Wired Interviews Bram Cohen, Creator of BitTorrent

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Thursday January 6, 2005 @05:20AM from the bit-o'-honey dept.

ZP-Blight writes "Wired has posted an in-depth five page interview with Bram Cohen, the creator of the popular Peer-2-Peer software, BitTorrent."

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Cohen didn't invent multi-source downloading by Sanity · 2005-01-06 05:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

The article seems to imply that Cohen invented multi-source downloading, for example:
Cohen realized that chopping up a file and handing out the pieces to several uploaders would really speed things up. He sketched out a protocol: To download that copy of Meet the Fokkers, a user's computer sniffs around for others online who have pieces of the movie. Then it downloads a chunk from several of them simultaneously. Many hands make light work, so the file arrives dozens of times faster than normal.
Yet this feature has existed in other P2P applications for years.
Personally I think BitTorrent's core advantage over other file sharing technologies is also its core architectural weakness, namely its centralised nature. This allows an editorial filter on content made available through BitTorrent, yet also makes a juicy legal target. Until recently BitTorrent's obscurity has protected it, but clearly this is no-longer the case.
(Disclaimer: I am working on some free software that is competitive with BitTorrent)
Re:WJR 760 by bwindle2 · 2005-01-06 05:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

Maybe his autism has something to do with that? "Cohen in fact has Asperger's syndrome, a condition on the mild end of the autism spectrum that gives him almost superhuman powers of concentration but can make it difficult for him to relate to other people"