Venice Project could break bandwidth limits

A 1GB cap could be exhausted in just 10 hours.

Beta testers of the Venice Project peer-to-peer Internet television service have been warned that the software could break bandwidth limits unless carefully managed.

The Venice Project is the latest venture from Skype founder Niklas Zennström and Kazaa founder and self-styled "disruptive Internet entrepreneur" Janus Friis.

Skype and Kazaa addressed telephony and music file-sharing over IP networks, while the Venice Project aims to allow users to easily view a huge range of TV feeds over a broadband connection.

While screenshots of the latest beta version leaked out in the run-up to Christmas, little is known about the software's overall performance.

Documentation sent to more than 6,000 beta testers has now revealed concerns over how bandwidth-hungry the application will be.

According to a report on out-law.com, the developers warn: "One hour of viewing is 320MB downloaded and 105MB uploaded, which means that it will exhaust a 1GB cap in 10 hours."

The software also continues to run in the background after the main window is closed, using up broadband resources.

The guidelines suggest that careful user management will be necessary. "If you pay for your bandwidth usage per megabyte, or have your usage capped by your ISP, you should be careful to always exit the Venice Project client completely when you are finished watching it," they say.