Verizon Announces BitTorrent File Sharing Network

By: John Lester
Published: Mar 14, 2008
Updated: Mar 17, 2010

Verizon said it is committed to offer the new P4P, an advanced peer-to-peer file sharing network, serving as the key to BitTorrent cooperation.

Verizon said Friday that it plans to offer a new advanced peer-to-peer network for BitTorrent file sharing and other applications. The international company also said it wants to increase speeds for legal file-sharing.

Unlike Comcast, who is the center of a bandwidth throttling debate with the FCC, Verizon says the key to generously providing subscribers to download or file sharing is cooperation. The network company suggests that if peer-to-peer companies cooperate with ISPs to route data through nearby network connections, rather than using random links, the service speeds can increase by 60 percent on average.

In one recent study, Verizon frequently saw just 6 percent of peer-to-peer traffic routed through nearby company subscribers. When file-sharing was conducted through nearby customers, however, the price of transmitting the data was reduced for ISPs.

Verizon is trying to minimize costs for network file sharing by using the P4P protocol, so that peers will not be selected randomly anymore, from all the corners of the world. The P4P is more optimized and could increase performance and even double the speeds.

P4P is primarily intended for file sharing networks where the content is legitimate such as Pando. The service plans to offer free NBC TV shows in April and may gradually help offset some of the content costs by reducing the bandwidth use.

The new P4P protocol is expected to be available as early as next month.