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

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!

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! :)

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