What are peoples views on security threats posed by peer to peer
computer connections, particulary the BBC's Iplayer utility.

I appreciate that various virus and spyware prevention programs need to
be kept up to date but one important criteria is to be careful what web
sites one visits.

If I understand it correctly if one views a BBC program using the
Iplayer then the data may not be coming from the BBC but from any
unknown source.

I am sure the BBC would not intentionally open up a security threat so
would be interested in other views.

Geoff Lane
Followup-To:uk.telecom.broadband

"Geoff Lane" <datemasde.t1m@gishpuppy.com> wrote in message
news:fm2rae$mjs$1@news.datemas.de...
The whole idea of P2P or Peer to Peer is that it shares the load of a
download (or something like that). The "traditional" method of downloading a
file (and taking a BBC programme as an example) means that the programme
would be held on the BBC server, it may be say, 500MB in size, and maybe
5000 people around the country would want to download it, so all 5000 people
would have to download the *entire* 500MB file from the one server, making
it slow.

With P2P, the load is spread between each person who wants the file. The
file is split into bits of, say, 10kb each. As soon as "Person A" has
received the first 10kb "chunk", he can then upload that chunk to someone
else, whilst simultaneously receiving the next chunk - and it's not just one
chunk at a time either. You could be downloading 20 different chunks from 20
different locations whilst uploading 25 entirely different pieces, again to
different locations.

The above explanation is a vast over-simplification and may well be complete
rubbish, but that's how I understand it. I'm sure someone will be along soon
enough to correct me )

In the context of your post, yes, you are in fact allowing total and
complete strangers access into your computer, but it's only very limited
access and IMHO, nothing to worry about. I've been using P2P for about 3
years and never suffered any problems - but I am anti-virussed,
anti-spy/malwared, anti-trojaned and firewalled to the hilt anyway, as
that's just commonsense.

John

John wrote:

That is pretty much how I imagined it.

I too keep it all up to date but I know of many people who don't and
still use all these facilities.

Geoff Lane