P2P Network Architectures - Peer-to-Peer Computing: Applications, Architecture, Protocols, and Challenges - page 43

Data

Provisions Consumptions Group Information

Decision Logic

Utility Function Selection Function

Communication

External Intra-Group

FIGURE 3.12: UBCA components [Lagesse and Kumar, 2007].

to meet the tra c demands. For the lack of a viable P2P business model,
telecom operators have yet to reap any tangible profits from the proliferating
P2P applications.
Consequently, it is not surprising to see that some telecom operators choose
to block P2P tra c. Yet such a “solution” is sometimes considered as a prob-
lem by itself because successful and effective blocking of P2P tra c requires
high speed detailed packet checking, which obviously adds considerable load
to the system and overheads to the users. Furthermore, such blocking of users'
tra c inevitably leads to customer complaints.
Thus, some telecom companies start to look at the issue from a more “con-
structive” angle—trying to find positive ways to work with P2P applications
while generating some possibly new revenue streams. Specifically, a natural
approach is to investigate whether a telecom operator can design and support
a P2P network architecture that can provide carrier-grade QoS guarantees.
Recently, Ma and Zhu [Ma and Zhu, 2008] proposed a novel network ar-
chitecture that has the following salient features:

•Providing a high scalability with the minimal amount of dedicated net-
work components;

•Supporting a unified approach for customer data management with
global accessibility;

•Providing a virtual home environment for customers to enjoy same ex-
periences anywhere;

•Providing QoS guarantees to users; and