P2P/BitTorrent fall on hard times

P2P may be falling on hard times in at least one sense; BitTorrent confirmed a 20% layoff but said the move had nothing to do with the Comcast throttling issue. In some ways it would have been better for the company had Comcast been the culprit, since the FCC has ruled that Comcast can’t strangle a particular type of traffic.

We believe that the real problem is that there is little BitTorrent can do to rehab the image of P2P, which our research and modeling shows is used for illegal file sharing in more than 90% of cases. It’s ironic the giant of P2P is now suffering, given that the telcos are at the same time looking at P2P signaling architectures as an alternative to centralized signaling systems like IMS. Recent rumors say that operators are researching the use of a P2P architecture for delivering “rich service signaling” without the need for a central signaling system and without the limitations of SIP/SDP/IMS.