Verizon Aims to Speed Up P2P

Providers have banned, blocked or slowed peer-to-peer traffic in their efforts to keep the flood of music, video, games and software from overwhelming their networks. But Verizon Communications Inc. has broken ranks with the industry and announced Friday that it plans to help its users share files faster — at least those who do it legally.

With researchers at Yale University and a group of companies that make file-sharing software, Verizon collaborated to enable faster downloads for consumers and lower costs for participating ISPs.

File-sharing accounts for one-third of all Internet traffic, according to Arbor Networks, a maker of traffic-management equipment, and some estimates are higher.

At a conference in New York, the Verizon group will present test results showing that when an ISP cooperates with a file-sharing software maker they can speed downloads an average of 60 percent — though collaboration boosted some downloads six-fold on fast Internet connections.

The idea is simple: using network topology data, reduce the number of hops for P2P data.  Don't get hopeful though: Verizon is only interested in helping LEGAL P2P traffic.