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."

Comments

Web Based Interface

[mistermund]

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).

Might this

[Anonymous Coward]

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

So if you don't swarm...?

[Anonymous Coward]

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"?

Old hat stuff

[Zeddicus_Z]

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.