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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.
The ultimate in spyware!!!
It's meant for legal downloads only, of course.
Then what's the point?
Palladium anyone?
Will it block access to MP3 files and a big list of other file-types/filename-extensions? Like MSN Messenger 7 does? But, like MSN Messenger, allow .WMA files? And do this under the guise of "security", alleging that MP3 is an "unsafe" format (though unlike WMAs, MP3s can't launch websites or "acquire licenses" and stuff like that)..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
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.)
It's illegal "wink wink nudge nudge" to copy Windows 3.1/98 but it helps spread windows users so that's a good thing.
It's illegal "wink wink nudge nudge" to use our faster service, but it helps support Microsoft so that's a good thing.
(It's not a bad idea, if it gets popular enough they can just roll it into Office and charge huge $$$ for it like their MSN Messenger 8...er... Microsoft Virtual Meeting...)
Sounds familiar. My car is meant for legal speeds only. Which is why the "55" is highlighted in a special color. On my 140mph speedometer.
So you will find your way to debian_iso.avalanche, download it, and find that it has transformed into a handy little PDF explaining why linux bites...
Spyware is found in Bit Torrent.
Microsoft Releases competitor to Bit Torrent.
Wow, I'm so glad they were so responsive to that problem. It only took them a couple of hours! That's amazing!
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
...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!
Mh.. Microsoft..
Will linux-images be declared illegal then, too?
...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 way the Register describes it, it appears that rather than sending out chunks of the actual file, it's sending out something similar to PAR chunks where once you have enough data, you can reconstruct the original file.
Futher, with a few chunks, you can calculate new chunks to send over to others, that way more people have access to more of pieces of the file.
Sounds interesting, I wonder if it'll be incorporated into the next version of BT.
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)
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I'm going to laugh my ass off when someone finds a trivial way to defeat whatever DRM MS puts into this to make sure the content is legal, and they get sued for helping distribute copywrited material.
Not laugh because they get sued, but laugh because I can almost guarentee that MS has the money and the lawyers to get off on the "we didn't host it" argument. And in doing so, they are big enough to set precident, and will thus free every other p2p software maker as well.
Of course, how damn amusing would it be if their P2P was used to share...illegal copies of MS products?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
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!
You made it man, you fucking lucky sunnofabitch. Microsoft wants to compete with your work, that's a badge of honor man, you're made now.
I'm trying to think if there is anything "Legal" I want to download.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
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.
Plus, how cool is it going to be to download Windows Server 2006 (or whatever it is) off a P2P network they created.
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No, .mp3 is dying, not dead, its right there with apple, BSD, and our civil rights.. (only 1 seems to be true..)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
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"
I read that in Singapore, the world capital for techo-fascist innovation, trucks would have flashing lights attached to poles on the side of the cab. When a sensor on the engine detected that the truck's speed ever went above 35MPH, the light would start blinking. Then the first police car to see it would issue them a speeding ticket.
If only half the things that I've heard about Singapore are remotely true, then this is one seriously weird place that reasonable people would be wise to avoid.
Yep. Apple's a goner. :-P
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
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.
Actually, if you read the actual research paper, you can see WHY it's faster. Basically, it combines two technologies. A bittorrent like protocol, and file parity generation (such as PAR). This allows you to generate additional pieces you didn't download and reduce the amount of code you need to download by about 20-30%.
This also solves "the last block" problem where everyone is waiting for the last block, since if you have 99% of the blocks you can generate what's left.
It's an interesting approach.
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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.
"Now with 20-30% more vapor!!!!"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And in this case, by creating a BitTorrent work-alike, they can draw up patent specs that INCLUDE BitTorrent's features, and then use that patent to shut down the servers. Time to start informing the Patent Offices!
Also, folks, make a note of the DATE of that paper describing Avalanche. One PTO rule that seems to me gets violated often is that there is supposed to be (or used to be) a one-year limit between the public release of an invention's description and the patent application. After more than a year, it's too late to apply. How many existing dubious patents were applied-for too late and could be overturned on those grounds?
This also solves "the last block" problem where everyone is waiting for the last block, since if you have 99% of the blocks you can generate what's left.
.PARs don't require any less data to be downloaded, it's just that you can substitute parity data for the original data, then do whatever transformation on that to get the original data back. If the file you're trying to get it 1GB, you're still going to need to download 1GB, whether it's 100% original data, 80/20, or anywhere in between.
Not really, it just (possibly) changes the nature of the last block.
The only thing this really helps is if clients prioritize the parity data and then all seeds disappear, although it's of very limited use there as well, since the data shared between the remaining peers still needs to total 100% of the file size.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Every time someone asks you for a block, you send them a new block, which is a random linear combination of all the blocks you have. This new block will almost always be useful to them. As soon as you get n blocks, where n is the number of blocks in the original file, you can reconstruct the original file. So bandwidth is never wasted sending a block the long way when the short way would do - you squeeze the maximum work from every hop.
The really interesting bit is right at the end, almost as an aside:
"In Avalance we use special sets of secure hash functions that survive network coding operations and consume very little computational resources"
So even though each block is novel, they have a way for the receiver to ensure that it's a real piece of the puzzle. That's a hard problem indeed! So why isn't the solution part of the paper? Are they holding off from publishing that until the patent comes through?
Xenu loves you!
Let's say that you have a bunch of people using BitTorrent. The only people who have segment 499 are behind slow modems. But lots of people want those.
If there's a rare part, you only need one downloader with a decent upstream to break the bottleneck. By the rarest-first scheduling algorithm used in both BitTorrent and eMule, the rarity of segment 499 would have long ago prompted some user with broadband to go get segment 499 from the dial-up user and then start seeding it out to other downloaders, quickly remedying the situation. Besides, with the "penis size varies directly with share ratio" mentality in many BT communities, there will still be quite a few complete seeds once demand for the file builds up.
I don't know if its BS. I actually read this paper last week as network coding is an area related to my field of study and it seems pretty legitimate. The paper actually claims much larger increases compared to uncoded transfers in cases such as networks made predominately of slow nodes with infrequent well-connected nodes.
The technique is actually pretty neat. They form a set of linear equations of the form:
ax_5 + bx_4 + cx_3 + dx_2 + ex_1 = g
where a,b,c,d,e,f are chosen randomly and x_n represents the data to transmit. They then send the coefficients and result a,b,c,d,e,f,g to other nodes.
With a block size of n, you typically need n sets of such coefficients (assuming they're linearly independent) to recover the original data.
This basically makes the rarest block problems of bittorrent irrelevant assuming the server has seeded a little more than n data blocks.
I read the paper too! They state 2-3 times speedup over BitTorrent for badly connected networks.
Recovering the original file is tricker than it looks though...
They state that they have to invert a matrix of O(nblocks^2) to recover the original file. This takes O(nblocks^3) operations. Since there is only 1 bit per entry that will fit into memory and won't be a problem. There are plenty of ways to invert matrices faster than O(nblocks^3) too.
They then have to undo the linear equations which is an O(nblocks^2) operation. However each of those blocks is a block of the original file. If you have a 4GB file (say) broken up into 4,000 1MB blocks, you'll need to do 16,000,000 x 1 MB operations, ie 16,000,000,000,000 bytes of operations which takes a while even at L1 cache speed! If you haven't got 4GB of ram, thats going to cause an awful lot of disk IO
I guess you'd allocate the largest buffer you can, and run through the file file_size / buffer_size times. Since file_size / buffer_size probably isn't huge 10 or so (4 GB / 400 MB say), then you'll only have to do 40GB of IO to tidy up at the end. With a 40 MB/s disk that should take 15 mins or so. Not insignificant, but quicker than network IO probably!
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