[Note: I wish the media would not throw around monikers like 'Inventor of the Internet' so casually. Frack! DLH]
Inventor of the Internet takes aim at BitTorrent
News.com.com
By Rafe Needleman
In the 1960s, Lawrence Roberts invented computer networking via data packets, which led directly to the development of ARPANet and the Internet . And now Roberts is trying to fix one of the Internet’s biggest problems: network overload caused by peer-to-peer file transfers.
At Structure 08, he laid out the problem: 5 percent of the Net’s users are running P2P transfers taking up 80 percent of its capacity, which is dramatically limiting the available bandwidth available to everyone else. Roberts’ company, Anagran, is able to detect which “flows” are P2P traffic, and reduce the bandwidth available to these communications when other users’ systems want it. Roberts says that Anagran’s technology even functions when P2P transfers are encrypted. I’m not going to pretend I understand exactly how this works, but it has something to do with keeping information about the flow of data between all computers connected through an ISP in memory in the Anagram appliance, and then leveling off traffic of P2P communications as needed–and throughput only, not latency. Judging by the reaction of the audience of infrastructure geeks sitting around me, Roberts is on to something. “He’s the real deal right there,” the guy next to me said at one point, pretty much gazing up at the stage in awe.
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