[November 02, 2009] BLOG: Good Morning Silicon Valley: New BitTorrent protocol exercises self-control [San Jose Mercury News, Calif.] Tweet (San Jose Mercury News (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 2--The widely used BitTorrent protocol for peer-to-peer sharing of large files has been a bandwidth bugaboo for Internet service providers for several years now -- estimated to account for a quarter to a half of all Net traffic [http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-still-king-of-p2p-traffic-090218/], depending on location, and held up as justification for the kind of heavy handed traffic management that got Comcast in trouble last year (see "FCC to Comcast: Go forth and sin no more [http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2008/08/fcc-to-comcast-go-forth-and-sin-no-more.html]") and helped bring the issue of net neutrality to the fore. Those days, however, may be nearing an end. BitTorrent Inc. says it is currently testing and will soon be launching a new version of the protocol, uTorrent 2.0, that is built to be aware of network congestion and will throttle its own traffic [http://torrentfreak.com/utorrent-2-0-to-elimininate-the-need-for-isp-throttling-091031/] (primarily upload speeds) as warranted, thus saving ISPs the trouble and expense. "If uTP is successful it should result in a multibillion dollar windfall in terms of savings for ISPs," said Simon Morris, BitTorrent's VP of Product Management. The resulting reduction in congestion should also mean better performance for users. "We're excited that this creates a better experience for millions of consumers," said Morris, "and it also potentially has a massive impact on ISPs -- greatly reducing (even eliminating) any justification to manage or shape BitTorrent traffic and allowing ISP networks to handle more BitTorrent traffic, without resulting congestion forcing capital network upgrades ahead of schedule or the 'need' to invest in DPI [Deep Packet Inspection [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspection]] or other traffic shaping gear." To see more of the San Jose Mercury News, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.mercurynews.com. Copyright (c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]