BitTorrent says its new protocol eliminated 80-90% of p2p congestion

A redesigned BitTorrent protocol is now in use by about 80 to 90 per cent of BitTorrent clients around the world, eliminating congestion caused by peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing during peak traffic periods, BitTorrent Inc.’s chief executive told The Wire Report in an interview. The protocol, known as Micro Transport Protocol (μTP), allows p2p traffic to flow more freely across networks, including those operated by Canadian Internet service providers, by identifying congestion before it happens and changing traffic to open pathways. In an interview with The Wire Report Wednesday, Eric Klinker, president and CEO of the company that created μTP and the original BitTorrent protocol, said the new design is being used by 80 to 90 per cent of BitTorrent clients—which are programs like μTorrent, Vuze, or BitComet that manage the uploads and downloads—and that it has reduced the same proportion of congestion caused by BitTorrent p2p transfers. “By our estimates, we’re probably 80 or 90 per cent of the way there,” he said. Klinker said different BitTorrent programs must be using μTP to interact and allow transfers. Otherwise, the programs will revert to the standard protocol, known as Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), which is less flexible in responding to congestion. He said μTP is now used by all of BitTorrent's own clients as well as competing companies’ programs running the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol. The company paid its competitors to implement the new μTP system, he said. “We control quite a few of the BitTorrent clients in the marketplace, but we’ve also paid all of our competitors—or as many of them that are interested—to implement this same technology, so we can all interoperate,” Klinker said. BitTorrent, a private technology company in San Francisco, Calif., earns revenues from software and technology licensing, software sales, and advertising and promotional partnerships. The basic BitTorrent protocol allows users to exchange files, often copyrighted movies and music, with others connected to a network of BitTorrent peers. Klinker acknowledged that BitTorrent’s share of the overall bandwidth “pie” is falling due to the rise of online video and over-the-top content services, but said the file-sharing protocol's overall bandwidth use has climbed for the past 10 years. Lower BitTorrent traffic during peak periods has more to do with the implementation of μTP, Klinker said, which makes use of free bandwidth in off-peak areas in other time zones or delays file transfers until congestion clears. “It’s probably indicative of μTP doing its job,” he said of reduced, peak-period bandwidth demands experienced by Internet providers. “It’s designed, of course, to leave the network alone when congestion occurs, and congestion is most likely going to occur, just like on the highways, at peak times.” Internet providers are continuously seeking ways to improve and manage congestion on their networks during peak hours. Network upgrades by Bell Canada Enterprises Inc. and Rogers Communications Inc. led the companies to announce plans this year to abandon their traffic shaping practices. During the CRTC's wholesale Internet billing hearings last year, Bell suggested the wholesale value of transmitting a gigabyte of data was 17.8 cents. Don Bowman, co-founder and chief technology officer for Sandvine Inc., told The Wire Report in an interview that μTP is “pretty good” at relieving congestion in a series of homes that share the same upstream traffic because it slows down and gets out of the way of traffic that is not p2p transfers. “But it’s not really able to accurately detect and deal with the concept of congestion, which occurs across large mixed groups of users,” he said. Bowman said BitTorrent was once identified as a primary source of network congestion, particularly for upstream traffic, but it has accounted for a smaller share of global bandwidth usage over the past couple of years. In 2008, he said, BitTorrent traffic accounted for about 90 per cent of global upstream traffic and about 60 per cent of downstream. It’s now rare to see BitTorrent traffic representing more than 20 per cent of a region’s aggregate traffic, he said. “In a lot of , it would be 10 per cent or less,” he said. Bowman said the rising popularity of online streaming and a decrease in BitTorrent’s relative traffic as a primary reason for why p2p traffic is not a primary source of congestion. He said most people stream videos during “peak period” evening hours when Internet traffic is heaviest, while p2p file transfers are often completed overnight. “As a consequence, BitTorrent uses a lot of bandwidth from off-peak periods,” he said. Bowman said μTP is “based on the principle that congestion occurs only at the edges of the network and nowhere else.” Klinker said μTP is good at “alleviating congestion no matter where it occurs,” including on central network points. “If congestion is occurring in the last mile, it’s going to be particularly effective at alleviating congestion in the last mile,” he said. “If there’s a particular peering point that’s congested, and a lot of BitTorrent traffic is flowing through it, it will be just as effective at alleviating the connection between any two ISPs that might be congested,” Klinker said. Klinker said μTP is in the final stages of being certified as a recognized Internet standard by the international Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which would allow developers to use the protocol more widely without concerns about interoperability. Chris Parsons, a network expert and University of Victoria doctoral candidate focusing on deep packet inspection, said IETF certification of μTP could address concerns about how the protocol relieves congestion and any other effects it has on networks. “Right now, they’re using a variation of a draft standard, so it’s largely closed, largely proprietary,” Parsons said. “The thing that has really made TCP shine, or not, depending on how you look at it, is all the congestion mechanisms are pretty well open. Everyone can see how they work, why they work,” he said. Klinker said if μTP is approved as a standard the company will look for ways to expand its use to other platforms and reduce congestion by other traffic like online video downloading. “It’s always been our vision for this protocol to address a larger problem than simply BitTorrent traffic,” Klinker said. He said he would like to see streaming services like Netflix or Hulu offer users an option to download video files into a queue, which could involve μTP. nkyonka@thewirereport.ca

BitTorrent says its new protocol eliminated 80-90% of p2p congestion

News | March 29, 2012

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