Founded in 2004 in New York City, Pando Networks was a managed

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer n ...

(P2P) media distribution company backed by

Intel Capital Intel Capital is a division of Intel Corporation, set up to manage corporate venture capital, global investment, mergers and acquisitions. Intel Capital makes equity investments in a range of technology startups and companies offering hardware, so ...

, BRM Capital and Wheatley Partners. The company specialized in

cloud In meteorology, a cloud is an aerosol consisting of a visible mass of miniature liquid droplets, frozen crystals, or other particles suspended in the atmosphere of a planetary body or similar space. Water or various other chemicals may co ...

distribution of games, video and software for publishers and media distributors and also operated a

freemium Freemium, a portmanteau of the words "free" and "premium," is a pricing strategy by which a basic product or service is provided free of charge, but money (a premium) is charged for additional features, services, or virtual (online) or physical (o ...

consumer business for sending large files. Pando Network's technology was based on BitTorrent but with modifications. Its hybrid P2P- and server-based network included central control over file distribution, intelligent throttling between peers and servers, reporting/analytics and security. In the spring of 2006, the company publicly launched Pando, a small application that let consumers bypass email's attachment limits and send large files (up to 1GB) regardless of

email service provider A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements Message transfer agent, email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or End- ...

. By late May 2009, over 30 million people had installed the Pando application. In late 2007, along with

Verizon Communications Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas i ...

, Pando Networks co-founded the P4P (“Proactive network Provider Participation for P2P”) Working Group, to serve both P2P companies and

Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...

s (ISPs), who were seeing as much of 70 percent of bandwidth go to P2P traffic. The P4P working group includes a mix of more than 50 P2P companies and ISPs including

Telefónica Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadba ...

and

Comcast Comcast Corporation (formerly known as American Cable Systems and Comcast Holdings),Before the AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corpora ...

. A

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

computer science research team developed the P4P technical protocol, which they believed could speed P2P content delivery while lowering ISP network utilization. In collaboration with Yale and the P4P working group, Pando Networks adopted the technology and Laird Popkin coordinated a test in the summer of 2008, showing promising results. The company released its first commercial service in May 2008; media distributors could now plug Pando Networks' peer cloud into their existing

content delivery network A content delivery network, or content distribution network (CDN), is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. The goal is to provide high availability and performance by distributing the service spatially re ...

s (CDNs). The combination of a peer cloud plus a CDN allows files in high demand to be quickly and cost effectively delivered by the peers and

long tail In statistics and business, a long tail of some probability distribution, distributions of numbers is the portion of the distribution having many occurrences far from the "head" or central part of the distribution. The distribution could involv ...

content to be reliably served off the CDN.

NBC Universal The National Broadcasting Company (NBC) is an American English-language commercial broadcast television and radio network. The flagship property of the NBC Entertainment division of NBCUniversal, a division of Comcast, its headquarters are l ...

incorporated Pando Networks’ technology later that year to deliver high-definition TV episodes to consumers’ PCs. The game industry was Pando Networks’ largest customer segment. Installation files, particularly for

massively multiplayer online games A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players, often hundreds or thousands, on the same server. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent open world, although there are ...

(MMOs), can reach well over 1GB. Pando Networks' game customers included

Nexon Nexon Co., Ltd. is a global video game publisher, listed in Japan, that specializes in online Virtual World games for PCs, consoles and mobile. Nexon is one of the world’s ten largest interactive game companies based on market capitalization a ...

Turbine A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work. The work produced by a turbine can be used for generating e ...

Riot Games Riot Games, Inc. is an American video game developer, publisher and esports tournament organizer based in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in September 2006 by Brandon Beck and Marc Merrill to develop ''League of Legends'' and went on t ...

, Gala-Net, and LevelUp. In May 2010, Pando Networks surpassed 30 million game downloads. Pando Networks was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

in March 2013.

References

External links

US 8,250,191 B2 METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR COOPERATIVE FILE DISTRIBUTION WITH TARGET DATA DELIVERY RATE
{{Microsoft Online mass media companies of the United States Companies based in New York City Cloud computing providers Microsoft acquisitions Former Microsoft subsidiaries

See also

References

External links