Netflix, Blockbuster etc.
P2P needs to get a proof in a closed system where all these things can be accounted and measured with real people watching real video.