Subject: [p2pi] Incentivization for P2P optimizations

From: The 8472 <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:00:20 +0200

The problem with most P2P optimizations, such as ALTO is that they must
be supported by many applications that are developed as a community
effort or are strongly user-demand driven in other ways. This means any
adoption of optimization depends on the user-perceived value of such
optimization.

This means that any optimization must perform as least as good or
preferably better than an unoptimized variant would on an open, neutral
network. Comparing against traffic shaped network is not a realistic
option as traffic shaping drives the demand for obfuscation, leads to
an arms race rather than asking the ISP's servers to support the very
file sharing applications it's sabotaging at the same time (i'm talking
about aggressive traffic shaping here). I.e. the stick does not work
very well.

So... how can the carrot look like? Preferring locality does not really
work if a swarm is seeded by a handful of very fast seeds in (standard
example:) sweden or japan, most peer selection operation in general can
only be strongly biased if the swarm is already saturated with
bandwidth since the peers are already optimizing for maximum
throughput, any deviation from that scheme could mean less-than-optimal
performance, from the user perspective.

The general point is that there is only a limited amount of upload
bandwidth within the global pool of peers. All ALTO&Co can do is
redistributing from the pool, which means it would be a disadvantage to
some users and thus a disincentive.

To provide a real incentive to end users there are 2 ways, either it
could be monetary or improved download performance. The basic idea of
the monetary incentive is to charge extra for non-optimized traffic,
e.g. some austrialian ISPs charge extra for "international" traffic in
general. But since users like flat pricing that's probably not such a
good option.

Providing "real" bandwidth improvements for peers can be done either
through caches or something i call "shadow bandwidth", i.e. bandwidth
that's physically available on the connection to the user but not part
of his broadband plan. E.g. if he is paying for a 20/5 plan but the
line is physically capable of 50/20 then we'd have a shadow bandwidth
of 30/15. Such bandwidth is already used in some scenarios do deliver
VoIP or VoD w/o interference from the internet traffic. If this shadow
bandwidth would be made available to local (or otherwise optimized)
connections then this would provide a significant incentive to adopt
such optimization schemes.

Caches can also provide an incentive since many swarms are not capable
of saturating the users' downlink, but as users can be members of
private, ratio-tracking sites or caches themselves only participate in
uploading to external peers to a very limited extent they can only
reduce the upload of a user indirectly by providing bandwidth that has
not to be provided by someone in the global pool of peers.

Other options are: multicast and symmetric connection. Multicast
dramatically reduces the number of nodes that have to upload and
symmetric connections make your local peer as good as any as most peers
will be able to reciprocate at your own upload rate on average, which
would mean locality-optimizations wouldn't be a dis-incentive at least.

Long story short:

incentives for and against adoption from the enduser perspective
should be consided in the design of such optimizations

the stick probably won't work. you do not feed the jaw that bites
you

going easy on the ISP infrastructure is not a carrot from the
user perspective if it has noticeable, negative impact on the
throughput, not just on average but also for individual users

cost savings or improved download speeds are real incentives for
endusers

any centralized solution will be watched with a wary eye as
they'll be run by cooperations that might be considered as hostile by
users in the light of stories like this one:
http://torrentfreak.com/uncovering-the-dark-side-of-p4p-080824/ thus
privacy and lawyer-resistance should be design-goals of any
P2P-infrastructure as this would otherwise prove to be a disincentive
for adoption

--

The 8472

independent developer for the Azureus Vuze Bittorrent client

_______________________________________________
p2pi mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/p2pi

---

From: Stanislav Shalunov <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:52:48 -0700

This is very well-reasoned and I thought I would just add a couple of  
small bits:

Many ISPs outside of the US already have traffic caps and charge per  
bit above the cap.  US ISPs seem to be moving in the same direction.   
Usually in these cases there's an exception for some form of local  
traffic.  The locality is different in different places, sometimes  
country-wide sometimes city-wide, and sometimes network-wide.  If ALTO  
allowed the ISP to convey this same preference in a machine-readable  
form, both the ISP and the P2P app/user would have an incentive to use  
it.

The incentives, briefly, are --

For the user and, consequently, P2P app developers,
pay less with metered traffic
be blocked or throttled less with unmetered traffic

For the edge ISP,
have less transit traffic

There's no incentive for core ISPs (who get paid for the transit  
traffic), but their participation isn't required.

The privacy requirement is that the ISP learns no more than it does  
today about the swarm operation.  The ISP already knows who you  
connect to, but it does not know who you're considering as connection  
candidates.

And yes, when ISP preference and performance collide, performance will  
win.  I do hope that there's a fair number of cases where there's no  
collision.

On Aug 27, 2008, at 2:00 PM, The 8472 wrote:

> The problem with most P2P optimizations, such as ALTO is that they  
> must be supported by many applications that are developed as a  
> community effort or are strongly user-demand driven in other ways.  
> This means any adoption of optimization depends on the user- 
> perceived value of such optimization.
>
> preferably better than an unoptimized variant would on an open,  
> neutral network. Comparing against traffic shaped network is not a  
> realistic option as traffic shaping drives the demand for  
> obfuscation, leads to an arms race rather than asking the ISP's  
> servers to support the very file sharing applications it's  
> sabotaging at the same time (i'm talking about aggressive traffic  
> shaping here). I.e. the stick does not work very well.
>
> So... how can the carrot look like? Preferring locality does not  
> really work if a swarm is seeded by a handful of very fast seeds in  
> (standard example:) sweden or japan, most peer selection operation  
> in general can only be strongly biased if the swarm is already  
> saturated with bandwidth since the peers are already optimizing for  
> maximum throughput, any deviation from that scheme could mean less- 
> than-optimal performance, from the user perspective.
> redistributing from the pool, which means it would be a disadvantage  
> to some users and thus a disincentive.
>
> could be monetary or improved download performance. The basic idea  
> of the monetary incentive is to charge extra for non-optimized  
> traffic, e.g. some austrialian ISPs charge extra for "international"  
> traffic in general. But since users like flat pricing that's  
> probably not such a good option.
> through caches or something i call "shadow bandwidth", i.e.  
> bandwidth that's physically available on the connection to the user  
> but not part of his broadband plan. E.g. if he is paying for a 20/5  
> plan but the line is physically capable of 50/20 then we'd have a  
> shadow bandwidth of 30/15. Such bandwidth is already used in some  
> scenarios do deliver VoIP or VoD w/o interference from the internet  
> traffic. If this shadow bandwidth would be made available to local  
> (or otherwise optimized) connections then this would provide a  
> significant incentive to adopt such optimization schemes.
> Caches can also provide an incentive since many swarms are not  
> capable of saturating the users' downlink, but as users can be  
> members of private, ratio-tracking sites or caches themselves only  
> participate in uploading to external peers to a very limited extent  
> they can only reduce the upload of a user indirectly by providing  
> bandwidth that has not to be provided by someone in the global pool  
> of peers.
>
>
> symmetric connections make your local peer as good as any as most  
> peers will be able to reciprocate at your own upload rate on  
> average, which would mean locality-optimizations wouldn't be a dis- 
> incentive at least.
>
>
>
> Long story short:
> the stick probably won't work. you do not feed the jaw that bites you
> going easy on the ISP infrastructure is not a carrot from the user  
> perspective if it has noticeable, negative impact on the throughput,  
> not just on average but also for individual users
> any centralized solution will be watched with a wary eye as they'll  
> be run by cooperations that might be considered as hostile by users  
> in the light of stories like this one: http://torrentfreak.com/uncovering-the-dark-side-of-p4p-080824/ 
>  thus privacy and lawyer-resistance should be design-goals of any  
> P2P-infrastructure as this would otherwise prove to be a  
> disincentive for adoption
>
> -- 
> The 8472

--
Stanislav Shalunov

---

From: The 8472 <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:28:50 +0200

Stanislav Shalunov wrote:

This is very well-reasoned and I thought I would just add a
couple of small bits:

Many ISPs outside of the US already have traffic caps and charge
per bit above the cap.  US ISPs seem to be moving in the same
direction.  Usually in these cases there's an exception for some form
of local traffic.  The locality is different in different places,
sometimes country-wide sometimes city-wide, and sometimes network-wide.
If ALTO allowed the ISP to convey this same preference in a
machine-readable form, both the ISP and the P2P app/user would have an
incentive to use it.

Well, actually... over here in europe many ISPs actually moved from
usage based pricing to flat fees... hum... 7 years ago? The only ones
considering returning to usage based pricing are those that offer flat
fee UMTS data services.

yeah... as i said, the stick would probably hamper cooperation.
Aggressive, protocol-specific traffic shaping leads to obfuscation, and
when you obfuscate you certainly don't want to draw the ISP's attention
to the fact that you're P2Ping by querying its p2p-optimization
services. Generic throttling (i.e. just lowering the connection's speed
caps) might be different, though it's still a "conform or die"-kind of
incentive.

For the edge ISP,

even the core ISPs (tier 1 carriers) have to build out peering among
each other and generally share the costs of such peering sites. But i
don't know if p2p actually is a serious cost concern at those points.

The privacy requirement is that the ISP learns no more than it
does today about the swarm operation.  The ISP already knows who you
connect to, but it does not know who you're considering as connection
candidates.

yes, while is this somewhat easy when you just do peer selection
optimization it gets way more difficult with caching.

And yes, when ISP preference and performance collide,
performance will win.  I do hope that there's a fair number of cases
where there's no collision.

The problem with most P2P
optimizations, such as ALTO is that they must be supported by many
applications that are developed as a community effort or are strongly
user-demand driven in other ways. This means any adoption of
optimization depends on the user-perceived value of such optimization.

Long story short:

incentives for and against adoption from the enduser
perspective should be consided in the design of such optimizations

the stick probably won't work. you do not feed the jaw that
bites you

cost savings or improved download speeds are real incentives
for endusers

users in the light of stories like this one: http://torrentfreak.com/uncovering-the-dark-side-of-p4p-080824/

--

The 8472

p2pi mailing list

[email-masked]

--

Stanislav Shalunov

--

The 8472

---

From: Marshall Eubanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:59:23 -0400

On Aug 28, 2008, at 7:52 PM, Stanislav Shalunov wrote:

> This is very well-reasoned and I thought I would just add a couple  
> of small bits:
>

Indeed :

<http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2329170,00.asp>

Comcast has confirmed that all residential customers will be subject  
to a 250 gigabyte per month data limit starting October 1.

Regards
Marshall

> country-wide sometimes city-wide, and sometimes network-wide.  If  
> ALTO allowed the ISP to convey this same preference in a machine- 
> readable form, both the ISP and the P2P app/user would have an  
> incentive to use it.
>
> 	• pay less with metered traffic
> 	• be blocked or throttled less with unmetered traffic
>
> For the edge ISP,
> 	• have less transit traffic
>
> connect to, but it does not know who you're considering as  
> connection candidates.
>
> And yes, when ISP preference and performance collide, performance  
> will win.  I do hope that there's a fair number of cases where  
> there's no collision.
>
>
>
>> redistributing from the pool, which means it would be a  
>> disadvantage to some users and thus a disincentive.
>>
>> To provide a real incentive to end users there are 2 ways, either  
>> it could be monetary or improved download performance. The basic  
>> idea of the monetary incentive is to charge extra for non-optimized  
>> traffic, e.g. some austrialian ISPs charge extra for  
>> "international" traffic in general. But since users like flat  
>> pricing that's probably not such a good option.
>> Providing "real" bandwidth improvements for peers can be done  
>> either through caches or something i call "shadow bandwidth", i.e.  
>> 	• incentives for and against adoption from the enduser perspective  
>> 	• the stick probably won't work. you do not feed the jaw that  
>> bites you
>> 	• going easy on the ISP infrastructure is not a carrot from the  
>> 	• cost savings or improved download speeds are real incentives for  
>> endusers
>> 	• any centralized solution will be watched with a wary eye as  
>> they'll be run by cooperations that might be considered as hostile  
>> by users in the light of stories like this one: http://torrentfreak.com/uncovering-the-dark-side-of-p4p-080824/

---

From: Stanislav Shalunov <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:26:37 -0700

On Aug 29, 2008, at 11:28 AM, The 8472 wrote:
> usage based pricing to flat fees... hum... 7 years ago? The only  
> ones considering returning to usage based pricing are those that  
> offer flat fee UMTS data services.

The meme is that flat fees make the ISP 50% more money.  (As far as I  
know the actual number is based on very few data points.) Whether or  
not the number is quite right (I think that's too high), flat fees do  
seem to make the ISP more money.

So the US ISPs moved to flat pricing around 12 years ago, and some non- 
US ones (still a minority) followed suit.

The ISPs, regardless of pricing plans, will do something with  
outliers.  Currently, non-metered ISPs terminate their accounts or put  
them into extreme penalty boxes.  This is clearly worse in every  
metric and for every party than charging a fair rate above a cap.    
The move to usage-based billing above a cap that most users don't hit  
is all but inevitable.  Check the news.

> Aggressive, protocol-specific traffic shaping leads to obfuscation,  
> and when you obfuscate you certainly don't want to draw the ISP's  
> attention to the fact that you're P2Ping by querying its p2p- 
> optimization services. Generic throttling (i.e. just lowering the  
> connection's speed caps) might be different, though it's still a  
> "conform or die"-kind of incentive.

The ISPs do count the bytes.  The users are the ones who pay and so  
they have the ultimate power.  But of course ISPs will move to stay in  
business or go out of business.

> each other and generally share the costs of such peering sites. But  
> i don't know if p2p actually is a serious cost concern at those  
> points.

Transit traffic is where tier 1 ISPs get paid.  Of course they have  
costs, but they stay in business by making a profit.

> optimization it gets way more difficult with caching.

The ISP already knows what you're downloading, except for https  
trackers + encrypted mode connections.  Encrypted mode will obviously  
need to disable caching.

>>> really work if a swarm is seeded by a handful of very fast seeds  
>>> in (standard example:) sweden or japan, most peer selection  
>>> operation in general can only be strongly biased if the swarm is  
>>> already saturated with bandwidth since the peers are already  
>>> optimizing for maximum throughput, any deviation from that scheme  
>>> could mean less-than-optimal performance, from the user perspective.
>>> idea of the monetary incentive is to charge extra for non- 
>>> optimized traffic, e.g. some austrialian ISPs charge extra for  
>>> bandwidth that's physically available on the connection to the  
>>> user but not part of his broadband plan. E.g. if he is paying for  
>>> a 20/5 plan but the line is physically capable of 50/20 then we'd  
>>> have a shadow bandwidth of 30/15. Such bandwidth is already used  
>>> in some scenarios do deliver VoIP or VoD w/o interference from the  
>>> internet traffic. If this shadow bandwidth would be made available  
>>> to local (or otherwise optimized) connections then this would  
>>> provide a significant incentive to adopt such optimization schemes.
>>> participate in uploading to external peers to a very limited  
>>> extent they can only reduce the upload of a user indirectly by  
>>> providing bandwidth that has not to be provided by someone in the  
>>> global pool of peers.
>>>
>>>
>>> perspective if it has noticeable, negative impact on the  

--
Stanislav Shalunov

---

From: The 8472 <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:30:09 +0200

> trackers + encrypted mode connections.  Encrypted mode will obviously 
they could know, but they don't (or they shouldn't) at the moment since 
that would violate user privacy. ISPs should be considered a public 
service, just like the postal service. Should the postal service be 
allowed to look into your mail? They can do so technically, just like 
ISPs can easily look into your packets and examine what you're doing.
Thus privacy has to be protected in a caching scheme.

---

From: "Theo Zourzouvillys" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 13:40:00 +0100

2008/8/29 The 8472 <[email-masked]>:

> Well, actually... over here in europe many ISPs actually moved from usage
> based pricing to flat fees... hum... 7 years ago? The only ones considering
> returning to usage based pricing are those that offer flat fee UMTS data
> services.

Perhaps in your Europe, but certainly not mine :-)

However you look at it, every single ISP here in the UK is usage
based, ether through monthly caps, usage based charging, dynamically
rate limiting, or sticking all the bandwidth abusers on a "naughy
boy's" LNS to be in line with their usage policy for that service.

 ~ Theo