A Look Ahead: P4P & DigiMeld

The adoption of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology has experienced substantial growth in the past several years, and the future looks even brighter. Currently, experts and researchers across several industries and academia have been making great strides with the creation and positive field results for the P4P(Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P) protocol.

Actively leading the way for the advancement of P4P is the P4P Working Group (P4PWG). The P4PWG consists of leading ISPs, P2P software distributors, and technology researchers. The group’s goal is to ascertain appropriate and voluntary best practices for the use of P4P mechanisms to accelerate the distribution of content and optimize utilization of ISP network resources in order to provide the best possible performance to end-user customers. P4P allows the P2P networks to optimize traffic within each ISP, which not only reduces the volume of data traversing the ISP’s infrastructure, but creates a more manageable flow of data.

DigiMeld, a rich media content delivery platform that uses proprietary Grid-streaming technology, has been a certified observer of the P4PWG since 2007. DigiMeld’s Grid-streaming technology enables them to be a prime player in theP4P protocol movement because its utilization of Central Grid Control Server architecture. According to DigiMeld’s CTO Dr. Jerry Qin, “Using Central Grid Control Server architecture, such as DigiMelds, highly optimizes the efficiency of the P4P protocol." Unlike most P2P software distributors, who employ what is known as a “client side” architecture, which limits efficiency.

As the P4P protocol continues to be tested and advocated by groups and researchers, the adoption of P2P based technologies will continue to advance. We will keep posting the latest news and advancements of P4P on our blog.

To learn more about the benefits of P4P and the P4P Working Group visit the website: www.openp4p.net

The Decentralization of Online Content Delivery Models

Online content delivery models have been undergoing a revolution from a historically centralized architecture to a decentralized architecture, due greatly in part to the adoption of peer based, and grid-streaming technology.

In traditional CDN and unicast distribution models the architecture is centralized, meaning the data is transmitted directly from the media servers to the users. Currently, emerging technologies such as DigiMeld's grid-streaming architecture, have been utilizing a highly decentralized model, in which video data is transmitted from user to user through an advanced grid network. The grid architecture that DigiMeld employs does not require vast amounts of expensive servers to deliver content efficiently like traditional CDN and unicast models. This feature allows DigiMeld to greatly reduce its cost to serve its streams. As an example, one Grid Control Server employed by DigiMeld can serve up to 20,000 concurrent viewers, while a traditional CDN server can only handle a mere 600 on average.

The Internet was originally designed as a highly decentralized facility, but when online content delivery models were originally adopted they became quite the opposite. Technology to deliver content via the Internet has been evolving because the realization that a decentralized architecture can be a more efficient, and cost effective solution for the distribution of rich media content. We should continue to observe the trend of decentralized models, like DigiMeld's grid-streaming architecture, becoming a popular solution to various applications in the online video delivery industry.