Editing Peer-to-peer (section)

===Network neutrality===
Peer-to-peer applications present one of the core issues in the [[network neutrality]] controversy. Internet service providers ([[ISPs]]) have been known to throttle P2P file-sharing traffic due to its high-[[Bandwidth (computing)|bandwidth]] usage.<ref name="newteevee.com">{{Cite web |date=2022-07-01 |title=What is bandwidth throttling? How to stop it {{!}} NordVPN |url=https://nordvpn.com/blog/what-is-bandwidth-throttling/ |access-date=2024-08-21 |website=nordvpn.com |language=en}}</ref> Compared to Web browsing, e-mail or many other uses of the internet, where data is only transferred in short intervals and relative small quantities, P2P file-sharing often consists of relatively heavy bandwidth usage due to ongoing file transfers and swarm/network coordination packets. In October 2007, [[Comcast]], one of the largest broadband Internet providers in the United States, started blocking P2P applications such as [[BitTorrent]]. Their rationale was that P2P is mostly used to share illegal content, and their infrastructure is not designed for continuous, high-bandwidth traffic.

Critics point out that P2P networking has legitimate legal uses, and that this is another way that large providers are trying to control use and content on the Internet, and direct people towards a [[client–server]]-based application architecture. The client–server model provides financial barriers-to-entry to small publishers and individuals, and can be less efficient for sharing large files. As a reaction to this [[bandwidth throttling]], several P2P applications started implementing protocol obfuscation, such as the [[BitTorrent protocol encryption]]. Techniques for achieving "protocol obfuscation" involves removing otherwise easily identifiable properties of protocols, such as deterministic byte sequences and packet sizes, by making the data look as if it were random.<ref name="breaking">{{cite journal |url=http://www.iis.se/docs/hjelmvik_breaking.pdf |title=Breaking and Improving Protocol Obfuscation |last1=Hjelmvik |first1=Erik |last2=John |first2=Wolfgang |journal=Technical Report |date=2010-07-27 |issn=1652-926X }}</ref> The ISP's solution to the high bandwidth is [[P2P caching]], where an ISP stores the part of files most accessed by P2P clients in order to save access to the Internet.