Peer to peer traffic on the internet has always gotten a bad rap. It has been associated almost exclusively with file sharing, or as the RIAA prefers to call file sharing - "The Destruction of Everything Good in the World, like Hugs... and America". But as I explained last week, peer to peer actually has a lot to offer the commercial sector, especially in the media industry.

The World Wide Web was built on the transfer of text files and linking them together. Back when everyone had 14.4 Kbit/s modems, viewing image-heavy pages was a pain. Web site visitors didn't have the bandwidth to download the images fast enough, so they were left waiting. As broadband connections came to home users, and the bandwidth hogs went from pictures to audio to video. Now the problem isn't on the user end, it's on the provider and server end.

Peer to peer traffic on the internet has always gotten a bad rap. It has been associated almost exclusively with file sharing, or as the RIAA prefers to call file sharing - "The Destruction of Everything Good in the World, like Hugs... and America". But as I explained last week, peer to peer actually has a lot to offer the commercial sector, especially in the media industry.

The World Wide Web was built on the transfer of text files and linking them together. Back when everyone had 14.4 Kbit/s modems, viewing image-heavy pages was a pain. Web site visitors didn't have the bandwidth to download the images fast enough, so they were left waiting. As broadband connections came to home users, and the bandwidth hogs went from pictures to audio to video. Now the problem isn't on the user end, it's on the provider and server end.