The current P2P model shares data equally with all peers, regardless of whether they are nearby, and this results in several nearby peers sending and receiving data across the world but not to each other when this is possible – working group members say that currently "the pattern of traffic poses a problem".
P2P client software (and P2P torrent servers, called trackers) can query the iTracker to identify the data routes the ISP prefers and connections to avoid, changing depending on the time of day.
This provides three methods of finding local peers: Note that P4P does not replace or control P2P networks.
[4] P4P will only work on software that supports it, yet other protocols which currently dominate the network will keep being blind to locality.
LiteLoad by Shay Horovitz and Danny Dolev (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presents a solution that leads to P2P locality in ISPs on both existing protocols and future ones.