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RSS And BitTorrent, Together At Last
eoyount writes "Wired has an interesting story about a really simple idea I wish I had thought of. Transferring large files across the Internet isn't easy for your average joe, but a combination of RSS and BitTorrent technology might just make it easier - Slashdot ran a previous story on the theoretical blending last year." (LegalTorrents is run by the strangely familiar simoniker, who wrote a short piece on the O'Reilly Network about how it was set up, and offers observations on how well the combination fares.) Update: 03/17 21:45 GMT by T : Ernest Miller submits two related postings he's written on RSS+BitTorrent, a combination he calls "broadcatching."
where can I find clear info regarding what is RSS exactly ? Isn't it somehow like what microsoft tried to do a couple years ago with their "Active Desktop" (c) TM concept ? Or am I completely way off ?
Je n'ai pas d'avenir Je n'ai qu'un destin Celui de n'être qu'un souvenir C'est pour demain
Now, how do we aim that at the web in general (and automagically) to avoid the slashdot effect?
A new browser protocol? Aim your browser at
bthttp://www.victim.com
and let it rip?
Although it's cool that companies are finding legit uses for BT (I believe the Worlds of Warcraft beta is being distributed this way), I'm not sure the legal departments are up to speed yet. To quote one of the fellows in my IRC chat:
"Hrm, WoW is bing distributed by Bittorrent. Meanwhile, I get angry phonecalls from Vivendi to shut down Bittorrent."
Yay for technical advances, but can commercial interests fully embrace it without killing the "evils" of it?
Kids these days. They don't know the difference between classic, and just plain old.
People keep trying to make BitTorrent something it isn't. And really, we should be fighting its corporate adoption in any form, as it's simply an attempt to shift server bandwidth costs to the client. ISPs eat that right now, but we're going to metered access if this keeps up.
Which is effectively getting us to pay for website access/services, but instead of giving the money to the content creators we'll be giving it to ISPs instead and paying in bandwidth besides. So this is a bad idea.
In this Slashdot article, Yahoo reported that things might be starting to come together. Looks like it's happened!
However, I'm a little concerned - BitTorrent has a lot of initial overhead (setting up trackers, and all the protocol stuff). I'm not sure if it would be wise for small files?
BitTorrent's weak spot has always been thedistribution of the torrent files in the first place. If there isn't a torrent file on the conent provider's page, where do you look?
RSS+BitTorrent, is a step closer to a better web. It almost answers the problem of pointing your client at an actively downloaded torrent by steering users twoard a slimmer and more flexible protocol.
IMO, maybe some kind of 'standard' torrent directory/lookup that is guarnteed to be traded by all torrent clients is the right ticket; kind of like a DNS for media. The RSS+Torrent scheme is good, but all it does is displace the complexity of the matter onto a new protocol and rely on everyone hitting the same feed to begin (the problem Torrent is trying to eliminate).
It does however, make it easy to make distributing torrents a lot more dynamic. Neat stuff.
Isn't this just Konspire2b? Konspire2b was designed specifically for this purpose:
Konspire2b
Essentially you subscribe to channels which push content instead of pulling.
Compared to Bittorrent
This is an exhaustive analysis (with pretty charts) why under the above scenario (pushing content, as opposed to pulling), Konspire2b is much more efficient.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
???
Sorry if I seem like I'm trolling but these questions will be asked at some point
-Phil
Shoot questions, first ask later...
Yep, that's the point of BitTorrent - and what made it so special when it first came out
So the sharing still works to some extent even if people disconnect right away.
Furthermore, it's only possible to leech significantly from a peer that has already finished downloading. Any other client will notice that it's giving but not getting, and scale down it's giving appropriately. I bet the leechs love it when folks moralise about not disconnecting right away - on the other hand, it's certainly not the kiss of BitTorrent when those connections do drop.
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
Since data sent equals data recieved within a BT swarm, and some people will act as seeders and continue to send more data than they recieved, you will always have people who will simply not have the opportunity to contribute to the swarm, mostly at the tail end. And of course many folks have their uploads limited or even completely cut off.
The real problem with bittorrent is that by enabling efficient transfer of large files, people are transferring larger files. And the service providers simply do not have the capacity for everyone to be sending those large files. They may advertise unlimited access but kids they really aren't set up for it. To say nothing of the fact that the way the internet is structured now is no longer geared towards everyone being as able to send as well as they are to recieve.
Really, the internet and its billing structure should be geared towards billing by amount received, and not amount served, and widespread implementation of load-sharing protocols like bittorrent. It would be far more efficient and fair, and would encourage people to limit their consumption rather than penalizing inadvertently popular unsupported sites.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
It may seem complicated but its not really.
The main problem people have using bittorrent is regressive internet connections. (Until IPv6 becomes ubiquitous this is going to be a problem for many of the internet's designed uses, not just swarming media.)
Im not so hot about RSS, but for things such a multicast or bittorrent- it really helps to get the content when everyone else is. So having a running subscription to a show you like, then have the download automatically kick-in as soon as it becomes available would be the ideal setup for using your computer as a media center.
Getting this working right could make even tivo seem quaint...
In the right hand corner: Hackers Embrace P2P
Hey, quit bitching and open your mind a little bit.
Let's say your favorite band just went on tour and as part of a promotion they decided to post a few songs and videos "bootlegged" from each concert.
Now, it might get kinda anoying to load up their page every couple of days and click on each link to download the media. However, they could post an RSS feed with BitTorrent links that you subscribe to just once. Everytime a new bootleg goes online, the RSS feed gets updated, and the content gets downloaded to your computer automatically.
Where would we be if everytime the Internet was mentioned 50 years ago, people ranted and raved about how the postal service already solved the problem of distributing content?
This is seriously cool stuff, you are just too closed minded to realise it.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
It's a shame they're using RSS, as it's a good idea with a bad implementation. There are currently 9 different versions of RSS, and all of them incompatible with one another. It ought to be replaced with a better technology like Atom. However, this does look like an interesting project, nonetheless.
-- Rob
Y'a jamais des choses qu'on peut pas se débrouiller ; juste laisse-moi t'aider!
I think that ideally, the most a user should see is bt://sitename.domain/file.zip, or something similar. The OS/browser should be able to handle that sort of protocol, and send it to the right application or use an integrated bit torrent client to get the file.
Correct me if I'm really wrong on this, or if it already exists. This would also be a welcome addition to Mozilla, I think.
I'm looking to get rich. I've got steps #2 (????) and #3 (PROFIT!) planned out, but am having trouble coming up with #1.
Upload limiting works, but limits your download speed. The client develoeprs have to recognize that yes, sharing is nice and leeching is bad, but disrupting the users' connection is a Very Bad Thing.
A decent client, of which there are many, will let you throttle your outbound.
Note that the way torrent works, if noone uploads, noone downloads. And the faster everyone pushes, the faster everyone gets. Its not so much an artificial thing as it is an economy of bandwidth.
And again, if you don't like sending full tilt, find a better client.
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
This approach has already been done with eMule and the like using ed2k:// style links. The downside is that you'll never have every browser that Joe User out there is using supporting something like this. Especially when a large part of the world is using IE and we all know just how innovative MS has been with that.
The approach that BitTorrent took of distributing the protocol information in a file is much more flexible. The option exists to name it file.zip.torrent* and as long as the proper mime types have been setup you can click on a link in any web browser and have your browser launch your preferred BT client to deal with that file.
My vote goes for the way it is now. I can use any web server and any web browser and still have the desired thing happen.
* There are very few compelling reason to zip something being distributed with BitTorrent but there are a quite a few reasons not to.
Encryption. It should generate a unique key pair for each socket it opens.