Smart P2P

[theslug]

Back in the "day" of proxying, Internet Service Providers and the like were all excited about proxying web and ftp to save bandwidth. Now with the increase of dynamic content, the advent of P2P and the overall decrease in bandwidth pricing have pretty much set those old proxying ways into a downward spiral.
However, with the amount of bandwidth being used for P2P networks, it would be nice to have a "proxy" of sorts for P2P.
A smart P2P network would help increase the performance of file sharing for users.

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"quick and dirty" SCENARIO:
As an ISP I have 3000 P2P users. A request is sent by user #1 to search for filename "foobar"
Rather then sending this out to the wonderful, efficient world of the Internet, you could inspect this at Layer4 and be able to redirect the search within your network first. It would be much quicker to download file "foobar" from within your ISPs network then going out to the Internet and downloading it from there.
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This would help ISPs, Post Sec. Campuses etc.. who have alot of broadband users who like to share files. Rather then limiting people and slowing down certain connection types or having to increase your monthly bill by throwing obsene amounts of bandwidth at your internal network, you could increase the efficiency so that everyone would benefit.

So my question (after a big long winded post), does anyone know of such software or device (available commercially or open-source) currently available?

Thank you

[zaphodiv]

IANAL but I think the presedent set in the Napster case would be enough to discourage any American ISP from trying that. I expect the ISP would soon be sued for contributory copyright infrigement. At the least they could expect piles of DMCA letters every day requiring them to remove copyright material from their p2p-cache.
If the ISP has a system in place which can redirect p2p downloads then a court can order them to prevent their users downloading copyright material.

It could be done easily with a freenet style system. Just put up a server with lots of diskspace to hold the encrypted filestore and only allow it to be accessed from ip addresses belonging to the ISP. The automatic cacheing of popular stuff would do the rest.

[Crazy Horse]

Bandwidth consumption is something that needs to be addressed by the p2p developers... and soon. We are already seeing problems with ISPs and they are thinking of adjusting rates to the amount consumed. Yikes - that will suck big time for me.

[theslug]

" IANAL but I think the presedent set in the Napster case would be enough to discourage any American ISP from trying that. I expect the ISP would soon be sued for contributory copyright infrigement. At the least they could expect piles of DMCA letters every day requiring them to remove copyright material from their p2p-cache.
If the ISP has a system in place which can redirect p2p downloads then a court can order them to prevent their users downloading copyright material. "

Well not all of us live in the US. Some of
us are lucky enough to have some 'lax
laws as per the definition of copyright
enfrigment. Anyhow, that' s WAY off topic. I
did manage to find one company that
does a "redirecting" of sorts.

I'm not to sure how it works yet, Datasheets and White Papers are pretty much just marketing propaganda nowadays. I have to find an open-source version though :(

"[...]designed to lower network costs resulting from peer-to-peer traffic by logically rearranging the peer-to-peer (P2P) network topology.[...]"
http://www.sandvine.com/products/default.asp