Confusion Reigns Supreme When It Comes To P2P Delivery Networks

I got a lot of comments from my recent blog post entitled "List Of P2P Delivery Networks" and the comments only reinforce that delivery networks, especially those who don't want to be thought of as traditional CDNs, are not making clear to customers what exactly they offer. Like customers, I don't get it either.

Stevan Arychuk from HP commented that, "BitGravity isn't a P2P network at all; they are a CDN service (with a twist), but don't do any P2P delivery." Ok, maybe not, but then what is the twist? Good luck finding out. Their website says their technology is  "the next generation of content distribution" with no info at all on how they deliver content. And I'm not picking on BitGravity, all of the networks that call themselves "next generation" really don't say what they do.

Move Networks does not use the term P2P on their website, but are classified as a P2P provider by everyone I talk to. Are they really? Only they can say. Their website says their delivery technology is based on "Quantum Streaming" but then don't define anywhere on their website that I can find how it works.

Grid Networks gives more info than some of the others but then confuses me even more by saying they have a hybrid approach that overcomes the challenges faced by P2P and traditional CDN networks. So if I understand this right, they are saying they are not a hybrid of both but rather of something completely different than the two.

Swarmcast calls their technology "grid-delivery" so I think that is P2P based but the first sentence on their technology page uses the term streaming and then says how their technology allows you to "always achieving the maximum possible download speed." So is it streaming or is it download, or is it both?

Itiva calls their technology "Quantum transport" and says it works "by taking every advantage of proxy and node contribution". Their website says that their Quantum transport technology "is similar to that of a controlled peer to peer model." So then it's not P2P?

Also, each one of the value propositions of the P2P (or non-P2P providers) has the exact same message on their websites which makes it hard to distinguish providers offerings:

- Move Networks: Highest Quality, Scalability, Low Cost, Reliable
- BitGravity: Performance, Reliability, Service, Price
- Grid Networks: Highest Quality, Performance, Scalable, Cost
- Swarmcast: High Quality, Reliable, Faster, Low Cost
- Itiva: High Quality, Low cost

Is anyone as confused as I am here? Don't get me wrong. I think it's great that there are new companies in the space who are looking to improve the user-experience for video based on a different way of delivering content, but if I can't understand it, how are customers expected to? It's not your technology that you are selling but rather the value you can show in the technology, translated in terms that are valuable to the customer.

Delivery networks needs to do a better job of education the market and customers on exactly what you do and don't support. How do you deliver content? What forms do you deliver it in? What formats can you deliver? Can you support live or just on-demand? These are the types of questions customers are asking.

Vendors,you need to help customers cut through the confusion. Make it simple. Deliver a clear message. Give them the information they need to make informed and educated decisions. Because if it stays this confusing in the market, it will not be adopted in the volume you want.

Comments

[Stevan Arychuk]

Nice summary, and I agree with most of what you are saying. We just finished a scan of the P2P space including vendors and technologies, and yes it is confusing. Furthermore, many of the vendors are changing their technologies and services offerings so quickly, it makes the value add and differentiator obscurity worse. Some of the vendors you mentioned were providing hardware solutions last year, and are now CDN or CDN+P2P hybrid solutions this year.

In addition to your value proposition list, I think understaning each vendors business model (ie: license vs. managed service, etc..) is also key, but again also seems to be changing.

I can't comment on BitGravity's secret sauce, but they are doing things differently than many of the other vendors IMO.

[Jim Ericson]

Dan, I'm glad we had a chance to clear this up when we spoke to you a few weeks ago. Move Networks is not a P2P delivery network at all. The technology and protocol include some common positive characteristics of P2P (e.g. the client controls the video delivery) but leverages CDNs for hosting and delivery.

The main technical characteristic that makes Move Networks unique on the transport layer (keeping in mind that Move Networks provides a full platform beyond the transport layer) is that Move Networks uses standard HTTP requests to transfer its video over TCP connections on standard Web hosting infrastructure. Other CDN-based systems use specialized media servers, which tend to be more difficult and costly to scale and maintain.

This protocol allows for very high quality video (ABC has announced they will be streaming in HD later this summer) while minimizing costs. Additionally, Move Adaptive Stream avoids the stalling and buffering common with other streaming technologies.

Anyway, we appreciate your diligence in learning about Move Networks and what we do.

Thanks.

[Justin Chapweske]

Hello Dan,

I agree that the current conversations around P2P delivery networks are confusing, and I appreciate your work to attempt to clarify things.

Swarmcast is not a P2P Delivery Network. Even though we originally invented this category and own significant IP, we moved beyond P2P some years ago to our newest invention: multi-source streaming.

Multi-source streaming uses only servers and does not use client PCs. It blends bandwidth from multiple CDNs and servers simultaneously to always provide the best quality and most reliable delivery for both live and on-demand video.

The Swarmcast client is a free toolkit that folks can use to provide improved, more immersive user experiences for online video. It works across all common codecs, media players, delivery networks, etc. and we work hard to ensure that our customers can always leverage the latest-and-greatest technologies such as Microsoft's Silverlight, Flash, etc.

Cheers!

-Justin

[Harvey Benedict]

Dan- good info here and you are correct, the market is confusing when it comes to P2P. There are many different services out there, but the reality is its less P2P and more about distributed computing. Many small players are so focused on the distribution aspect (not a small technical lift), yet the power of a peer based system is more on the commercial element. Can it interface into the workflow systems that content owners have invested significant time and money into over the past years. Ads, metadata management, player, reporting on down the line. Agreed the customer does not care how the content gets there, but they always care about quality, relevancy and subcriptions. Intelligence on the desktop. Full disclosure is I am with Verisign as part of the Kontiki acquistion, my points are based on real world experience. Keep up the good work, I check your blog every day. Harvey

[Jeff Payne]

Dan, one thing that's obvious is that client-side software is changing the business of content delivery. Several of the companies you mention provide client-side software which pull data from multiple hosted nodes simultaneously. This approach overcomes some of the inherent limitations of classic (single source) client/server data delivery. GridNetworks takes it a step further, enabling viewers to pull data from any combination of hosted and peer nodes. Grid's is more of a "CDN-extension" approach, keeping all of the command & control associated with traditional CDNs, adding the reliable full-screen capabilities of multi-source hosting, and also providing the improved scalability & economics of secure realtime P2P.