Whether it really would have preferred to do so or not, Comcast (
News -
Alert) — under fire from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for interferring or blocking peer-to-peer applications — has made an investment in GridNetworks.
GridNetworks is a provider of managed Internet video delivery services and says it now is "collaborating" with Comcast in the area of bandwidth efficiency for Internet video.
No doubt that is especially true in the area of improving the efficiency of peer-to-peer application performance on Comcast's networks. That will be quite a challenge as P2P becomes a more-popular protocol for delivering full-motion video content, because major content providers generally are expected to use P2P as a mechanism for delivering high-quality video over the Internet.
So there are at least two angles here. As a pure investment, Comcast might want to be a supplier of P2P platforms optimized for cable networks. If key business partners are going to use P2P, Comcast might as well try to provide an optimized P2P to its trading partners.
Beyond that, P2P strikes at the key strategic weakness of a cable network: upstream bandwidth. As P2P usage grows — unusual pressure is going to be placed on upstream bandwidth requirements. So anything Comcast can do to alleviate that demand will delay the time it must make expensive upgrades to its network.
"We are interested in the application of P2P concepts in a manner that puts the quality of the consumer experience first, and enables lawful distribution of copyrighted content while also efficiently utilizing the network," says Tony Werner, Comcast Chief Technology Officer.
GridNetworks, based in Seattle, primarily targets media and entertainment companies as buyers of its GridCasting technology.
Gary Kim (News - Alert) is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Gary’s articles, please visit his columnist page.
 Internet Protocol (IP) | X |
| IP stands for Internet Protocol, a data-networking protocol developed throughout the 1980s. It is the established standard protocol for transmitting and receiving data
in packets over the Internet. I...more |
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