Is Akamai Announcing A New P2P Delivery Service Next Week?

That's the question I keep getting asked by people the past few days. Seems many are speculating that Akamai may announce a new P2P based delivery offering next week to coincide with their financial analyst summit. I don't know the date Akamai will announce such an offering, but I do expect one to come before the end of the year. Many in the industry are closely watching to see which traditional CDN provider is the first to offer a hybrid service.

VeriSign and CacheLogic both offer hybrid delivery today, but VeriSign bought Kontiki to get their P2P product offering and has been working to build out its traditional CDN service. And CacheLogic was built from P2P technology from the start and like VeriSign, has also been putting their efforts behind adding traditional CDN services. So Akamai would be the first CDN not built from P2P technology to offer the service if they announced it next week.

I also hear that Internap and Level 3 are working on P2P based offerings for video as well, so it seems the race is on amongst the CDNs to see who will offer it first, aside from some of the work the CDNs do already with BitTorrent.

Comments

[Yaron Samid]

Interesting times for CDNs and P2P indeed. Its one of those seemingly odd but ultimately obvious marriages thats got everyone talking. Like most people, I'm eager to see what will come out of Akamai's Red Swoosh acquisition.

For those interested, at Streaming Media West Akamai, Verisign, CachLogic, Level3 and Internap will be talking about their plans and perspective on P2P on a panel titled "CDNs & P2P - Is Hybrid Content Delivery the Future or Just Hype?":
http://www.streamingmedia.com/west/program/session.asp?id=1008

Some additional thoughts here:
http://www.pandoblog.com/?p=230

[Alex]

P2P is interesting for file delivery. But is awful, especially for streaming services.

It is untrue that P2P is more cost efficient. It still requires professional services and infrastructure to maintain a decent P2P network.
P2P also generates more data overhead (especially with realtime services). Up to 40% more traffic due to parity data and communication data is needed to guarantee the end user a little reliability.

P2P needs critical mass: when a file is unpopular, you'll have a hard time to find it. And when you find it, it will take ages to download. A unpopular stream won't work.
P2P can also become a uncontrollable mass bomb: too many requests can overflow the P2P system and can lock up an entire ISP network. There is no control at all. That's why I prefer CDN delivery.

P2P moves traffic costs from CDN's to ISP's. All major ISP's are traffic shaping P2P and decrease the best effort delivery service to a stuttering drama. And the ISP's are right. Look at the BBC in the UK: they launched their P2P iPlayer. The UK ISP's responded by filtering harder on all P2P traffic. Boohoo BBC.

ISP's don't want a single service provider or a specific traffic kind to fill up their network. 5% of their customers fill up the network by using P2P services. If ISP's don't enforce traffic shaping, all other 95% would complain. They also can't charge more to power users so they block P2P.

[Robert Morton]

Alex, have you used Joost any? P2P video works better than I expected, though it still has some rough edges. But do check it out (www.joost.com) and see if your opinion on this matter changes.

[Yaron Samid]

Alex, I'm not sure where you’re getting your data from but you sound like someone who’s never deployed content on a Hybrid P2P network and perhaps has a vested interest in them not succeeding? I’d love to discuss how it could boost your streaming business if you’re interested.

In the meantime, regarding your claims --
1. “It is untrue that P2P is more cost efficient.” – That’s a first. Hybrid P2P is inherently more cost efficient than traditional HTTP content delivery, especially as content becomes more popular, because it serves to intelligently offload bandwidth demand (cost) from CDN servers whenever possible. Every CDN has maintenance costs, thats a given common denominator, P2P networks actually require far less maintenance because you don’t have storage servers to manage. What professional services did you pay for??

2. “P2P also generates more data overhead” – 40% more traffic to ensure reliability? Where did that coming from? I’m sincerely curious to hear about your experience. Hybrid P2P reliability is ensured by maintaining central servers as fallback supernodes. The communications required to keep bits flowing at a guaranteed bitrate from available sources is literally unnoticeable compared to the massive files being delivered.

3. “P2P needs critical mass” – Again, I suggest you read up on Hybrid P2P here - http://www.pandonetworks.com/cdn-peering. It works with 1 or 1 million simultaneous downloaders equally well.

4. “There is no control at all.” – Do you really think that companies such as AOL, Warner Brothers, Viacom, BBC, Sony, Akamai, Verisign, etc. would use managed P2P technology if they had no control of their content or network? What system did you use?

5. “P2P moves traffic costs from CDN's to ISP's.” This is true Alex. This is what you pay your ISP for each month – the ability to download and upload content from the Internet. The fact that P2P is currently generating so much uplink traffic is definitely an issue for ISPs. The irony here is that P2P can actually save and even make ISPs money when implemented correctly. That’s why the world’s top ISPs, including Verizon, AT&T, Cox, Comcast and Cablevision are embracing a new standard being developed by the P4P Working Group. It’s not as sexy as a report of Comcast blocking BitTorrent so you may not have heard of it.

Again, I extend the offer to chat if you're interested -- yaron@pandonetworks.com.