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."

Comments

Microsoft Wants Your First Born

[Anonymous Coward]

It's meant for legal downloads only, of course.

Well BitTorrent is meant for legal downloads too, but that doesn't mean a whole lot.

Naturally, Microsoft is very keen to stress that this technology should be used for distributing legitimate content. It even put that in italics in the press material.

Oh, never mind, I didn't realize they put it in ITALICS, that is sure to stop piracy dead in it's tracks.

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.

Re:Microsoft Wants Your First Born

[Rei]

On the contrary, I think it will not destroy it but legitimize it. Now people can say "Even Microsoft is developing P2P!". Plus, with a big backer like MS behind it, we might start to see pressure for more incorporation of P2P into other arenas - for example, a smoother mix between P2P content serving and conventional web serving, with seamless browser support. Microsoft loves tie-ins, after all, even if the products that they tie together are inferior to other products on the market.

Re:Microsoft Wants Your First Born

[shadowmatter]

Microsoft Research has been working on efficient, decentralized, and fault-tolerant P2P systems since 2001. See the paper about their DHT (Distributed Hash Table) called Pastry, which was co-authored with Rice and is still under active development there. Note that the Kademlia DHT, which followed roughly a year later and is now used in a variety of P2P networks (eMule, the new decentralized BitTorrent network, etc.) employs a variant of Pastry's routing algorithm of longest prefix matching.

They still have quite a presence if you look through recent NSDI or IPTPS conferences. Note that this paper is for IEEE INFOCOM, which is big.

- shadowmatter

Re:Microsoft Wants Your First Born

[bman08]

I'm more concerned about the embrace and extend issue. Maybe they see piracy as the next killer app for windows and want to lock us all in with their super kewl proprietary p2p app. It's not going to work. Piracy and Porn drive P2P communities to critical mass. If nobody's using this thing, it's not going to be that fast, is it?

Re:Microsoft Wants Your First Born

[shadowmatter]

Why do you need to guess what it's about when it's all there in the paper linked to by the article? I've skimmed it, gotten the gist of it, and I think their technique is quite clever. And the paper seems to give full details, so anyone can implement it.

Basically, similar coding schemes make scheduling of data in a swarm easier (so there's no choking/unchoking a la BitTorrent, data just flows) and minimize the risk of a file piece being owned by only one peer (if he leaves, downloading is over). These encoding schemes, through linear combinations of pieces using XOR, combat this (I'm generalizing here). The most attractive, I think, are Rateless and Raptor codes, which have similar performance. (Incidentally, the former was developed by Petar Maymounkov, who was actually one of the inventors of Kademlia.)

Anyway, a few months ago I read the Rateless paper, and thought "Gee, I should code this and release it under the GPL... It would be great for P2P apps!" But soon after I finished its implementation, I discovered that all the ideas authored in the Rateless paper were actually covered by patents of Digital Fountain, meaning that Petar's company, Rateless, had to develop a different, proprietary coding mechanism that is outside the patents of DF, and I can't release my code!

So, getting back to my original point, the paper says, "Network coding can be seen as an extension or generalization of the Digital Fountain approach since both the server and the end-system nodes perform information encoding." Meaning that it might not be covered by DF's patents, and thus should be welcomed by the P2P community, and not immediately disregarded blindly by prejudice. I mean, if it's a 20% improvement, why not give it a chance, huh?

- shadowmatter

point?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's meant for legal downloads only, of course.

Then what's the point?

Question is..

[wfberg]

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)..

Legal Downloads only.

[soupdevil]

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.

Linux distros

[Ochu]

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...

Re:Linux distros

[mbbac]

You trolls really get under my skin. You know this is Microsoft we're talking about, yet you still deliberately misinform people about obvious facts.

Microsoft Avalanche will use a file name like debian_iso.ava.

For those who ask why

[NardofDoom]

Microsoft is developing P2P technology because their bandwidth bill from people downloading patches is threatening their profitability!

Ha!

Can we stop...

[Anonymous Coward]

...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.

Distributed PAR2

[Ececheira]

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.

Re:Distributed PAR2

[1000StonedMonkeys]

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.

Re:Distributed PAR2

[ChadN]

A simple example for those reading who don't understand, then some follow up comments:

Say I have bits 'a' and 'b', that other people want.

I could sent bit 'a', then bit 'b' to receiver FOO, who can pass them on to others. However, if I send bit 'a' first, and others want 'b', they have to wait.

Now, instead of transmitting to FOO bit 'a' then bit 'b', I send to FOO ('a' XOR 'b') first, then either bit 'a' or bit 'b'. I'll end up sending FOO the same amount of information (assuming the order is specified in the protocol itself).

BUT, and here's the cool part. If someone already has 'a', they can get ('a' XOR 'b') from you, and complete their set of data (bits 'a' and 'b'). Furthermore, if someone already has 'b', they also get ('a' XOR 'b') from you, and complete their set. So, by only downloading 1 bit, instead of 2, you can complete the set for others who already have one or the other bits.

Now, in practice it'll get a lot more complicated, and the method presented in the paper is not exactly like I describe, but the idea is that you can send data to help people complete their data sets, even though you yourself do not yet have the actual uncomputed data. Instead, you have a computed function of the data, which others can use immediately, and from which you can reconstruct the actual data later when you have more information.

The practical upshot is that the computed data is more valuable to other peers than the uncomputed data, as they may be able to use it to complete their data set, rather than wait for the remainder of the uncomputed data.

So, in reference to your comments, it may not be so much more practical to any one receiver; they still need to wait for all the data, in either computed or uncomputed form. But, for the network as a whole, it means that each receiver has many more options from which to download and compute each chunk, and thus make available to others. It is not hard to imagine that this can benefit the overall throughput of the network (which the authors of the paper claim).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I want Windows

[robertjw]

Plus, how cool is it going to be to download Windows Server 2006 (or whatever it is) off a P2P network they created.

Re:Better? No.

[QuantumRiff]

No, .mp3 is dying, not dead, its right there with apple, BSD, and our civil rights.. (only 1 seems to be true..)

Why.teh. Fuck?!!!!

[Thud457]

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!!!!

Re:Why.teh. Fuck?!!!!

[empaler]

I think you misread this part:

While they're (Microsoft) world renowned for not playing nice with others?!!! Get the fuck out!!!! You can't have it both ways Microsoft!!!!

He meant that since MS are egomaniac bastards who do not share, they should not expect anyone else to behave differently. (Thud457, correct me if I misinterpreted, and if so, I apologize for putting words into your mouth)

Yes, Microsoft wants to destroy competition

[VernonNemitz]

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?