In the span of just six months, peer-to-peer (P2P) companies have gone from being the bane of Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) to emerging as a practical solution for managing network traffic and maximizing profits for the ISP’s and content creators.
A great deal of collaboration is underway including the efforts of Comcast and BitTorrent. NBC is reading its video download service with a P2P component from Pando Networks.
Tomorrow in Los Angeles at the P2P Media Summit, held in conjunction with Digital Hollywood, leaders in the P2P and media industry will gather to discuss the implementation of P2P. As an indication of the of how legitimate this has all become, the Bob Pisano, COO of the Motion Picture Association of America will speak.
A number of guidelines from a working group will be released by the Distributed Computing Industry Association.
Robert Levitan, CEO of Pando Networks, is a member of the 60-company working group. He will give a keynote address tomorrow. I caught up with him on Friday in Manhattan’s Madison Park for a chat about the work of the DCIA and the findings of the group.
In tests conducted of the past months by Pando, Robert told Beet.TV that P2P has clearly demonstrated that network operating costs can be reduced and the speed of delivery to the consumer increased. Some of these findings were published last month.
We have been following Pando from a while. The company has shifted its business from providing a desktop P2P consumer application to becoming a P2P solution provider to
content creators and network operators.
Pando recently raised $8 million in an additional funding round from Intel Capital and others.
This is Robert’s fourth start-up. He was the co-founder if iVillage. Great to have him on the show again.
BEET.TV IS GOING TO HOLLYWOOD!
We are heading out to LA early tomorrow morning to cover Digital Hollywood. Lots of coverage beginning right here on the purple channel beginning on Tuesday.
— Andy Plesser
