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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."

21 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Seasonal Traffic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Funny, I used to work for a porn site back in the bubble. Same thing, our numbers plummeted in the summer due to college students being off.

  2. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  3. It would be interesting... by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...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.

    1. Re:It would be interesting... by athakur999 · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's also worth noting that most people use BitTorrent for larger files like ISOs. So even though the traffic in bytes in higher, I'm willing to byte when it comes to "number of files transferred", Kazaa still has the lead.

      --
      "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
  4. Kids are such slackers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    We all know copyright infringement is a full time job. When I was a kid, we didn't have high speed internet... heck, we didn't even have any peer to peer programs. We had a BBS and Zmodem (or worse!) and we traded what we could! And we we liked it! 0 day all the way.

  5. Re:How can they accurately measure it? by Mondongo · · Score: 5, Informative

    I remember on a NYT interview that Bram Cohen said that all BitTorrent packets were not encrypted nor decentralized. All machines must connect to the tracker in order to download, so there ARE ways to measure it.

  6. Great, Slashdot.... by eril · · Score: 5, Funny

    ....keep on screwing us by pointing the man in the direction of the next big thing. If you guys would keep your mouths shut, we could have the man chasing after Kazaa for years to come....just like he's still bitching about Doom as the game those kids play that cause 'em to go postal (no pun intended).

  7. I'd assume BitTorrent is seasonal Too by yotaku · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "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."

    And BitTorrent traffic isn't seasonal?

  8. Re:How can they accurately measure it? by athakur999 · · Score: 5, Informative

    They installed their monitoring system at the ISPs, so they can just analyze packets going into and out of the ISP's network. Kazaa packets and BitTorrent packets will look different and be destined for different ports, so it wouldn't be too difficult for the software to tell the difference.

    --
    "People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
  9. Re:Well shit. by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I sure hope the RIAA doesn't look in Bittorrent's direction.

    You should know by now that they certainly will, if they could show that ftp was ever used for music piracy they'd go after ftp servers, too. You're concerned that cow actually cares where it takes a dump?

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  10. MPAA monitors BitTorrent traffic by unisol5 · · Score: 5, Informative

    MPAA monitors bittorent traffic from sites such as suprnova.org. They constantly send out letters to ISPs that explains which movie was donwloaded, and how the ISP should proceed with the client. So, downloading several movies from suprnova.org is not a good idea, because MPAA sees what everyone downloads. BitTorrent is in no way an anonymous download.

    1. Re:MPAA monitors BitTorrent traffic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
      I can confirm this...
      Anti-Piracy Operations
      PHONE: (818) 728 - 8127
      Email: MPAA@copyright.org <mailto:MPAA@copyright.org>

      Via Fax/Email

      RE: Unauthorized Use of Copyrighted Motion Pictures
      Reference#: [Withheld] (M)
      IP Address: [Withheld]
      Date of Infringement: [Withheld]

      The title(s) offered included:
      WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT

      Specifically, we have identified the following material as infringing:

      Infringement Detail:
      Infringing Work: WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT
      Filepath: Who Framed Roger Rabbit-avi(1).torrent/
      Filename: Who Framed Roger Rabbit.avi
      First Found: [Withheld]
      Last Found: [Withheld]
      Filesize: 748,644k
      IP Address: [Withheld]
      IP Port: 6885
      Network: BTPeers
      Protocol: BitTorrent

      Please contact us at the above listed address or by replying to this email should you have any questions. Kindly include the above noted Reference # in the subject line of all email correspondence.

      We thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Your prompt response is requested.

      Respectfully,
      Motion Picture Association of America
      There was more to the email, specifically steps we need to take and such, but it just made it way to long and boring.
  11. Disturbing by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Am I the only one who find this disturbing that a private company is allowed inside a number of major ISP's and allowed to monitor traffic to the level of determining which programs the users are running? Doesn't this mean that they've looked inside the packets, since most programs now allow the user's choice of ports to use, and P2P means you can't analyze traffic based on its destination IP address?

    If CacheLogic, then why not the RIAA?

    If monitoring, then why not outright blocking?

    Is that a slope, or a Slip-and-Slide[tm], ahead of me?

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  12. Re:How can they accurately measure it? by nkh · · Score: 5, Informative

    Everything is explained in the documentation if you ever need to write your own client (or alternatively, you could look at the Python source code which is very interesting for all the lazy CS students on holiday like me ;)

  13. same book, same cover, same price by radiumhahn · · Score: 5, Funny

    People, people, people... The RIAA and MPAA look to slashdot to find out which file sharing systems to target next.

  14. This just might be "the one"... by mcrbids · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I sure hope the RIAA doesn't look in Bittorrent's direction. There are a LOT of good legal uses for it. Moreso (in my mind) than KaZaA.

    Which is precisely why BT stands to legitimize open-structure p2p networks forever.

    Napster really had no legitimate use. I mean, did you *ever* download a song from Napster that wasn't a bootleg? Neither did anybody else.

    Kazaa also has very limited legitimate use. Other than renaming an encrypted tar file "Wild Donkeys do hot chicks.mpg" and using it as a backup vehicle, its use as a bona-fide legal distribution channel is pretty limited.

    However, BT is different. There are plenty of BT users distributing bootleg movies, songs, and pr0n, but there are also plenty of sites using it to distribute legitimate demos, patches, ISO images, and other large files.

    To think that BT allows somebody on a T1 to serve near an OC3 worth of bandwidth by distributing the load is just incredible. I don't think the industry would be willing to give up that advantage without a fight.

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  15. And in other news.... by scifience · · Score: 5, Funny

    New installations of spyware have dropped by 53%.

    "We just don't know what is going on" said the CEO of Claria.

  16. Re:Bit Torent by Peeet · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.
    That being said, wouldn't centralization (sp?) or merger of trackers create the one problem that other P2Ps have had? One target to attack? I think it's fine that BT is harder to find and nail down. That will help keep it as content-rich and un-**AA-able as possible.
  17. Who needs it by smclean · · Score: 5, Informative

    Who needs P2P software when people leave movies unprotected on their websites all the time? Click on any website on this google search, see what movies they have, and leech em.

    --

    "'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."

  18. Re:How can they accurately measure it? by vDave420 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.

    --
    The pig browse. With Google. Sigh is to the chicken. Chicken is fool. Giggle. The DailyWTF giggle.
  19. Re:How can they accurately measure it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    All of that is great Dave, but Bearshare has spyware in it and it doesn't seem to stay up for me for more than a few days at a time. Why do you expend so much effort only to wrap it in such a crap program?