Comcast and BitTorrent in P2P talks

Comcast and BitTorrent are in talks over how to make P2P exchange less a traffic management problem for cable networks. There has been little detail released on this but the rumor is that Comcast is seeking a “topology-aware” hashing tree so peer uploads from one user on a cable span would eliminate the span as a source for other uploads, seeking instead alternative systems on other spans or operators. The move is prompted not so much by the FCC’s actions, which are not likely to require Comcast to stop its traffic management, but by the fact that the problem has handed the RBOCs, and especially Verizon, a major competitive advantage.