Bram Cohen's Response to Microsoft's Avalanche

An anonymous reader writes "Bram Cohen has reduced Microsoft's proposed file-sharing application--codenamed Avalanche--to vaporware, dubbing its paper on the subject as "complete garbage". "I'd like to clarify that Avalanche is vapourware," Cohen said. "It isn't a product which you can use or test with, it's a bunch of proposed algorithms. There isn't even a fleshed-out network protocol. The 'experiments' they've done are simulations.""

Comments

Avalanche

[Dink Paisy]

It's not even a code name. Avalanche is an academic research product coming out of Microsoft's research organization. I guess there are not plans at Microsoft to make Avalanche into a product. If it were ever released, there is a decent chance it would be shared source, since researchers tend to like that kind of thing.

But, yeah, like he said. Avalanche isn't supposed to take over the world. It isn't a product, and it doesn't exist in source code form.

Who?

[pr0nbot]

That's Bram Cohen, author of Bittorrent.

Re:Pointless Article

[spellraiser]

Another pointless article. Troll me, but the fact is that this is addressing something that is behind MS's closed doors.

Ah, you mean like this research paper that Cohen is criticizing.

Or perhaps you are referring to these completely unfounded claims (from TFA):

The developer said Microsoft had completely misunderstood the way BitTorrent operated. The paper quotes "the tit-for-tat approach used in the BitTorrent network" as an inspiration for parts of Avalanche's own operation. Under the approach, a peer-to-peer client will not upload any content to another client unless it has also received a certain amount of content in return.

Cohen said, however, this was a waste of time and had been discarded long ago.

"I can't fathom how they came up with this," he wrote. "Researching either the source code or the documentation on the BitTorrent Web site would have shown that the real choking algorithms work nothing like this."

"Either they just heard 'tit-for-tat' and just made this up, or they for some odd reason dredged up BitTorrent 1.0 and read the source of that." BitTorrent is currently at version 4.0.2.

Cohen went on to say that the 'tit-for-tat' approach was used when BitTorrent was still being developed, but that the first real-world test with only six connected machines showed that it did not work well.

Yup, that's a guy bashing closed doors alright.

fwqcwq

[rbarreira]

Yeah, I know most of the posts here are bashing Cohen for bashing microsoft (and I was agreeing with them until I decided to RTFA - the summary is not a good one). Bram isn't randomly attacking them for having a vaporware product, he is specifically pointing out the many mistakes that they make in their paper, where they compare Bittorrent to their proposed algorithms. It seems that they made too many mistakes to make their research paper valid, so their simulations are crap... RTFA!

Re:Why The Rant?

[Jerf]

Skip the article, read the blog entry. First line:

A bunch of people have been pestering me about Avalanche recently, so I'll comment on it.

A perfectly reasonable reason to discuss something. It isn't Bram that posted this to Slashdot.

I think he's trying to point out to the "bunch of people" that at the moment, Microsoft isn't exactly shipping the BitTorrent killer that he's somehow "got" to respond to. He might get less dismissive if they ship something that obviously works.... or if people didn't pester him.

(I've seen several people comment that Bram's "arrogant"; it's nothing to the arrogance of assuming they can force him to comment on something, or the arrogance of assuming that his essay was written straight for them, or the arrogance of saying since they don't like it it shouldn't have been written. This is just an addenda so I don't have to post again, not directed at CleverNickedName.)

It's not MS bashing!

[Limburgher]

Bram read a paper on a topic he actually knows something about, and critiqued it. It's not like he did this sight unseen and is just venting sour grapes because the big bad corporation is trying to steal his thunder. He actually judged MS's proposed software on the available merits, and found it deeply wanting. He also goes to point out a few minor strengths. Yes, all in all he relegates Avalanche to the junk heap, but he did so based on a surprisingly dispassionate evaluation.

So, lay off! :)

Have you even read Cohen's article?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just took a look at Cohen's article and he responds exactly to that proposal and elaborates why it does no good and can actually be bad.

RTFA

Re:And there it is!

[MorningDew76]

Try using a legitamite source for BT.. such as bt.etree.org (and i don't care if you think that music sucks)

you will find that the popular torrents on there FLY, and that's because of the mentality of the userbase. they like to share, and don't hop off a torrent right when it's done. there is nothing illegal about it, thus no fear of the man knocking down your door. i've left seeds on there for months.

so.. if you are getting crappy speeds, i'd recommend finding yourself a better group of people to swarm your files with. bashing on BT isn't going to solve your problems, and niether is a piece of vaporware from microsoft

Re:bad research, too

[nonlnear]

Actually, Avalanche is a FEC method. The advantage of Avalanche over other FEC methods is that the server doesn't have to do all the coding. Hence the term `network coding'.

While the paper didn't worry too much about comparing Avalanche to other FEC methods, the comparison seems moot, as server coded FEC methods seem obviously impractical for individuals wanting to seed data from a humble PC. Reliving the seeder of the burden of coding seems an obvious enough differecne that Avalanche and other FEC methods are not nearly as apples to apples as comparing to Bittorrent. (Because Bittorrent is actually practical for Joe Celeron-user to seed right from home.)

Implementation may end up being harder, as it will be a lot harder to combat poisoned blocks in Avalanche. I think the authors were too optimistic about this issue.