Peer-to-Peer technology - a confession.

Okay.

Time to confess.

I JUST DON’T GET IT!

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology.

I have commented on a Guardian blog on IPTV and admitted my confusion with the technology.

To restate here:

As someone (who) “just can’t get it into their “terminally thick brain”" how wonderful p2p is to distribute media content, may I ask how you deal with the following in a decentralised network as a broadcaster:

1. Those who use it for downloads and don’t share uploads.
2. Traffic-shaping by ISPs
3. Multitudes of p2p clients competeing for resources on the host machine.
4. Others on a network competeing (sic) against p2p clients for upstream bandwidth.
5. Compromised clients “poisoning the well”.
6. Compromised clients breaking the OS.

With BT moving to a purely IP based backbone which will allow for native multicasting and the use of Content Delivery Networks there is a more technically robust alternative.