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Better Than Bit Torrent, For Internet2 Users?

FastDownload writes "New technology for doing mulitsource/multithread downloads of ISOs is making Linux users on Internet2 happy. It's called Logistical Networking and is being developed at the University of Tennessee. Though there are some obvious similarities to Bit Torrent, Logistical Networking uses fixed, shared infrastructure instead of being peer-to-peer, which makes it useful for moving big content even when no peers are available."

176 comments

  1. Internet 2 ?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Is there pr0n on this so called internet 2?

    1. Re:Internet 2 ?? by LittleBigLui · · Score: 2, Funny

      not pr0n, strictly speaking, but it's more modern alternative pr1n

      --
      Free as in mason.
    2. Re:Internet 2 ?? by InadequateCamel · · Score: 1

      Jamaican roaming pr0n.

  2. I've never had much luck with BT by Powercntrl · · Score: 4, Funny

    I think the Internet2 users should use Kazaa Lite and eMule just like the rest of us. Throw caution to the wind, screw the RIAA.

    --

    ---
    DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
    1. Re:I've never had much luck with BT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's not funny.

  3. P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by Preach+the+Good+Word · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Especially for legal content... bit torrent has made it so that you can get all sorts of legal content like game demos, linux distros, etc. off p2p without having to be on horribly slow ftp servers.

    1. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by orthancstone · · Score: 1

      What does this have to do with the topic and Internet2? Since neither are used by the common person (they are used between Universities doing research), your comments (which are far from insightful, even if on-topic) don't address a single thing in this news story.

    2. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by xenocide2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      And you know what? That didn't stop my university from blocking all packets over the bittorrent protocol! Bastards.

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

    3. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by calebtucker · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yeah, I remember during my freshman year in the dorm I'd do "research" in a divx trading irc channel just for internt2 .edu connections (heh, a script would only give you +v if you had .edu in your host).

      I guess research was the original intent, but obviously not the only use.

      --
      My sig can beat up your sig.
    4. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by ameoba · · Score: 1

      Same here. Since I live off-campus, the only I ever bothered using it for was ISO downloads (too much trouble sneakernet other stuff).

      Damned dorm-rats.

      I really hope this does take off and is a good replacement for BT AND the campus admins don't block the ports on it like they did for BT.

      --
      my sig's at the bottom of the page.
    5. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by Robmonster · · Score: 1

      Exactly like P2P. You CAN get loads of legal content, linux distros, game demos on any P2P network, be it Emule,Kazaa or BitTorrent

      You can also get plently of illegal content off each of these as well.

      BitTorrent != Always Legal

      --
      I have no sig yet I must scream.
    6. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's probably because BitTorrent was hosing their upload. It was blocked on my campus along with the rest of the p2p software because 90% of the bandwidth was being used by about 20 people.

      The sysadmin said that he didn't care what we downloaded or how much, just that he didn't want uploading to kill the bandwidth for everything else.

    7. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by proj_2501 · · Score: 1

      that's faulty. not every .edu is on the internet2, and not every .edu in the internet2 has i2 connection across all facilities.

      my college didn't have an i2 connection until my sophomore year (that was nice when the rtsr underworld ftp archive was hosted by my buddy at NYU, ZOOOOOOM) and even now the dorms have been taken off.

    8. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wouldn't worry too much...

      We have an anonymous protocol going faster in the debugging! :)

    9. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by Student_Tech · · Score: 1

      @ WSU ( Washington State ) my friend lost all network because of excessive uploads (pre-finding the upload limiting BT client, he could live with the limited download speed). They could never tell him what the limits were after he jumped through the hoops to get his network back on. Now that he is working for the computer people they all seem to agree that there is no real "excessive," it varries from day to day and seems to be more on who the top is (One day I got warned in top 10 @ 25 KB/sec (little too much Freenet outbound)).
      Of course right now the downloads(everything, www, ftp, ect. BT is blocked @ Packet Shaper) suck because: 7 subnets, each subnet has 7Mb/sec allocated to it. Ok for the 400 people, but I'm on a 1200 person subnet. Makes me yearn for my old 56K modem some days. (Ok, not that much but before they did that I could grab 500-800 KB/sec at almost anytime(and would worry on big things because my outbound traffic was up in the 20-30KB/sec just to ack the packets), now my average hovers around 10-20 KB/sec). On weekends that are almost using one of the T-3s to the campus, even during the week the 2 T-3s aren't being maxed. (Watch it it says max of 155Mb/sec but only 2 T-3s are installed (unless they added another once since Jan 2003) )

      My easiest way around the block they are doing, SSH to home(they aren't filtering anything), bittorrent stuff there, upload via SSH to computer @ school. Have to limit the upload from home computer so that they can still get decent internet access abilities (512Kb/sec down, 128Kb/sec up. 10 KB/sec up to me seems to be a good number)

    10. Re:P2P is NOT Going Anywhere by Crash6-24 · · Score: 1

      However those of us at home find that our internet response has gone to hell because we want to be using streaming audio and browsing e-Bay. Every wotkaround has a cost.

  4. BitTorrent is too ad-hoc by Space+cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was considering setting up a download of a database dump for hostip.info using BitTorrent, but it's too awkward to create, and there's no guarantee that there's any saving, as far as I can see (people turn their machine off, and you're stuck waiting for a chunk in the middle). Instead, I let people download the meta-data, and construct the DB - much faster :-)

    The idea of fixed nodes is less "cool" I guess, with less of the "dynamic network adapting to the load", but probably more useful...

    Simon.

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
    1. Re:BitTorrent is too ad-hoc by koreth · · Score: 4, Insightful
      people turn their machine off, and you're stuck waiting for a chunk in the middle

      Generally it's a good idea to run a seed for your files if you're running a tracker. That way everyone will always have at least one source for the file -- i.e., you fall back to roughly the download performance level you'd have without BitTorrent, with people downloading from your server.

      If you just run a tracker and don't provide an always-on source for the actual underlying files, then yeah, BitTorrent will pretty much suck for infrequently-accessed files.

    2. Re:BitTorrent is too ad-hoc by Kris_J · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I thought ad-hoc was a good thing. Sure, businesses who want things to be simple and predictable might consider ad-hoc to be unworkable, but there's heaps of "little people" out there without big budgets that benefit from co-operative networks that can be assembled as needed by everyone pitching in their bit.

    3. Re:BitTorrent is too ad-hoc by yerricde · · Score: 4, Insightful

      people turn their machine off, and you're stuck waiting for a chunk in the middle

      As long as the first publisher of the file leaves a BT window open, nobody is "stuck waiting for a chunk in the middle."

      --
      Will I retire or break 10K?
    4. Re:BitTorrent is too ad-hoc by halr9000 · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you think bittorrent is too adhoc, you've never been to 3dgamers. For every game demo or movie they provide information about, they provide a bittorrent seed. In addition, they do provide direct download mirrors, but I don't even bother anymore.

      Another tip: The official bittorrent client isn't that great. You should try Azureus. It's written in Java, which sucks (flame me, I bite back), but even so I love it. In fact it might be the only java program that I like now that I think about it.

    5. Re:BitTorrent is too ad-hoc by drauh · · Score: 1

      How about FreeCache, from the Internet Archive folks? They have a good presentation about how it differs from BitTorrent and it addresses the ad hoc-ness of BT.

      --
      This is a tautology.
    6. Re:BitTorrent is too ad-hoc by zero_offset · · Score: 1
      It's written in Java, which sucks (flame me, I bite back), but even so I love it. In fact it might be the only java program that I like now that I think about it.

      I WANT to flame you, but I agree with you!

      Signed,
      Gripped by Indecision

      --

      Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005

  5. Of course, the important question is.... by herrvinny · · Score: 0, Troll

    when do WE get it? This is great and all, but Internet1 is overflowing with stupid users, and maybe Internet2 will help weed out the stupider ones. The average Joe can keep Internet1, I'll move on to Internet2.

    1. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by Matey-O · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You'll get is when you pay cubic buttloads of cash to hook yourself up. You think that $45 Cable ISP fee is arbitrarily set?

      --
      "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
    2. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, a major research university needs to accept you into their program before you can use it. And your grades just don't cut it; so have fun with the stupid users, maybe someday you'll realize you are just one of them. :)

    3. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by Ianoo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Internet2 is such a stupid name. It's just another high-speed network linked to the Internet. We technologically backward countries have similar schemes but don't have the audacity to call them Internet2. In the UK, the high speed academic network is called JANET, for example - and they do quite a bit of research-type things with high speed links. Even has extensive peering with Internet2 IIRC.

    4. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by tarquin_fim_bim · · Score: 1

      Internet.1 is limited only by your mind, those who seek internet.2 will not find it.

    5. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WE already have it. And I agree stupid users can stick with Internet1. From my point of view it is a clear sunny day and a vast open meadow spreads out before me. What's it look like where you are at? Bwahahahahahahahahah

    6. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by XO · · Score: 1

      Unfortunatly, like the original Internet, it won't take all that long for it to be flooded with riff-raff.

      I remember a time when I knew literally EVERY English speaking person that used IRC. In the entire world. All 100 or so of them.

      That wasn't THAT long ago. Only 15 years or so.

      --
      "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
    7. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OMG James from IRC is that you? It's Collins you remember right? I was the one who lived in his parent's basement but still had SOME friends.

    8. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Deep, man.

    9. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by MarcQuadra · · Score: 5, Informative

      As mentioned earlier, Internet2 is NOT what it sounds like. It's just another high-speed WAN, like the commercial backbones, but because it's *cough* academic only *cough* it's got a lot less traffic and there are no artificial speed bumps.

      See when you get an internet connection, of any kind, you usually get wired up for a LOT more bandwidth than you buy, but the ISP caps it to make a market.

      On the Internet2 there are different grades of connection, but a huge number of schools are chatting to each other at 155Mbps, full-rate ATM. If you're in a dorm at any of those schools on the I2, chances are some of your regular ho-hum web/p2p traffic flows through the I2.

      The real advantages of the I2 project are reduced school ISP costs, as inter-school traffic doesn't have to traverse a commercial line, and much better collaborative access for research, development, and distance-learning.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
    10. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by tarquin_fim_bim · · Score: 1

      That's much better, JANET conjures up a far more exciting mental image, where can I get JANET?

    11. Re:Of course, the important question is.... by nr · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yep, been there, done that. :)

      Our research/education network here in Sweden called SUNET (Swedish University NETwork) runs at 10 Gbit/s in the core and providing all connecting nodes with minimum 2 GB/s trunks, all the major universities are directly connected with 10 GB/s trunks.

  6. Dear Santa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    Please put me on Internet2. Internet1 is old and busted. I've seen all the pr0n, downloaded all the songs, and I'm tired of getting viagra penis spam 418 times a day.

    I'll be a good boy next year, you can believe it.

    Thanks in advance,
    Johnny

    1. Re:Dear Santa by mog007 · · Score: 1

      I've seen all the pr0n

      Call me crazy, but I find that really hard to believe... pun very much intended.

    2. Re:Dear Santa by digitalmuse · · Score: 1

      Internet1 is old and busted.
      bwaaah! +1 funny

      --
      "If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
    3. Re:Dear Santa by El · · Score: 1

      Should't that be "419 times a day"?

      --

      "Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney

    4. Re:Dear Santa by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 1

      Dear Johnny,

      You've been a bad boy, so I'll give you a Gopher instead...

      Best regards,
      Santa

  7. fish is to apple as... by glassesmonkey · · Score: 4, Informative
    What a HORRIBLE description this is to compare with BT!!
    From this page you can see a graphic representation of the Application Layer and Local Layer this program works in (I2). From the description below we can see that this is more like every ISP making local copies of large files available!
    The LoRS tools give you read/write access to the unused storage space on the L-Bone. The L-Bone is a collection of IBP depots spread across the globe. The distribution of Linux using this infrastructure is to us an experiment, and to you, the chance to get your ISO in about 5-10 minutes. Our intention is to upload multiple copies of the ISOs into the L-Bone using the lors_upload tool. These copies will be geographically dispersed and broken in to smaller pieces. Once the copies are uploaded, the tool generates the exNode pseudo-file. These exNodes will be available from this page for download with names like [distribution_name].iso.xnd.
    ...
    After installing these tools, you can upload your own files to the L-Bone and then send the exNode to others who would be interested in having a copy of the file. During the upload process you can determine how long your uploads reside in the L-Bone and even which depots to use based on locality/proximity (like ZIP codes). The depots themselves also determine how long an allocation is allowed to exist. After the allocation time (user or depot determined) expires, the data is erased from the L-Bone.

    Also, a Director for this stuff hints at it being a fee-based in the future. (More documentation here)
    "Well . . . It's new! It's cool! It solves a big need! It's free (for now)! And it has a good instruction manual. Woo-hoo! I'll take Joe's opinion that you don't even have to be "a minor league geek" to play around with this new stuff with the proverbial grain of salt, but I'll bet quite a few of you will be "LoRSing around" with it soon."
    -- Terry Calhoun is director of communications and publications for the Society for College and University Planning (www.scup.org)
    1. Re:fish is to apple as... by Duncan3 · · Score: 1

      Yup, it's shared FTP space really.

      Not a thing to do with BT.

      Most importantly, it's NEW :)

      --
      - Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
    2. Re:fish is to apple as... by Zach+Garner · · Score: 2, Informative

      What a HORRIBLE description this is to compare with BT!!
      *shrug* The technologies have different end users in mind, but both are interesting to the same kind of geeks.

      Most researchers are probably not interested in BitTorrent since their transfer rates will not be imporved by BitTorrent's model (There's likely only one or two downloads going simultaneously for research data, since the audience isn't large)

      The LoRS tools give you read/write.... [full text truncated]

      You highlighted a few phrases from the above, and seemed to make a big deal about them. But, basically, this project is like every other Grid project.

      Resource owners define the conditions of use, such as when and how the resource can be used (in this case: how much space and for how long). Users can search and see if resources are available that meet their requirements. If a match is made, great. If not, oh well, you can always pay for service to ensure you have what you need.

      Also, a Director for this stuff hints at it being a fee-based in the future

      LoRS source code is available, see freshmeat.

      The software is under the revised BSD license. When they refer to "free (for now)" they're likely refering to the actual storage service.

      This is no different than developers of ftp software releasing the client and server for free, but restricting access to their ftp site.

      I can certainly see a pay-per terrabyte service. If a researcher needs professional grade quality of service, massive data storage and high bandwidth, they will have the grant money to afford it.

      For those that want something cheap, roll your own service, with your own terms.

    3. Re:fish is to apple as... by gl4ss · · Score: 2, Funny

      so it's kinda like those unsecured windows servers that get used as public ftp dumps?

      hmm.. i wonder if ms has a patent coming on this..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  8. Re:Yeah right... linux isos..... by Urgo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That is definitely not true. Bit Torrent has a lot of legitimate uses. I used Bit Torrent to download an ISO for clusterknoppix and the multi-disk ISO's for red hat when their servers were swamped. Bit Torrent is a great concept that is not going to be going away. It's sort of like multicasting over the traditional internet structure. I see BT only growing is variations and uses in the future both for good and bad.

    --
    Belive in Technology and AMAZE yourself. -- RIP ZDTV/TechTV
  9. Two posts, already slashdotted please mirror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone please mirror.

    1. Re:Two posts, already slashdotted please mirror by commodoresloat · · Score: 1

      Who needs mirrors? Can't somebody just seed a copy on bittorrent for Internet2?

  10. Re:Yeah right... linux isos..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You stupid fuck, piracy isn't killing it, its the reason it exists. Do you think you would know what "p2p" stood for if it wasn't for napster and kazaa? File sharing tech has always been driven by piracy, legitimate uses have always come second.

  11. Oh please by Sanity · · Score: 4, Insightful
    This sounds like Akamai, you still need to pay for server bandwidth - it isn't competitive with P2P content delivery networks like BT.

    Oh, and as soon as Freenet gets N.G Routing working nicely, BitTorrent will be obsolete [/flamebait] ;-)

    1. Re:Oh please by Valdrax · · Score: 1

      Oh, and as soon as Freenet gets N.G Routing working nicely, BitTorrent will be obsolete [/flamebait] ;-)

      Will it run on GNU/Hurd when it comes out?

      --
      If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
    2. Re:Oh please by jake_the_blue_spruce · · Score: 1

      I know it was a joke, but last I checked, infrequently referenced files fall off Freenet. BitTorrent allows people to champion files that may not be popular now, but later on become wildly so (or even just mildly so). To a certain extent, I think they're both targetted at fundamentally different purposes, with some overlap.

      --
      "There's so much left to know/ and I'm on the road to find out." -Cat Stevens
  12. Gah.. they're spreading! by Ianoo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Yet Another PHP Nuke-alike (YAPNA). This time from a university! Somehow I expected better. Ah well, looks like their MySQL is down anyway.

  13. I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'd hardly call this "better than bittorrent". While the principles may be similar, the target users are entirely different.

    Bittorrent is for people who can barely afford to run their one server, and need others to take some of the load off.

    This seems to be targeted at people who can set up a whole bunch of servers in a bunch of locations, and just want to use them efficiently to deliver huge content very quickly.

    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
    1. Re:I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      But couldn't that be done using BT just having the "tracker" only list the established servers and not attempt to upload from the downloaders

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    2. Re:I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by burns210 · · Score: 1

      ya, this sounds like a way to replace the 'please use a mirror site [insert 30 urls]' tag on all the big downloads... which is fine, but that reaches a different audience than bittorrent's.

    3. Re:I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is getting ridiculous. Instead of coming up with elaborate schemes to replicate data across the world or wasting half the bandwidth for ad-hoc network formation, they should work on getting IPv6 with multicasting to the users. The original host only needs the bandwidth of a single connection to send the "Linux-ISO" to everyone at the same time. The multicast protocol is already optimized to multiply the data as close to the recipients as possible. You can still have local mirrors for random-access, but the distribution problem doesn't need another solution, it needs the one solution to become widely available.

    4. Re:I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by Wolfrider · · Score: 2, Informative

      --AFAIK, Multicast only works if everyone who wants the content, wants it at the EXACT SAME TIME.

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    5. Re:I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Correct, but this isn't different with Bittorrent or any other distribution scheme: When someone wants to receive, someone else has to send. With multicasting, one sender is sufficient. Bittorrent uses seeds, too, but the clients still have to retransmit, often through a slower upstream connection. There is no need for more hierarchical (or meshed) distribution schemes, because precisely that function is built into multicast enabled networks. Alleviation of desynchronization effects and overruns by senders which send faster than the client can receive are left as an exercise to the reader.

    6. Re:I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, it looks like that is already in place (the whole bunch of servers part). According to the listing on their site, there's about 20TBs of space that anyone can read from/write to using their LoRS tools package. I was able to upload and download files from my home computer (obviously not I2 connected).
      The drawback is that whatever you store will automatically be deleted in a matter of days.

    7. Re:I wouldn't say 'better' exactly, just different by TheSync · · Score: 1

      With a technology like Digital Fountain, you can continuously send out encoded data using multicast, and once clients receive enough packets (equal to the size of the file plus a slight overhead), the clients can then recreate the original file.

      More simplisticly, you can "carousel" your data out through multicast by sending out packet 1..2..3..4..5 then back to 1..2..3.. etc. again, but if anyone misses a single packet they have to wait the entire length of the file to receive the final packet they need. Technology like Digital Fountain avoids that.

  14. Re:Yeah right... linux isos..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I knew what peer-to-peer was ages before Napster (which wasn't P2P) and Kazza were around, buttmunch.

  15. Re:Don't forget... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought it was $1499?

  16. Give it up for the coward! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    LINUX USERS ON INTERNET2 NETWORKS ENJOY THE BENEFITS OF LOGISTICAL NETWORKING

    PHOENIX, AZ - November 17, 2003 - Linux users on Internet2 networks are enjoying the benefits of a new approach to high performance content distribution, called Logistical Networking, which will be on display this week in the Internet2 booth at SC2003 in Phoenix, AZ. Developed by a research team from the Logistical Computing and Internetworking (LoCI) Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, Logistical Networking (LN) combines state-of-the-art data transfer technology with storage resources provisioned throughout the network to create a convenient and powerful new paradigm for distributed data management.

    To test this technology, the LoCI team has used the 22 terabyte (TB) testbed of LN "depots" deployed across Internet2 networks to create an ad hoc content distribution network for distributing 650 megabyte (MB) CD-images (called "ISO's") of Linux and FreeBSD software. Users are now employing the Logistical Runtime System (LoRS) tools to download these ISO's at speeds of 30 to 80 megabits per second (Mbps)--roughly tens times faster than from traditional HTTP or FTP mirror sites. Downloads for gigabit Ethernet connected users can exceed 150 Mbps.

    "We think that this kind of network storage infrastructure paves the way for a new era in content distribution," said Dr. Micah Beck, Co-Director of LoCI Laboratory and the chair of Internet2's Network Storage Special Interest Group. "For example, although using multiple copies and multiple TCP streams to increase transfer speed is similar to what some peer-to-peer systems do, with our fixed but shared infrastructure of well connected nodes, you can scale up the size of the content without sacrificing performance."

    What makes this unique combination of flexibility and performance possible is an XML encoded metadata file called an exNode. A content publisher who uploads a file to the testbed of LN depots, which is called the Logistical Backbone (L-Bone), receives an exNode containing metadata that maps the segments of the file's content to L-Bone storage allocations, which are time-limited to make them more shareable. A single exNode can represent content that has been fragmented across multiple depots to accommodate large sizes, replicated to ensure fault tolerance, or both replicated and geographically dispersed to improve accessibility and performance. A single exNode used to distribute a Linux ISO represents eight copies of the ISO's content, which has been broken up into 8-20MB chunks and spread across L-Bone depots nationwide.

    Publishing content that has been stored in the L-Bone is as simple as sharing the exNode that represents it. Since exNodes are text files, they can be published via HTTP, sent as e-mail attachments, or passed on a floppy disk. When they are posted on a Web site, as with the exNodes for Linux ISOs, the result is called an exNode Distribution Network, or XDN. To access the content in an XDN, users simply retrieve the relevant exNode from the site, and then use them with the LoRS tools to download the content. The LoRS tools are freely available and easy to set up, have a convenient GUI, and run on Microsoft Windows, Apple OS X, and all common variants of UNIX and Linux. The LoRS tools make fast, mulitsource/multistream downloads routine for Internet2 users when the content is suitably replicated, as in the Linux XDN,

    "As compared to some of the other things we're doing with Logistical Networking, like managing the data sets from supercomputer simulations or accelerating remote browsing of massive image databases, putting up an XDN is a pretty simple application that anyone on Internet2 can do," explains Dr. Beck. "And prototype applications like IBPvo show that there are some easy variations on XDN that can automate different parts of the process."

    IBPvo is an Internet2-enabled personal video recorder (PVR) service created to show the flexibility of LN technology. Like TiVo or ReplayTV, IBPvo can be scheduled in advance

  17. W00000T P2P by HansF · · Score: 1

    They've got the cash,
    But we've got the numbers.

    --
    --> Insert Funny Sig Here
  18. Re:Nothing is better than bit torrent for piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Shut it, bitch. I bet you think Kirk is better than Picard too.

  19. MojoNation? by yerricde · · Score: 1

    It looks more like Freenet or (the defunct) MojoNation to me, except without the constraints imposed by an anonymity guarantee.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  20. Agreed- by jsav40 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I used bittorrent do download the Fedora Core 1 ISOs on their day of release- took maybe 3 hours to get the images at a time when few of the conventional mirrors had even synched/ those ftp mirrors that *were* synced were also holpelessly overloaded. It just works (TM). Still sharing those ISOs back, can't hurt to add to the torrent ;).

  21. drftpd - Distributed FTP Daemon by mooogse · · Score: 1

    This sounds a bit similair to drftpd, Distributed FTP Daemon. Although drftpd does not stripe data at the protocol level, you can use some kind of splitting tool such as RAR with multiple archives to stripe data across nodes. I'd implement striping at protocol level but that would break site-to-site FTP transfers and would require improved protocol and FTP clients. GridFTP might be better for it anyway.

    1. Re:drftpd - Distributed FTP Daemon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IBM Mainframe's already do this, kind of, in that raid / solid state disk controllers buffer and intelligently forward. Cisco probably does something similar with streaming video. If you ask a mailman, he will tell you junk mail is already processed in this manner.

  22. Re:Don't forget... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OT, but does anyone think that Slashdot should post chess matches under science or programming?

    I know its a game, but its not interesting to 99.99999% of gamers that visit this site..

    And another thing, why didnt they just post the end, instead of every fucking game?

  23. What if a node goes down? by menscher · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Bittorrent works well, because it doesn't matter if one of your peers dies. There are lots of others. (When I downloaded the Fedora ISOs, for example, there were hundreds of peers.)

    This new thing looks like each site has a piece of your data. If one site loses everything, then wouldn't any file that had even a piece of it in that site be forever lost? Sounds like a distributed RAID0 (stripe) array to me. And everyone knows that reliability of those goes down as you add more stripes....

    1. Re:What if a node goes down? by shird · · Score: 1

      And what about when the last seed dies? The problem with BT is you can only get stuff that is popular and current - there will nearly always be a bunch of people that only manage to get half the file and never be able to get the rest.

      It mostly works for the moment, because people leave their torrents open while they download through the night, so the upload/download ratio becomes almost even (required for the economics of a p2p infrastructure to work).

      Once clients get developed which stop sharing once a torrent has completed, and become popular, BT will die a miserable death. It is the same with all p2p apps, the new ones always seem good, because there are few abusers at first.

      --
      I.O.U One Sig.
    2. Re: What if a node goes down? by taco8982 · · Score: 2, Informative

      LoCI deals with this by having multiple copies of the data spread around (mirroring in your RAID analogy). So if one site goes down, no data will be lost. For instance, "A single exNode used to distribute a Linux ISO represents eight copies of the ISO's content, which has been broken up into 8-20MB chunks and spread across L-Bone depots nationwide."

    3. Re:What if a node goes down? by polaar · · Score: 1

      I was wondering about that, too. Ok, it's true that a publisher can ensure that there is a seed, but what if that publisher is me, on my home pc? Good luck with your download speed!

      Now, maybe this sounds ridiculous, I don't know if it would be possible, but what about a combined bittorrent/ftp client? You'd point to an ftp location as the 'original' source file. When no seeds are available, download starts via ftp (or even http), and you yourself are ready to act like a seed to others. When the last seed dies, switch to ftp again...

      If possible, it would allow for using bittorrent with normal ftp resources... With the difference that you get the advantages of bittorrent when multiple users are downloading at the same time.

  24. You think that's cool? by DroopyStonx · · Score: 4, Funny

    You think the Internet2 is cool?

    Wait until Paris Hilton sex tape #2 hits the P2P networks on OUR internet.

    How you gonna DEAL WITH THAT, INTERNET2? HOW? YOU CAN'T TOUCH THIS.

    --
    We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
  25. Re:Oh please [OT] by Magila · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sure it'd be great if Freenet was working nicly, but that's a big if. It's been in development for more than 3 years now and they're still not even close to having a network that's ready for use by the masses. I'm not sure it'll ever get to that point either. One of the golden rules of P2P is that bandwidth is precious, yet Freenet merily uses n times the amount of data being moved in bandwidth passing that data up a chain of nodes to preserve anonimity. This is probably going to forever relagate Freenet to solution-in-search-of-a-problem staus as the vast majority of people arn't that worried about anonimity.

  26. As a LoRS User by barureddy · · Score: 2, Informative

    This is like bit torrent, but not any way close to the redundancy of users. Right now there are only a few servers that host a file. There isn't a need for much more because A. the network doesn't have that many people B. there is so much bandwidth. There is no organized p2p warez network setup. It is in the experimental phase and only used now for research applications.

    As stated in previous posts, Internet2 is only accessible by academic institutions and corporations. I'm just a student at a university that is connected to the internet2 and I use LoRS for a smaller cooler application where I download recorded tv shows that I can select to be recorded at a central server.

    1. Re:As a LoRS User by subk · · Score: 1

      Hmm... I didn't know slashdot supported the tag.

      --
      Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
    2. Re:As a LoRS User by subk · · Score: 1

      Shit. neener.neener tag, rather.

      --
      Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
  27. Yep... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I remember then. It was right about then that everything started going to shit.

    I remember when there was Usenet and Fidonet and that was it. Life was much better then but the porn sucked ass. ASCII porn is really pathetic shit.

    1. Re:Yep... by XO · · Score: 1

      Nah, GIFs were all the rage. Especially the new 256 color ones...

      --
      "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
  28. Possible explaination. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've not been able to read the article, but as far as I understand it, the IP distribution in IP6 is based on a tree structure. Paths between nodes are a simple walk-up walk-down the tree. Routing tables are no longer needed - except for shortcuts between nodes in the tree.

    The side-effect of this is that given a foreign IP6 address, you can determine logically where it is in relation to you simply by comparing that IP6 to your own. It's very, very easy to work out what the "closest" server is when given a bunch of them. This minimises long-distance network traffic by only going as far as you need to get the data.

    I've always thought that an IP6 variant of BitTorrent should work in a similar way - making it more efficient by swaming files only with your closest peers (for popular downloads, this means any given ISP's customers only generate internal traffic that is never routed externally over the internet).

  29. Re:Nothing is better than bit torrent for piracy by quakeroatz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Kirk would kick Picards little French butt all over the vinyard. Then he'd bang all the whores in Paris.

  30. Old news for quakers by glassesmonkey · · Score: 1

    Pennsylvania already tried this type of mega-giant fiber plans, but got screwed by the telecoms. Hopefully the Morons with their genius city planning (seriously, they plan cities better than any one, well on a grid) will do this better.

    What they paid: $2.1B + $3B extra by 2015
    What they got: crap
    What they paid for:
    "This capability falls short of Verizon's commitment; Verizon committed to providing two-way broadband capability of at least 45 Mbps," noted Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission member Terrance J. Fitzpatrick in a statement. "The Commission accepted this commitment, and approved the Plan based upon that commitment."

  31. mod_torrent is the way to solve this by belphegore · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The way to go here is to make serving content through bittorrent easier. Ideally, as easy as publishing a resource on a web server (that is, copy a file into a directory and figure out what the URL is). This is the goal of the mod_torrent project. We're building an apache plugin on top of libtorrent which automatically creates torrents in response to http requests, and then begins serving them, in response to conditions on the apache server. Load is low? Fine, service with good-old HTTP the normal way. Load is high? Instead of a direct HTTP download, instead have the HTTP GET respond with an application/torrent file, which then launches bt to grab the content (all automatic). Goodbye slashdot effect.

    1. Re:mod_torrent is the way to solve this by phebz23 · · Score: 1

      This is cool, especially since the Internet is such a large community, you have a higher number of peers (as compared to Internet2).

      I think it would be just as legitimate to have an Apache module based on Logistical Networking. Maybe a mesh of both aspects, fixed plus peer to peer, could prove beneficial.

      Until then, I think bittorrent-fueled downloads from web servers will be very cool.

    2. Re:mod_torrent is the way to solve this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's not clear to me how this would actually work
      for a real Site, since you'd either need a Plugin
      for you browser or at least BitTorrent installed.

      Also, this would greatly increase loading
      times on your website ( granted - a fully-loaded
      webserver won't be doing any better ) especially
      when using lots of graphics as each of them
      needs to be downloaded from a P2P network.
      As you might know, latency is rather bad on
      P2P.
      Overall, I don't think this would be a huge
      advancement, as for now, its just not suited for
      that purpose.

    3. Re:mod_torrent is the way to solve this by belphegore · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The idea would likely be to have the plugin only kick in for either certain mime types, or content above a certain size, at least for today. Yes, currently you need to have a bittorrent client installed, or integrated into your browser, but the content is at least available in a slashdot-like situation. I agree that it's likely HTML or small image files will never usefully be conveyed by this mechanism, but larger files, or any content that's rendered inline in a page would benefit.

    4. Re:mod_torrent is the way to solve this by Majix · · Score: 1

      Many sites already require you to use their own download manager applications if you want to download anything large, so requiring BitTorrent isn't so dramatic these days. But what if, instead of every site developing Yet Another Download Manager, they instead brandend their own versions of the BitTorrent client. The clients would be interchangable and the sites wouldn't have to maintain their own programs (I'm sure they've got better things to do).

      Using BitTorrent for large files you need to serve seems almost like a no-brainer. The choices are basically:
      a) provide all the bandwidth for all the downloaders
      b) provide all the bandwidth in A, and on top of that all of the downloaders would also provide their upstream capability.

      Your bandwidth would still be maxed out, but much more content would be distributed in the same amount of time. So what basically changes mod_torrent from regular torrenting is that the seeding would be essentially guaranteed.

  32. Aww, how nice. by Anenga · · Score: 5, Funny
    New technology for doing mulitsource/multithread downloads of ISOs is making Linux users on Internet2 happy.

    Aww, good for those Internet2 users. All 15 of them.
    1. Re:Aww, how nice. by finkployd · · Score: 2, Informative

      Aww, good for those Internet2 users. All 15 of them.


      There are around 130,000 Internet2 (actually Abilene) at my university

      Finkployd

    2. Re:Aww, how nice. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      25k-ish here.

    3. Re:Aww, how nice. by Sethb · · Score: 1

      Yeah, we've got another 17,000 or so here. :)

      --
      When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
  33. Re:Yeah right... linux isos..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wonder how many people know you can transfer files with AOL and MSN messenger...

    P2P will always be around, piracy comes from people actually sharing.

    Sharing is bad. Dont ever share. Leeching is not good, but at least you wont get caught.

  34. Oh the irony... by phebz23 · · Score: 1

    A story about Internet2 networking technology kills Internet1 web server in minutes flat.

  35. Speaking of which by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Anyone have a torrent link for the Paris Hilton video? (yeah, i still haven't seen it.) thx.

  36. because.. by Suppafly · · Score: 1

    Because I2 wasn't fast enough requiring that everyone on it be in relative proximity to a gigapop.

  37. Captain Kirk is Gay by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or perhaps you didn't know? Allow me to enlighten you:

    Lost Gay Episodes

  38. uh, yeah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    that's so ironic you could pick it up with a magnet.

  39. Funky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    heh, this is weird to see on Slashdot, I go to UT and have friends and professors that work on Loci, just weird to read about the work of friends on slashdot :).

  40. Re:Oh please [OT] by Feztaa · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Freenet merily uses n times the amount of data being moved in bandwidth passing that data up a chain of nodes to preserve anonimity.

    That's the whole point of Freenet! It's not designed to be the easiest way to get the latest DVD rips, it's designed to be a way to communicate 100% anonymously, for example if you're living in a repressive regime, and you need to send a message without getting killed.

  41. Freshmeat home page. by infolib · · Score: 2, Informative

    LoRS Tools are on Freshmeat
    The download link works ok - it seems the slashdotting has merely taken out dynamic HTML generation, not the bandwidth.

    Apparently it's under a BSD License - IMHO quite suitable for a publicly funded project. (Flamewar ensues...)

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
  42. Re:Oh please [OT] by Magila · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, if you absolutly positivly need to be anonymous Freenet is the way to go. But the parent was talking about Freenet making Bittorrent obsolete, which is never going to happen because Freenet has to sacrifice too much efficency to maintain anonimity.

  43. Software download mirror by infolib · · Score: 1

    here (temporarily)

    Bandwidth sponsored by danish research funding.

    --
    Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
  44. Re:mod_torrent is the way to solve this - MOD UP! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    imo all three posters are correct; mixing bt into apache should allow a simple process for sharing a number of files (ideally just dropping them into a dir & running some indexer?), whereas one would otherwise need a running bt (seeder) for each shared file (other solutions?) all the time.
    seems to be good for 0day stuff and rare files alike.
    though making a browser render a page out of a bt tmp-download dir might be possible, surfing exp would probably be nowhere near 'fast'.

  45. Santa visited me Early this year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://members.internet2.edu/university/universiti es.cfm#P

    Mmm Go Purdue.

  46. BT by Stumbles · · Score: 0

    The only thing that annoys me about BitTorment is it's tendency to lock up my router and I've no idea why. When I use BT I will have to power cycle the router at least once during a download.

    --
    My karma is not a Chameleon.
  47. Dear Santa-MIB II by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A variant on what "J" said to "K" in MIB II about "K" driving the new car, instead of the old car that "K" use to drive.

    1. Re:Dear Santa-MIB II by digitalmuse · · Score: 1

      yes, I've been here long enough to know that one.
      I just found it quite amusing in the context. I need to submit that one to fark with IcyHotStuntaz composited in front of some Sunfire K15s all 'glistnin' with chrome, ST fibre and cold-cathode effects.

      --
      "If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
  48. Re:Oh please [OT] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    dude, BT is written in python - so why isn't it dog-slow?

  49. Publishers can prevent that if they care by billstewart · · Score: 1
    Anybody who wants to publish something reliably just needs to put up a seed and keep it up. If they want to publish something _more_ reliably, they can put up two seeds in different places to decrease the chance of failure, plus if they're distributing something with worldwide popularity, it helps to put seeds on several continents. if a given file becomes less popular, on a server which also has material that's more popular, the possible download rates obviously go way down, but there's no reason for something you're publishing to go unfinishable if you don't want it to.

    People who only half-assedly care about publishing their material don't need to do this, of course, and your experience with stuff getting aborted in the middle is probably for popular material like anime or perhaps concert recordings where the people who publish it take it down when it's no longer "current". There's no reason that this has to happen for your own garage band's main CDs, even though you might not keep every show on line permanently.

    On the other hand, an obvious feature for BitTorrent to add, if it doesn't have this already, is a "De-Publish" option which will let people who have part of the file get the rest of it but won't serve new download sessions to people who haven't already started. That'd be enough to give a day's warning when taking something down. You could either implement it mandatorily in the server or permissively in the client (e.g. make the server enforce it, which is more work, or let the client tell the user that the flag is set for 3.27 hours from now [Continue?][GiveUp?].

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  50. bittorrent.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think to remember that you can use any port you want for Bittorrent....
    It just uses 6881-89 by defaults, but nothing stops you from trying 60000-65534 (and you know what ? it will just work the same 8)

    1. Re:bittorrent.... by AntiOrganic · · Score: 2, Informative

      Unfortunately, most campuses use Packeteer or other packet-shaping devices to analyze the packets to determine the traffic type in order to throttle bandwidth-hogging applications rather than blocking ports explicitly. While port-changing tricks may have worked in the past, even the most incompetent administrator can set up one of these, and no matter how many ports you try, you're not getting around it.

    2. Re:bittorrent.... by Wolfrider · · Score: 2, Interesting

      1. Get To Know your Campus Admin
      2. Buy Him/Her $quantity of their favorite $consumable
      3. Ask for Local Bittorrent Access
      4. Profit!

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    3. Re:bittorrent.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What if the traffic is encrypted? Are the packet shaping tools really effective?
      Mnet comes to mind.

  51. Bittorrent sucks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you have bandwidth limits. Is it my settings or do most of them ingnore the upload limit? I don't mind having to take a decrease in speed, but having it give up 400 MB in less then a minute and getting 2 MB out of the full 50 MB in return isn't really worth it.

  52. Re:Yeah right... linux isos..... by silentbozo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Don't forget the latest 250 mb update to America's Army that 2.5 million other gamers are trying to get, all at the same time. It took me 2 hrs using a Bittorrent stream, the first time I've tried that technology. I ended up serving up 2gb worth of data by the next day, when I switched my Bittorrent upload off. Works for me, and I didn't have to create a stupid account to sit in a javascript-powered queue just to download.

    I wonder how long before people start mirroring whole sites using Bittorrent? It'd be a cool idea, save lots of bandwidth, and it would add another layer of redundancy for file repositories (such as UMICH, AMUG, INFOMAC, etc.)

  53. Re:Yeah right... linux isos..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But would you have had much faith in P2P buttmunch? "Pirate" filesharing networks have proved that P2P can be greatly successful.

  54. It's not IPv6-related at all. Servers + Protocols. by billstewart · · Score: 1
    You're misunderstanding IPv6, but that's not relevant here because this project isn't about IPv6. IPv6 does have enough address space that it's possible to do some consolidated routing tables, especially for lower-level nodes, but if the network topology isn't tree-structured (and it almost never is), then a tree-structured search is unlikely to get you an optimal route.

    This project seems to be about two things

    • A distributed bunch of fat servers around the world (well, mostly North America and Europe) that academically correct data publishers can upload their content to, with N copies of everything they're publishing spread around different servers, on the Internet 2 fat underloaded academic backbone.
    • A protocol for striped downloads from multiple servers, so if a given server is overloaded and slow it doesn't become the bottleneck, plus windowing download features that can handle a bigger speed*delay cross product than TCP's rather limited single-stream windowing can.
    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  55. Re:Nothing is better than bit torrent for piracy by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 1
    Kirk would kick Picards little French butt all over the vinyard. Then he'd bang all the whores in Paris.
    Yes, but when asked about how many whores he had banged, Kirk would tersely reply, "get a life."
  56. I've Used This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Working at a university, I have the opportunity to get on the I2 occasionally. On one notable occasion, I grabbed all three mandrake 9.1 isos in 3 minutes 40 seconds! Possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen...

  57. Great toolset by FU_Fish · · Score: 1

    I'm glad to see the LoCI guys getting some recognition. I've been using their tools for quite some time and they are useful well beyond downloading ISOs. Data movement is an important issue, especially in distributed environments, such as the Internet and grids. The packages that LoCI has released are a very strong solution to the data movement problem.

  58. BT works great on the internet2 by pimpinmonk · · Score: 1

    I'm at a university (Columbia) which is connected to Internet2. It automatically routes (as far as I know) across Internet2 when appropriate, which means to students at the other schools on Internet2. And we all know who P2P's biggest users are... so I've been using BT nonstop to great effect here. Also, Columbia's idiotic bandwidth policies (can't upload >100MB/hr or they administratively sever your ethernet port) don't apply to data across Internet2. So I usually don't get in trouble letting the upstream bandwidth run free on bittorrent. I frequently observe 500kb/s on a single torrent. Not bad for a 10mbit dorm connection (room-to-room speeds max out at around 1000kb/s for comparison).

    1. Re:BT works great on the internet2 by Tazzy531 · · Score: 1

      Oh how I miss Columbia. I would get calls from AcIS all the time about my bandwidth usage..It got to the point that I knew them pretty well and who would be able to restore it for me quickly..

      On a related note, a while back Columbia was at the top of the Wired list for worse bandwidth policies at college.

      --


      _______________________________
      "I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
  59. Call me ignorant but ... by Carmelia · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What's internet2 ???

    1. Re:Call me ignorant but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're ignorant.

    2. Re:Call me ignorant but ... by mooman · · Score: 1

      Internet2 is a research network for developing and testing new protocols/applications/technologies related to networking. It consists primarily of universities and other research facilities, but there are several companies (like mine) that are also participating in it.

      There are much higher hardware standards for the routing equipment and overall Internet2 is currently operating at around 100x the speed of the "conventional" internet. (My company has a video and audio collaboration package that just rocks with that bandwidth, for instance)

      I2 is not intended to replace "the" Internet, but just serve as a proving grounds for many of the technologies that might be part of "the" Internet soon.

      For more information, just check out www.internet2.edu and read the "About Us" sections.

      --
      In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
  60. torrent? by snatcheroo · · Score: 1

    anyone got a torrent for internet2? ;P

  61. Re:Nothing is better than bit torrent for piracy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    www.voracity.net

  62. two-degrees by Bruha · · Score: 1

    Has anyone checked this out? http://www.two-degrees.com I tried it on a download yesterday of 50 megs and 1 second after starting up I was connected to 7 hosts at full download speed. Torrents have never done that for me ever no matter what network I was downloading from.

    Sadly it has no linux version.

  63. Where's the tracker for this Internet2?... by LnxAddct · · Score: 0

    Can someone post a link to the tracker?

  64. Re:Better 'connectivity' article? by King_TJ · · Score: 1

    This seems like govt. come full-circle to me, in some ways. After all, the Internet as we know it today was built/funded by the govt. (as Arpanet, initially) - and eventually became privatized.

    Now, these plans are popping up to create govt. funded high-speed networks? It's just going back to the roots of the net, but on a state or city instead of federal level.

    Of course, the telecom companies would be expected to whine and complain - but their selfish motives aside, I think it is legitimate to ask why government feels this is a necessary function for them to perform. Sure, any of us "computer geeks" would love to have a net connection running 100x the current speed - but there's no free lunch here. This eventually means you're going to be paying for it in taxes, and as is the norm for government spending - you can bet they won't shift around existing funds to pay for this. Instead, they'll waste just as much money on other projects as ever, and demand a tax increase to cover this new one....

  65. Re:cool, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's your link: Bit Torrent.

  66. OpenBSD + Internet2 = the ULTIMATE g33k wankfest.. by RLiegh · · Score: 0

    see subject for content.
    see signature for my opinion.

  67. internet2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I love my 155 mbps internet2 connection at work. It is basically idle all of the time, except when I'm downloading iso's. At almost 15 megabytes a second.

    It's almost faster then my laptops harddrive.

  68. Re:Oh please [OT] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wouldn't that make it snake-slow?

  69. kicking street knowledge by SethJohnson · · Score: 1


    Pleaze mod parent +100 Insightful
  70. Re:It's not IPv6-related at all. Servers + Protoco by pacc · · Score: 1

    Uninspiring, if IPv6 don't make anything new possible aren't there technologies like multicast that could make sense for p2p programs like bittorrent on a sufficiently updated network?

  71. usenet by SethJohnson · · Score: 1


    Not trying to be as big of a smartass as I normally am, I'd like to point out that we've got basically this L-bone thing going on right now. It's called Usenet.
  72. Re:It's not IPv6-related at all. Servers + Protoco by billstewart · · Score: 1

    Multicast is available in IPv4, but not too many ISPs support it natively, and I'm not aware of any of the major ISPs doing multicast peering with each other except to the extent that they connect to the mbone. There has been lots of work on reliable multicast for file distribution, but that's a lot more useful in a controlled environment, e.g. a many-site company distributing software updates or retail price lists over the Internet instead of satellite, than they are in random crowds where people join and leave. Unreliable multicast applications are a lot easier to coordinate over random crowds, e.g. video conferences, where if you miss a few packets you're not going to go back and recover them.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  73. Re:Oh please [OT] by Tracy+Reed · · Score: 1

    Because Python isn't Java. All of the Python apps I have used were fast and worked well. I can't say the same of Java apps. :(

    However, freenet really does have the potential to be faster than bittorrent due to the way it caches more popular data closer to where the demand is and distributes the load over a great many more systems.

  74. Is internet2 really coming? by Soothh · · Score: 1

    We have 2 local power companies, One of which is cinergy who told me about 6 months ago they were beta testing and had hard plans to offer it in full swing in my area in 6 months, or if needed would offer atleast beta testing (which should be this month) but now they are quiet about it, another power co, IPALCO, has totally dropped moving to internet over power line.
    Strange thing is, they have already invested in ALL of the needed hardware and such to run it (i do have an inside source for this info) so...are we really going to see it?

    --
    We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
    1. Re:Is internet2 really coming? by Tazzy531 · · Score: 1

      You're probably talking about a different thing. Internet2 is a consortium of industry and universities that are linked together by a high speed [usually OC-42] connection. Regular consumers will not be able to get on this.

      --


      _______________________________
      "I'm not Conceited...I'm just a realist..."
  75. Re:Oh please [OT] by cduffy · · Score: 1

    Because Python isn't Java. All of the Python apps I have used were fast and worked well. I can't say the same of Java apps. :( ...and the really funny thing is this is mostly true even though a Java JIT compiler is typically quite a lot faster than the Python interpreter when benchmarked running equivalent code.

    (Part of what this implies is that Java code really can be quite a lot faster than Python when it's written right using libraries that don't suck -- but the "libraries that don't suck" bit is important; a Python/GTK interface will be faster than Java/Swing any day, even though the Python interpreter is slower to process the program logic).

  76. What i'd like to see in BitTorrent by Kegetys · · Score: 1

    BitTorrent is quite nice, though I found that sharing files with it isn't quite easy, since you need to seed the file yourself if no one else has it yet. So if you are keeping up a thousand downloads on your website for example, you'd need to run a thousand bittorent seeds for those.

    It would be nice if the bittorrent tracker file could have a regular http or ftp link in it, from which the BT client would start downloading the file in case no seeds are found. I think that would make it alot easier to use for legal file downloads in websites.

  77. Downloader for X by wowbagger · · Score: 1

    What I am trying to do is to get the author of Downloader for X to include BT protocol in his program. As his program already supports HTTP, FTP (with file splitting for multithreaded downloads), scheduling, inter-process communication (X drag-n-drop) and has a decent GUI, if he would add BT it would be just about perfect.

    Go to his site, take a look, and perhaps drop him a line on his forums asking for BT - maybe if he gets /.ed he may just do it.

  78. P2P and Server-based Hybrid? by elementalist · · Score: 1

    Would it be possible to make a P2P server hybridized program? Essentially a Server serves content (a peer that never vanishes) and other peers simple serve to speed it up?

    1. Re:P2P and Server-based Hybrid? by DukeyToo · · Score: 1

      Thats essentially the way BitTorrent works.

      --
      Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use - Mark Twain
    2. Re:P2P and Server-based Hybrid? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what a seed IS. BT needs a tracker, too. And that's a weaker model than a pure p2p model could be.

      Ideally, a server is just a big peer. Servers die. Peers can spread the load. Distributed tracking in the scone protocol mean no single point of failure, no upper limit to the number of clients in a currant.

  79. L-BONE by BigDocJayster · · Score: 0

    Is connected to the Knee bone?

    Knee bone is 'nnected to the Unix bone?

    Unix bone is 'nnected to the SCO bone.

    SCO bone tis connected to your ASS Bone..?

    This better get modded as funny, oR ElSe.

    --
    -Where there is blue screen, there is OWNAGE
  80. my bittorrent idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    make a porn-only network and call it butt-torrent

  81. Re:Oh please [OT] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Certainly. The gross inefficiency also comes from a shedload of unfixed bugs and basic design problems with host discovery and transports; too many unfixed bugs to be able to unit test NGRouting, in fact, so no-one really knows if it works well or not.

  82. Re:Oh please [OT] by /dev/trash · · Score: 1

    I would wager that the lines that anyone uses in a 'repressed' country are already tapped.