Peercast: Peer-to-Peer Streaming

Anonymous Coward writes "peercast is currently in beta for a new p2p client based on the Gnutella protocol. Seems to be alot easier to use than the current "streamers". Linux/Mac on its way."

Comments

Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this

[NanoGator]

I see why you feel that way, but I think the reason he didn't make it to Slashdot was that he committed suicide. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, just saying that there is a difference between 'died in his sleep' and 'died at his own hand'. I'm sure the people that knew the guy don't want to be reminded of it.

I'm a little puzzled as to why your post was modded off-topic. It's all related. As you pointed out, Gene has done a lot of work to make P2P what it is today.

Play it right and p2p goes mainstream

[MadFarmAnimalz]

There's apparently a winamp plugin in the pipeline.

If this could get bundled with the regular winamp download, I think we'd be on to something.

I think the folks at winamp would be interested in doing this; it's an interesting 'selling' point. Download this player, get instant access to millions (?) of songs instantly and without further downloads.

The gnutella network, if I read things correctly, would benefit from the incremental bandwidth of Joe Sixpack and his brethren.

Win-win situation?

Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream

[ImaLamer]

It is complicated.

AOL/TW owns the content people will publish, CARP free.

Nullsoft created the original Gnutella, yet abandoned it because of AOL/TW of course...

Nullsoft would attract mindshare, stealing from Windows Media Player, +1 for AOL/TW.

Nullsoft would attract mindshare to shoutcast, and further it's free alternatives such as Icecast, even more stealing mindshare from Windows Media Player.

Yet AOL/TW doesn't want people out there streaming their music without paying up - and other companies would very quickly object to AOL/TW's software allowing people to do the same to them.

The next Winamp "Eula" equivalent would prohibit this type of technology -or- AOL/TW locks down your ability to "copy" streams* by co-developing the technology and it's okay.

*I favor this approach. I would rather the client to not allow stream "ripping". It would make more sense than to charge money for something that isn't even been stolen yet.

Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream

[blowdart]

I would rather the client to not allow stream "ripping".

Stream ripping is a major problem on my Real and Windows Media servers. We've had people fire off stream rippers to take off a 1 hour stream ("hey it's free, I must be able to save it myself"), however stream rippers are horrible from a provider point of view. For a 1 hour stream, a user in an NYC trading bank (I traced the IP) took 40GB to get the stream. The source file was about 4Mb. As you can imagine, for that hour, other people's experience was not optimal.

Now, imagine on a peer to peer network, some anti-social little sod stealing your stream. All your DSL bandwidth gone.

Of course, someone will write a stream ripper anyway, and people will use it, not caring about other users.

Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream

[Jeremi]

For a 1 hour stream, a user in an NYC trading bank (I traced the IP) took 40GB to get the stream. The source file was about 4Mb.

I'm confused... why would ripping a stream take any more (or less) of the server's bandwidth than regular streaming-playback? Either way, you just need to download the contents of the stream once, whether you are saving the bytes to disk or just viewing them and then throwing them away shouldn't even be detectable by the server. Or am I missing something?

Now, imagine on a peer to peer network, some anti-social little sod stealing your stream. All your DSL bandwidth gone.

Exactly the opposite, I would think. Instead of every listener having to connect to your server to get the stream, now a good percentage of them are connecting to the "anti-social little sods'" peer-machines, and therefore not using bandwidth on your server. More likely you'd be sitting there with lots of bandwidth free, wondering where everybody went... ;^)

Users armed with a web server.

[Mattygfunk]

A built-in web server is included with each client, this enables you or someone else on your LAN to view/listen to your active channels with a standard web browser.

For all you lot preparing to cry sercurity, sercurity, security, don't worry it only runs on windows so I'm sure everything is ok.

Ultra short review....

[MADCOWbeserk]

Downloaded and tried it a few minutes ago. The system set to default settings found three streams. They all seemed to stream well, I liked the "Soma Tribute" stream alot. All in all everything works as advertised. I'm (easily?) impressed with what they have done. But more content is needed, more people need to put up "stations."

I'll be taking down my andromeda server and replacing it with a Peercast stream in the next few days.

From their forum..slashdotted

[ImaLamer]

Posted: Sat Jul 13, 2002 10:31 am
Post subject: Slashdot

Our router decided to die a minute ago because of the /... but hopefully it should be OK now. If you find it difficult to connect to connect1.peercast.org then please keep trying.. We have enough bandwidth (100Mb fibre) .. just not a very good router [icon_smile.gif]

Multicasting over the internet at large

[blowdart]

The p2p protocols are very suitable for multicasting

Except of course, the internet at large doesn't support multicasting very well. Sure, you can multicast internally on a small network, assuming your switches support it, but once you start to involve routers, you find very quickly ISPs don't support it. Some DSL providers are starting to consider allowing multicast within their own blocks, so a streaming server sitting in their DSL space will use up less bandwidth, but what currently happens is they are all running Inktomi caches which cache streams within their own network. Of course, its only Windows Media or Real Media streams that are supported.

(Disclaimer : My employeer is a large provider of streaming services in Europe)

Re:What this'll be used for

[handsomepete]

Pear-to-pear sexual encounters ;)

That's much better than the oh-so-inappropriate apple-to-orange sexual encounters...

(OT) Source

[Anonymous Coward]

From the peercast homepage: The main reason for not releasing the source code so far is literally because we haven`t had the time yet. We`re doing this in our spare time (yes, we have proper jobs :) and want to have the chance to clean up the code, document it and put it CVS.

Not wishing to get into the old GPL debate, as their page implies it was all written from scratch rather than borrowing GPL code, but...

I really don't understand why people plan to put things into CVS after the code is writen and changed, etc... It makes sense to start with CVS from the outset.

Bandwidth?

[JediTrainer]

P2P is all great and everything, but nowadays I'm worried that it'll all be killed off because of bandwidth costs.

Most cable/DSL companies are now putting caps on traffic, and are starting to charge by the byte when you go over those limits.

I don't know about you, but while I don't mind paying for bandwidth I use, I sure as hell am not going to pay for someone else to get music/videos/pictures/etc at my expense.

This also brings in an interesting dilemma - if both users are on the came cable company's backbone, are they double-dipping if they charge both users for that bandwidth?