[ NNSquad ] Re: NY Times: Verizon offers system to improve P2P transfers

[Robert Oliver <rlo-nnsquad@olivers.us>]

Frank A. Coluccio wrote:
> Verizon continues to stand out from the pack in a growing number of new and
> interesting ways. Whether this reaching out to P2P users is legit, or involves
> hidden gotchas, remains to be seen. Although, if the abundance of bandwidth
> afforded by its FiOS offering is any indication of its philosophical bent,
> then I'd be inclined to think that it's for real, especially when one
> considers the efficiencies that Verizon itself stands to gain from this
> approach. ...
Verizon certainly has been displaying some Internet-savvy behavior, very 
much a refreshing change from the old days when the telco guys just 
didn't "get" data. Of course, Verizon has the luxury (as Frank notes) of 
FiOS bandwidth in their latest P2P / P4P project. While P4P might be a 
win for Verizon, it will likely still bring a typical cable (e.g., 
Comcast) network to its knees. So this is a great marketing advantage 
for FiOS. Tech savvy or market savvy? Clearly both, which is a powerful 
combination.

So far, Verizon seems to have an interesting mix of understanding the 
technology (for instance, they went full fiber to the premises FiOS 
rather than ATT Uverse fiber to the neighborhood) combined with older 
more restrictive ideas that haven't been exorcised yet (residential TOS 
restrictions on running a server, blocking port 25, maybe port 80 as 
well, etc.).

Which brings an excellent point: Technically, one of these new Verizon 
P4P nodes is a server. Will Verizon finally clean up their residential 
TOS as well as stopping the across-the-board port 25 blocking (vs. just 
blocking "offenders" such as Comcast used to do before they started 
blocking 25 nearly randomly)? It would seem Verizon's TOS is 
incompatible with their own P4P. Of course, there's no viable technical 
or legal definition of "server" especially since MIT / X-Windows turned 
it inside out.

But one has little legal recourse in ISP negotiations these days. Don't 
like it? Go elsewhere! Oh -- wait -- there's nowhere else to go. Which 
is part of what NNSquad is about.

In the end, my bet is if Verizon P4P makes it out of the labs and sees 
the light of day, it will just be classified as a "non-server" 
application by the sole judge and jury (Verizon), and thus no TOS change 
is required.