Enhancement to P2P found to help network costs

psycho12345 writes: A study, sponsored by Verizon and Yale, finds that if P2P software is written more "intelligently" (by localizing requests), the effect of bandwidth hogging is vastly reduced. According to the study, redoing the P2P into what they call P4P can reduce the number of "hops" by an average of 400%. With localized P4P, less of the sharing occurs over large distances, instead making requests of nearby clients (geographically).