Yale Researchers Create a 'P4P' system to Increase Efficiency on the Internet

A team of researchers from Yale University has developed an improved system that will make Internet service providers (ISPs) and peer-to-peer (P2P) software applications work better together and accelerate the speed of the Internet.

The P4P is intended to both cut down the cost to ISPs and bring better performance of P2P applications as stated by a paper planned for ACM SIGCOMM 2008, a premier computer networking conference in August 2008 in Seattle.

A research team that includes Professors Avi Silberschatz, Y. Richard Yang, and Ph.D. candidate Haiyong Xie in Yale’s Department of Computer Science is putting forward an innovative architecture called P4P which basically means “provider portal for P2P applications” – to facilitate direct communications between ISPs and P2P applications.

As Silberschatz explains, the P4P architecture helps the Internet architecture expand by providing servers the group calls iTrackers to individual ISPs. Actually, the servers have the role of P2P portals to the ISP networks.

It seems that the innovative P4P architecture is able to function in multiple modes. Using the simple mode, the ISPs will disclose their network status enabling P2P applications to avoid hot-spots. P4P can also operate in another mode acting as a stock or commodities exchange — allowing markets and providers cooperate freely to develop the most well-organized information and cost flow, so costs of operation are reduced and the risk of access to individual to overload is also diminished.

According to the Yale researchers, in a field test carried out using the Pando software in March 2008, P4P obtained impressive results, decreasing inter-ISP traffic by an average of 34 %, and improving delivery speeds to end users by up to 235 % across US networks and up to 898 % across international networks.