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Microsoft Wants P2P Avalanche to Crush BitTorrent
pacopico writes "Microsoft seems to think it can be the better Bittorrent. You know faster and more well-behaved. The Register has a story on the P2P work being done by Microsoft's researchers in the UK. Redmond reckons its "Avalanche" technology will be 20 to 30 percent faster than BitTorrent. It's meant for legal downloads only, of course."
Besides BitTorrent might not be the most efficient P2P system any more, but it is one of the most widely used. I guess this is what Microsoft does best, copy other technology, add a little to it, then destroy it.
By "more well-behaved" they, of course, mean "DRM capable"... Innovation is taking everyone else's great ideas and adding "DRM capable" to the name.
(Yes, I know there is a bit more to their proposal.)
What kind of legal torrent would you want to download that goes 20-30% faster?
I'll gladly use it. Show me the source code first. How do I know there is no RIAA/MPAA spyware in it.
...You will be assimilated.
Microsoft has always been about the assimilation of the technology of other companies...that in itself is no surprise. But between their music subscription service, their new image editing program, and now this, they've fired warning shots across the bows of three different types of applications, all in the space of a week and a half.
Is this just a momentary flurry, or can we expect this escalation to continue?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Ha!
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
...the knee-jerk reactions that this story will elicit? The original post really doesn't do TFA justice.
This is basically an improvement to the BitTorrent protocol that will overcome scheduling difficulties that really do exist today (I need piece X, but the person who has it is busy uploading piece Y).
What it is NOT:
1.) A Microsoft-proprietary application (at least nor yet).
2.) A production application that only runs on Windows.
3.) In any way (in theory, at least) tied to DRM'ing anything.
4.) A way for Microsoft to track your downloading.
Basically, Microsoft has suggested a way to make BitTorrent-like downloads better. Microsoft! Making P2P downloads of large files easier! Really!
This isn't MS search trying to overtake google, or some such. MS isn't trying to own the P2P market (at least not yet). They're suggesting improvements, and if you read TFA, the improvements make sense.
This is a Good Thing. Yeah, I'm suprised it came from M$ too.
The scary thing is that if you are a windows user, what's the stop M$ from requiring any updates and patches to come through this new P2P system, thus making it almost mandatory to install it on your system if you ever want to update your OS. Microsoft doesn't want to compete, they want to force.
The Technomancer
"Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active."-
The open source community has really been the driving force behind technolgoies like BitTorrent. Sure, obviously other applications have good legitimate uses for BitTorrent-like technologies too, but the technology-savvy crowd are really the people who are using things like BitTorrent... whether it's for slackware images, or anime episodes :) With a closed-source solution from MS, I'd be shocked if it gained a huge following. The momentum from the tech crowd just wouldn't be there.
I store my recipes online (the way nature intended)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This reminds me of when Microsoft wanted to crush MP3, and came out with a highly proprietary format that nobody wanted to use for many reasons, one of which being the ability for the software to curb the usage of copyrighted media. I'm not advocating piracy, but if you're already using a tool that does what you want, and is free, and is... (did I mention it was free?) why switch?
Why should users be expected to dump their already-in-place tools and formats for a probably-proprietary version made by microsoft? Its no secret that MS wants to make money, so if you have a choice of a relatively stable and free version, or a new version by microsoft, which would you pick?
And they said zombies weren't real!
Actually, that could be an interesting concept; they could be using this as a way to "lease" software to people. Think about it; you lease a copy of MS Office instead of buying it, and when you run the .lnk file in the Start menu, it torrents parts of the app as needed, or just license files, to get itself running.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
This would save quite a lot of $ in servers hardware for distributing windows updates.
Another solution would be to make less security holes, of course.
Speaking of which, I wonder how many of them will be in this little "innovation"...
1's and 0's should be free.
Here's the thing. If you have a number of par files and all of the original segments, then there are many more pieces you could potentially download. If you need to download 500 of 500 segments, the number of sources you can download from begins to dwindle as you get on towards 400 or 450 pieces (I'm just making up these numbers, but you get the point). If instead, you need to download 500 of 1500 segments, chances are there won't be a scarcity of segments even at 499.
IMHO, this is actually a really good idea, since I for one would take the added CPU overhead of processing parity files in return for more sources to download from. I've got spare CPU cycles anyway.
Here's where I call BS: "20-30% faster."
I don't know. I wouldn't underestimate the MS marketing beast. They've done better before.
Let's say, they tell their users it will be "faster". Everybody knows MS users are idiots. With the new firewall in SP2, there's no way more than 20% of them know how to open a port for bittorrent anyways. Of that, I'd bet even less are motivated to do it all the time. So, bittorrent is either worthless or slow for 80% of Microsoft users.
Bam! In comes the Microsoft "solution": integrate bittorrent into their "OS". The client automatically gets a port opened up whenever it's used. Hordes of idiots go running around saying "it's faster". Add in a few more integration techniques, and it may very well be faster (ie. bittorrent is crippled).
Oh, and also, the whole thing is funded by the RIAA. MS bittorrent checks all the shared files for piracy and/or requires DRM. Step, umm, five? Profit.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
How about the fact the current MS windows update is real slow because it is client-server and there are always going to be hundreds of millions of clients all wanting the same damn thing at the same damn time.
The patches ain't getting smaller either.
This is exactly the sort of problem BT was built to solve.
Even if they restrict it to only MS authorised updates it might still be a big win for them and, arguably, Joe windows user.
On the other hand, if they screw up on whatever verification they put in (and they haven't exactly got a good track record on crypto implementations) then you've got virus heaven...
Would I want to use the bandwith I paid for so other Windoze lusers can leech off the copy of Longhorn Service Pack 3 that I downloaded? Microsoft wants me to take part in some damn hippy-dippy bandwith commune? While they're world renowned for not playing nice with others?!!! Get the fuck out!!!! You can't have it both ways Microsoft!!!!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This paper is from some researchers who have nothing to do with Microsoft's products. MS may not ever use this technology in any product. And if MS does use Avalanche for something, it will probably be buried away inside some other application (like Windows Update) instead of a standalone app.
When you use an app that wants to accept inbound traffic, Windows Firewall asks if that's okay and automatically opens the port if it is, so you don't need to know how to open a port.
How soon till this gets some nasty exploit?
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.