The World of Peer-to-Peer (P2P)/What is Peer-to-Peer (P2P)/Shadow play
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[edit] Shadow Play
Some actions are not intended to see the light of day, this section is dedicated to bring out some of the subjects/actions in an attempt to help the reader to fully appreciate some of the less publicized information that has some kind of baring on the evolution of P2P.
[edit] OS
Since P2P (and P2P related technologies) started to pop up, the security of the user OS started to be placed above user freedom, probably due to most people being, technologically challenged, some organizations (or groups with invested interest) are still free to think for the masses in place of just try to push the information out. There is an organized attempt to hide this fact from the public, it is funny to see that after this security enhancements are done they tend to be hidden so not to cause any brain damage or confusion (read foment rebellion) into users.
Well not all is lost, some people can't seem to be made to comply with this state of things and some information can be found and actions reversed.
- about MS Windows
- CrackTcpip.sys - [similar solution for Vista SP1]
- BadVista.org - An information campaign run by FSF/GNU aiming to stopping Microsoft Windows Vista adoption by promoting free software. What's wrong with Microsoft Windows Vista? ( http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista ) gives an extensive list of problems in the OS related to user loss of freedom and DRM.
[edit] ISPs
Internet providers (ISPs) aren't very pleased with P2P technologies due to the load the bring into to their networks, although they sell their Internet connections as unlimited usage, if people actually take on their offer, ISPs will eventually be unable to cope with the demand at the same price/profit level. This has made clients increasingly worried over some ISPs actions, from traffic shaping (protocol/packet prioritization) to traffic tampering.
San Francisco-based branch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) a digital rights group have successfully verified that this type of efforts by Internet providers to disrupt some uses of their services and evidences seem to indicate that it is an increasing trend other as reports have reached the EFF and verified by an investigation by The Associated Press.
EFF Releases Report Interference with Internet Traffic on ComCast ( http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair ), other information is available about this subject on the EFF site.
[edit] Traffic shaping
[edit] Traffic tampering
Traffic tampering is more worrying than Traffic shaping and harder to be noticed or verified. It can also be defined as spoofing, consisting in the injection of adulterated/fake information into communication by gaming a given protocol. It like the post office taking the identity of one of your friends and sending mail to you in it's name.
Pcapdiff ( http://www.eff.org/testyourisp/pcapdiff/ ) is a free Python tool developed by the EFF to compare two packet captures and identify potentially forged, dropped, or mangled packets.
[edit] Localization/Acceleration (Cache)
[edit] Network neutrality
Network Neutrality deals with the need to prevent ISPs from double dipping on charges/fees for both the clients paying for their broadband connections and WEB sites/Organizations having also to pay for prioritization of traffic according to origination and destination or protocol used.
