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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."
I've been writing extensively on Corante about RSS + BitTorrent, which I call "Broadcatching" here: Broadcatching Archives See, for example, RSS + BitTorrent Roundup - Broadcatching Isn't MS Active Channels and First Broadcatching App Available! (And Related News).
BitTorrent is basically another p2p service, except it's different (yes, i'm trying to be very specific here)
It allows for people to take advantage of bandwith by downloding bits of a large file from different users hosting a 'torrent.' At the end, all these pieces are put together. Yes, it is pretty good.
...combining RSS and torrents is not going to solve the problem. This is the most complicated solution to a non-problem that I've seen since someone paid me to design something.
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
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.
The problem with bittorrent is that a lot of users disconnect as soon as their download is finished. Won't this be an even bigger problem with game downloads (specifically multiplayer games) since even if the users knows they should stay connected afterwards, they might not since it would lag their game?
Many ISPs and college campuses block P2P ports, BitTorrent included. I'm not sure that 'news' is a compelling enough reason to have many (or any) of them change their policies.
Trolling is a art,
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.
This sounds like a wonderful melding of two current technologies...
However, remember when cable gained enough steam to warrant not one but many 24hr cable news networks? We are now blessed with an overabundance of crappy sensationalist "reporting". I do NOT want cnn/msnbc/fuxnews/etc. landing on my HD.
If an individual set up a feed for say, a favorite game or movie alone, I would subscribe. But most webpages I read, I gloss over quickly then am done with.
If I, and everyone else had subscribtions to all of the media content of their favorite websites delivered autonomously, the majority of it getting thrown out quickly...
think of the bandwith, the poor helpless bandwith, won't somebody please think of the child., er bandwidth!?
...but in that case, you're no worse off than before. And realistically, if there's some huge download I'll usually just start it before I head to bed. Of course, if you're sitting there counting down the seconds until it's done, that's different...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No new browser protocol is needed.
The technology is already available at http://freecache.org/ [from the peeps @ archive.org]
I don't why many others have jumped on the bandwagon yet.
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?
Wow! You're right, with one smallish exception:
Please note that you cannot submit a whole site to FreeCache as in http://freecache.org/http://www.rocklobsters.com/ This will not work as only index.html will be cached. You have to prefix every item that you want to have cached seperately.
Using the last THG article as an example, either the Slashdot story would need to point to each page individually via freecache redirection or Tom's Hardware would need to do it.
Not quite as transparent as incorporating BitTorrent into the browser.
Please provide proof that BitTorrent is 'based' on KaZaA sourcecode. Of course, you can't.
:)
:)
I do know that Bram talked with the authors of Furthur, an open-source JAVA P2P for legal content. A few members of the Furthur dev team also work for a company that once did buisness with Sharman Networks, so if anything, KaZaA source may be based on already GPL-ed software... but don't tell anyone that
Of course, all modern P2P is 'based' on Napster or Gnutella (take your pick), so it's all a mute point anyway
The previous poster is incorrect. BitTorrent has nothing to do with Kazaa (0 lines of code in common).
BitTorrent is open source (MIT license) and written in Python.
Kazaa is closed source, spyware-ridden dreck that was probably written in C++.
Bittorrent protocol has nothing in common with the protocol used by Kazaa (FastTrack). Even their basic P2P topologies are different.
Also, Kazaa is in trouble not for it's protocol, but for running servers that allow piracy, it's just in Kazaa's case one automatically means the other, since the protocol is closed source. Of course, Bittorrent trackers that host pirated material are also susceptable to such troubles - but this has nothing to do with Bittorrent protocol itself.
Uh, yes...
Here, here, and here.You can already subscribe to SuprNova feeds right here. Half way down.
???
Sorry if I seem like I'm trolling but these questions will be asked at some point
-Phil
Shoot questions, first ask later...
Suprnova is pretty much the major culprit in associating Bittorrent with illegal file trading. Full movies, warez, etc make up the bulk of their content. It's making things difficult for legit uses of Bittorrent, of there are many. Beware if you download anything off Suprnova, the RIAA and MPAA are watching those torrents and gathering some nice logs of IP addresses and times. Remember that by participating in a Bittorrent you are uploading.
Too many good uses for Bittorrent to let the warez kiddies spoil it for us.
...
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?
This problem is easily addressed with multicasting. All a server need do is send a multicast datagram to notify all RSS syndicators that the RSS document has been updated, at which time the syndicators can fetch the new document.
BT is non-linear as you suggest. The n'th person gets the n'th chunk. This still allows for (randomly-caused) relative scarcity of certain chunks (although they are not the last ones!), and that is the problem you notice up around 98%.
No, seriously, try playing a partially complete BT download of an AVI with a player that doesn't look for the index (mplayer, DivX, etc.). The file is missing random chunks, not the end.
The previous sig has been removed due to
A million years ago (1998?) Wired published a whole edition on Push as the Next Big Thing. It was the first time I was really aware of them being totally wrong. Or perhaps just a bit ahead of their time.
While I think this is a neater solution, there is another product that does exactly the same thing, allow you to subscribe to channels and received pushed content via incentive compatible (you get faster speeds if you upload more) swarms.
It's called kast.
The way I figure it, with this bittorrent-RSS combination and a slight modification of torrent watching sites like animesuki we will essentially have a fansubbed anime online tivo at our disposal. Actually, you could have probably done that even without RSS, though it does simplify matters. The only limitations are our bandwidth and hard drives. Which actually are pretty limiting these days, especially with p2p being frequently capped.
Hell, you could modify an actual TiVo with broadband for exactly this sort of thing, and it needn't be limited solely to anime either. I'm sure it'll be popular with overseas watchers of American TV as well.
The international media and internet companies need to face facts and realize that Video On Demand is a reality and is already extremely popular - but that the shows people are demanding are not the ones the companies have been providing through their own limited, misfocused, and (most importantly) redundant services. Until we see simultaneous worldwide release of all media (including DVDs released simultaneously with the theatrical release) they will find themselves losing what should have been their easiest sales - those to impatiently eager fans.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
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.
Realistically speaking, the biggest problem with Bittorrent is seeding. I think this is how bittorrent works:
.torrent file generated .torrent file is uploaded to a tracker .torrent from the tracker .torrent file, which causes the the bittorrent client asks the tracker for the machines/locations of the seeds and people downloading the file(s) pointed to by the .torrent
.torrent goes missing, the file is inaccessible. If the tracker goes away, the file is inaccessible.
* a file is seeded, and a
* that
* clients who want to download the file download the
* the user opens the
* the client downloads various chunks of the files from both the seeds and the other downloaders
The more people download a file, the better bittorrent is able to spread the bandwidth.
The downside is that if a file isn't seeded, it's no longer available. If a
Bittorrent's main problem right now, which is a client problem, is its upstream usage can easily swamp a home connection. That's just dumb client design.
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.
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!
If I take a knife and I cut someone up with it. Does that mean that somehow you are now going to be unable to go use the knife for something you want/need to?
Honestly, if the only thing on this planet that anyone used bittorrent for was "warez", *GASP* you could still set up torrents for legal files and have all your buddies download them.
If BT becomes illegal at some point, then we all are going to have a lot more to worry about then the fact that we can't get ahold of our warez.
./revolution