Finally Real P2P With Brains

dfelznic writes: "The mp3 archives of CodeCon are now availble, which is news in itself. But what makes this real interesting is that they are being distributed by BitTorrent. BitTorrent allows users to download a file from multiple different people. Instead of everyone nailing one server, users get the file from other users. Furthurnet uses a similar technology to distribute legal bootlegs of concerts. The archive is available at the BitTorrent demo downloads page. As soon as I started downloading (cable modem) at around 300k I got a request for the file and began uploading at 40k. This could be the answer to the slashdot effect;) Now, who is going to be the first to complain about the use of mp3s instead of oggs?"

Comments

What about Gnunet?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm very surprised at the little ammount of attention that GNUnet has gotten in the P2P arena. GNUnet is anonymous, distributed, encrypted, reputation based, has accounting, allows for distributed queries, and uses dynamic routing. While GNUnet is still beta software, I think it's a great anti-censorship tool. What all this means in non-buzzword speak, is that you have a tool that combines a lot of the great qualities from other similar networks (FreeNet, mojo nation, etc) and doesn't have all of the short comings. Give it a shot.

"chaining" is DIFFERENT than "swarming"

[rubybroom]

I'm not completely versed in morpheus/kazaa/bearshare/whatever, but I understand they allow you to download a file from more than one other person simultaneously, known as "swarming" the download (btw, this is called "anteloping" on furthurnet). It is my further understanding that you can only do this from people who have the *complete* file.

What bitTorrent (I think) and furthurnet (I know) are doing is different than this. If 5 people are downloading a file from the one person who is sharing it, those 5 people can be the beginning of 5 chains of people, relaying each packet down the chain as they get it, regardless of whether or not anyone has the complete file.

Furthurnet uses a protocol called PCP (Packet Chain Protocol) to do this, and it automatically arranges the chains so that those with faster upload speeds are toward the top, with the dialup users toward the bottom.

If the main host goes offline, even if no one on the chain has the entire file, everyone on the chain can still continue downloading everything that the topmost person on the chain has already saved.

A good example: say a dialup user has large file that is in high demand. A T1 user comes along and spends a long time downloading it off of the dialup users horrible upload speed, and gets about 80% of it before anyone else comes to download. Then you show up with your cable connection and instead of being at the mercy of the upload speed of the dialup guy, you have access to 80% of the file from the plentiful upload speed from the T1 guy. And of course Furthur knows to hook you up to the fastest open slot available when you come along.

The result of this is that the underlying host and network shape becomes transparent, and you just see a list of shows to download, you start downloading one, and all this stuff happens in the background. The longer everyone stays connected to the network, the more efficient it comes because it has more time to structure it with the faster folks in the "middle", and the slower ones on the "outside".

Over at furthurnet, the current record is having 71 people on a downloading chain. Combine PCP with the Anteloping and you can have some serious improvement over "dumb" p2p.

I wont even go into the benefits of the md5 checking furthur does...

Lossless - big files - Bittorrent helps a lot

[billstewart]

If you're shipping around small files, like MP3s, there are lots of transfer systems that can do the job. But the Lossless Compression movement for music means that a concert tape is typically a few hundred megabytes large, maybe 1/3 the size of the uncompressed original, so it takes much longer to download, just as ISOs for Linux distributions are large. In that environment, you can't always depend on connections being up for a long enough time, so you need to be able to download parts of files, and swarming systems like BitTorrent help a lot.