BitTorrent Beats Kazaa In Traffic Numbers

prostoalex writes "CacheLogic attempted to measure the peer-to-peer network traffic by installing their network monitoring tools in data centers of large ISPs. The results are in, and Bram Cohen's BitTorrent overtook Kazaa's FastTrack network. BitTorrent traffic amounted to 53% of all peer-to-peer traffic, according to CacheLogic. It's worth noting, though, that Kazaa traffic is highly seasonal, as a lot of high-schoolers and college students are simply on vacation this time of year."

Comments

How can they accurately measure it?

[hey]

I file trading is peer-to-peer (decentralized) how can some central "authority" know what's going on?

Re:How can they accurately measure it?

[vDave420]

I file trading is peer-to-peer (decentralized) how can some central "authority" know what's going on?

Glad you asked.

The company I work for, FreePeers Inc, faced this same problem about 2 years ago.

At that time, I invented a statistics gathering scheme that took full advantage of the decentralized nature of p2p networks.

Previously, the client/server scheme was superimposed upon networks (see Limewire's network crawler, for instance, which contacts every node it can to count them).

My invention takes advantage of the nature of the network itself as a routing/aggregation tool to gather statistics for me,and let the results "ebb" thier way to our collector.

See the public results here.

Interesting to note is that we are running our aggregator node on a cable modem, and yet still get "round trip times" for measuring stats on the whole network of 5 minutes. This could even be reduced to about 2 minutes for our current network size.

In any case, the problem you describe (central counting of decentralized p2p info, such as network count or bytes transferred in a given time) is solved, and our company is awaiting a patent on it.

It does work well. We are running the aggregator on a 256Kbps cable modem (as I said above) but the BW usage is so rediculously low that it could be run on a dialup 56k modem, if only we had any in our office! With it we can accurately collect lots of good statistics about our network, and update it every 5 mins.

Each of those graphs in the linked to page is clickable, and will show more details.

-dave-

Use BearShare for all your p2p needs.

Re:How can they accurately measure it?

[jarich]

Use BearShare for all your p2p needs.

Doesn't bearshare still have spyware embedded?

From a quick google search

http://www.oit.duke.edu/ats/support/spyware/bearsh are.html

It would be interesting...

[AKAImBatman]

...if someone could plot legit traffic against "illegal" traffic. My guess is that BitTorrent would account for a much higher percentage of legitimate file traffic as pretty much anyone who has a large file (e.g. Linux Distros) uses BitTorrent to distribute it.

Bit Torent

[trotski]

No surprises here, bit torrent is far supperior to Kazaa in almost every way.

The only thing that needs to be improved with bit torrent is a merger of all the small tracker sites into one big site where you can hook on to any torrent out there. Suprnova.org is getting there but still, more momentum needs to be developed.

That being said, the best thing about the bit torrent technology is that it's almost impossible for the RIAA to control it. The cat is out of the bag and theres no way it will be pushed back in.

Direct Connect?

[Epistax]

I've never seen direct connect mentioned on any of these studies or warnings. Even when my school, RIT, got warned and passed the warnings on to the students, they only complained about Kazaa and not direct connect, despite the fact that it is much larger on campus. Is there some big thing about Kazaa that I'm missing? No matter how rare the item is that I'm looking for, I'm sure to find several people that have it. I've never seen a reason to use anything else (yet).

P2P, Bit Torrent, Kazaa, DC++, Open Source

[Dark-Helmet]

think p2p is here to stay, and there are still features that need to be put in place univerally before it's mature, and all the various p2p flavors are comparable.

The various bits are there scattered across different p2p networks. IMNSHO, all p2p networks/clients ought to have:

-Swarming (as defined/used in BitTorrent)
-Privacy/anonymity (perhaps as much as in Freenet)
-Good searching (Kazaa, Napster, those types. With room for improvement all around)
-Open-source clients with no ads/spyware
-Decentralized/self-organizing networks (no central point of failure, or at least minimal)
-Browser/web server hooks to autoswarm web content (there ought to be bittorrent:// links)

Pardon my BitTorrent bias. I moderate the bittorrent_help mailing list, so I have more exposure to that.

All these features should someday be pushed into numerous language libraries, so that they become ubiquitous.

P2P vs direct download??

[Tojosan]

Am I the only individual here on Slashdot that isn't using a P2P client on a regular basis????????

I've never been unable to get a demo I wanted from a legitimate source.

I don't download pirate videos or music.

I've d/l linux distros direct or at distro sites with no problem.

So, in a short answer, why is using a P2P client sooo much better? From the consumer side that is?

I've read the info at the Bittorrent site.

And just to ask my fellow Sd folks...how safe is it?

Thanks and be well!