Posted on Tuesday, June 03 2008 @ 5:45 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
Yale researchers have developed a more efficient way to share files online. DailyTech
has all the info on P4P, this is a new technology that will make communication more direct, resulting in cost savings and higher speed.
Professors Avi Silberschatz, Y. Richard Yang, and Ph.D. candidate Haiyong Xie, faculty members at Yale's Department of Computer Science, are developing a new proposed standard known as P4P. P4P stands for “provider portal for P2P applications”. The system would make for more explicit and uninterrupted communications between ISPs and P2P applications.
The team will be presenting their findings in a paper at the premier Seattle computer networking class ACM SIGCOMM 2008 in August. In the paper, they detail how P4P will reduce cost for ISPs and improve P2P performance for normal users. Silberschatz explains -- current P2P technologies do not have a sense of what network they're on and may do ridiculous things like making a long distance call to connect to a neighbor when transferring a file. The lack of intelligence translates in money lost for the ISPs, particularly for users with "unlimited" connections, and in time lost for the consumer, who could be receiving the file faster.
The Yale team hasn't just come up with a name for and analysis of the new architecture; they also are testing and implementing key system components. Yang states, "Right now the ISPs and P2P companies are dancing with the problem — but stepping on each other’s toes. Our objective is to have an open architecture that any ISP and any P2P can participate in. Yale has facilitated this project behind the scenes and without direct financial interest through a working group called P4P that was formed in July 2007 to prompt collaboration on the project."
