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A Blog With Unlimited Bandwidth (Beta 1.2)
jcr13 writes "konspire2b is a new content distribution system that essentially turns the standard p2p model upside down. This simple change gives the network several nice properties, including log-bounded distribution times (logarithmic in the number of nodes that receive a file) and a refreshingly different (and somewhat blog-like) user-interaction model. Comparisons have been made to other systems, including BitTorrent (with in-depth analysis), but k2b stands alone as a unique system tackling a different problem than other p2p systems. Recent Slashdot attention gave the network an effective stress test and provided the first real-world measurement results. The new beta1.2 release contains fixes for all of the issues encountered during this traffic surge."
The web based interface is refresing.
That's one of the biggest strengths that Audiogalaxy had (before the service got defanged). You could run their Linux client on a box at home, then sign into the Audiogalaxy site from anywhere (work, school, etc) and grab different things. Made it easy to run the client somewhere safe, with a fast connection, or lots of drive space, and get to it from anywhere. Nice to see another app taking the same approach (though you host the web interface yourself).
Finally be an effective distribution mechanism for the hundreds-of-small-files model that would be needed for among other things, say, p2p mirroring of webpages (html and image files) that Bram Cohen says has been so problematic?
:)
At the least, couldn't, say, Keenspace save almost all of their bandwidth by use of this protocol, having people subscribe to channels for the webcomics they read daily and just releasing a new comic on the channel every day?
ANyway, questions i can't seem to work out from this page: 1) Does this have one big gnutella-like mesh, or does it follow BitTorrent's create-a-new-p2p-network-for-each-torrent file model? 2) Is the idea that you set up your "channel" to contain certain files, and anyone who's ever had that exact file anywhere on the Konspire network can download this file to you, or is it again like BitTorrent and if two different channels happen to share one file in common, the subscribers to each channel will be unable to use members of the other channel as mirrors?
If the former in each of the two questions above, this is the ULTIMATE rom distribution mechanism, and i eagerly look forward to using it for that purpose
Anyway this is neat to see, and good to see something like this done right. And wierdly enough, I actually expect this to be of much use to me in a totally legal fashion (the website my non-AC persona runs will soon be adding a regularly updated feature which i was expecting to be a major bandwidth drain, but which this Konspire thingy seems more or less just tailor-made for...)
- super ugly ultraman
If I understand how this works, is there a sci-fi channel that will send me the latest enterprise episodes as they come to hand? what about a simpsons or futurama channel? Are there some examples out there already?
...the previous /. story about konspire:
here it is....
It looks like they've done a lot of work on the project to deserve 2 submissions in 3 weeks.....;o)))
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
Something I am looking at this and trying to figure out but don't see elucidated: If you don't "swarm", how do you deal with one single host crapping out?
I.E., let's say I'm downloading this 3 MB file from this one guy, and halfway through he disconnects. I'm left with half a file. What happens then?
My bigger worry: let's say that the app does support file resume, so my host disconnecting is not a worry. But what happens if I set a channel to run and leave the room, and suddenly the download rate for the host my client has chosen drops to 0.1k/sec. How does the app handle that? If I constantly watch the download i could click "retry download with different host", but if I'm going to have to watch my downloads constantly and reset them every time they start sucking then they've lost their one benefit over kazaa. How does this app ensure that optimal download speeds are had by all, and does it at least have a feature where i can say "if the download ever goes below 0.5k/sec, try to find a new source"?
Push technology pushing multimedia content. Meh, it was a bad idea 4 years ago when they first tried it with normal Web content. Why would anyone thing that using bandwidth-hungry archives/multimedia/whatever is going to make Push suddenly a sucessful content. Speaking even in the simplest terms of ISP data charges, people go looking for what they want (music/movies/etc), then pay for it (fees to ISP for data Xfer). People wont pay for a lot of crap they dont want in any way on the off chance they may receive that which they do.
Janie took my gun...
Oh dear, like there isn't enough crap around on the innurnet ...
n telligent-to-say paradigm. Most of them are stupid, some are okay, and a precious few are really worth reading.
Methink someone should create a blog rating server that blog readers could vote in and people could consult before choosing to read a blog. Blogs are very low S/N ratio, simply because they implement the hey-I-can-talk-so-I-will-even-if-I-have-nothing-i
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
My first read of the comparison with BitTorrent just feels wrong. Unfortunately I haven't the time right now to go into it properly (being at work, with boss coming up every five minutes) but does anyone else get the impression that one of the premises (leading him to the conclusion that k2b is more scalable) is wrong?
He says that it's based on most people have far greater download than upload bandwidth, so people lower down the chain are going to receive a trickle. Yet every time I've done a BT download it has maxed out my downstream bandwidth. My first guess is that he doesn't take into account people leaving their BT clients open once they've finished a download.
The fact is, it would be a great idea to combine the idea of a secure distribution channel and a swarming distribution mechanism. If the protocol extended to permit a web of trust like PGP, then you could have groups of people who could send files to a secure, very fast, distribution channel.
Now if we could get rid of the BitTorrent need to trust a single host with the task of tracking who has what... then we're there.
--Mike--
The problem is that Usenet feeds were approaching DS-3 speeds last time I checked (over a year ago), and are probably beyond that now.
Satellite is the only reasonably way to get a newsfeed these days (without paying $5,000-$10,000 per month for bandwidth), but even the satellite providers are running out of room using QPSK modulation on a single Ku-band transponder. Higher-order modulation would require a larger then 1m dish (well, maybe until DVB-S2 is standardized).