Neowin.net

Peer-to-peer traffic is one of the biggest headaches for internet service providers, but now a Swedish company says it has developed technology that can help handle the load.

Last week, Stockholm-based Joltid said three major service providers in Europe licensed its PeerCache technology - software designed to reduce costs of network traffic by caching frequently traded digital files within file-swapping systems.

PeerCache is built to work for FastTrack, one of the most widely used P2P protocols and the underpinnings of such popular applications as Kazaa and iMesh. Joltid said its traffic on FastTrack protocols can account for nearly 70 per cent of the network's total bandwidth. PeerCache plugs in to the ISP network and temporarily caches FastTrack P2P traffic, helping to lessen the bandwidth burden.

However... in the US, copyright laws protect ISPs from liability for their users' activities. With PeerCache software, ISPs would cache, or temporarily hold, digital copies of pirated files on their servers so they're more easily accessible to traders on Kazaa and other FastTrack systems. But holding copies of copyrighted material could make ISPs accomplices in illegal file trading, at least according to an early survey by one recording industry trade association.

News source: Yahoo News UK

Sexual thrills

Chat rooms are the fastest rising cause of relationship breakdowns, according to counselling groups in the US. The problem would get worse as the number of people online continued to rise, said Ms Mileham. For the study, the researcher interviewed men and women who used chat rooms specifically aimed at married couples. She found that most people said they loved their partner. But the anonymity of the net provided an outlet for those seeking an erotic encounter.

"All I have to do is turn on my computer and I have thousands of women to choose from," said one of the men questioned for the study. "It can't get any easier than that."

Most people ventured into the chat rooms because of boredom, a partner's lack of sexual interest, or a desire for variety and fun.

"The number one complaint from men was lack of sex in the marriage," said Ms Mileham. "Many of them said their wife was so involved in child-rearing that she wasn't interested in having sex."

From virtual to real

The study found that what often started out as just friendly chat turned into something much more serious. Almost a third of people taking part in the study went on to meet the person with whom they had made contact. All but two ended up having a real-life affair. In one case, a man had 13 affairs with women he had met over the internet.

"We are hearing from therapists around the country reporting online sexual activity to be a major cause of marital problems," said Al Cooper, author of the book, Sex And The Internet: A Guidebook For Clinicians.

"We need to better understand the contributing factors if we are going to be able to warn people about the slippery slope that starts with online flirting and too often ends in divorce."

For the study, Ms Mileham interviewed with 76 men and 10 women, aged between 25 and 66, who used Yahoo's Married And Flirting or Microsoft's Married But Flirting internet chat rooms.