Investigation of the problems associated with P2P File-Sharing

Over the past year a number of UK ISPs have been forced to either limit access to such services or re-design their packages to cope. Many find that the often tight economics of offering a broadband service can be easily stretched by heavy use of P2P file-sharing applications, which eats away at bandwidth.

Unsurprisingly some ISPs have thus chosen to make P2P a target and reason for their problems, increased prices and or package alterations. However not all agree; the MD of popular UK ISP Pipex, David Rickards, sees P2P as an in evitable reality: “Whilst we don't currently specifically monitor or measure the use of P2P on the PIPEX network I think it's true to say that a sizeable percentage of our customers use it.

P2P doesn't affect our service, aside from the expected effect - that a larger amount of bandwidth is being used than would be if P2P were not in use. That said, given the attractiveness of broadband for data exchange it's very likely that if P2P didn't exist then a similar system probably would.”

Sam Hill, the Development Director at UK ISP NDO, shares a similar perspective to Rickards: “We do not find that P2P causes us any bandwidth issues. Bandwidth is only a problem when ISP's do not have sensibly designed network backbone and infrastructures and the problems are then caused by either very poor network design or cost saving on the part of the ISP by buying smaller peering links than they really need and then blaming the end users and P2P for using up all their bandwidth.”

The Legal Issue

The legal difficulties surrounding P2P have also caused a stir, with a number of industry bodies calling for ISPs to be more accountable for what passes through their network. Unfortunately this is often easier said than done, Rickards (Pipex) had this to say: “P2P can be used to illegally exchange material protected by copyright, but then so can email, FTP and many other Internet protocols. Indeed, by burning the material onto CD-ROM, so can the postal system.

Like any responsible ISP we take a very serious view of any illegal use of the Internet but in common with most ISPs we do not monitor or record the type of information passed over our network. In reality ISPs would be no more able to inspect and filter every single packet passing across their network than the Post Office is able to open every envelope and check to see what is recorded on a CD-ROM inside. Even if this were possible, an enterprising software developer would evolve a way to hide the content of P2P packets so that they were that much harder to detect or stop without affecting other services.”

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