Mar 09
16
Save the Planet – Share a File
Peering is an agreement between two or more ISP’s to share
traffic between each other to prevent it from using the internet for its
transit.
Chris Gilbey my business partner lives 120 kilometers down
the road from where I live.
You would think that when he and I send each other email it
(the email) travels between his place and mine, a mere hundred and twenty
kilometers. Well that’s what most people think. However it is not quite so…..
Unfortunately – I use Unwired and Chris Uses Telstra. Two
different ISP’s with different commercial objectives and little in common
except for the fact that they both have customers.
When Chris sends me an email it travels all the way to Philadelphia
– which is where my Outlook Express has to retrieve it from. However, if
Unwired and Telstra peered then…..
Non Peering Mail Retrieval Peering Mail Retrieval
Everyone in Australia
would benefit from the saving of my email not having to go to halfway round the
world and back.
If all ISP’s peered with all ISP’s then everyone in the
world would save bandwidth and the Internet would be faster for important
things like Youtube or online Tetris.
That is what P2P is. Sending data between users without
blocking up the international links.
Imagine how slow the internet would be if ten million
Australians used Unwired and the other ten million used Telstra to send emails
to each other.
There would be no room to download movies, no room to
download songs and absolutely no way to play online Tetris.
Conversely, consider the possibilities if everyone
ignored their ISP’s anti competitive policies and the content industries mis-information campaign and everyone peered with
everyone.
Think of the savings in greenhouse gases of not having to send an email around the world (around 0.42 grams of carbon) multiplied by one email per day and multiplied by 1.8 billion internet users.
That equal over eight thousand tons of carbon emissions per day.
P2P should be passed into legislation as mandatory.