Faster Feeds Using FeedTree Peer-To-Peer

dsandler writes "Researchers at Rice University have just released version 0.7 of FeedTree, a peer-to-peer system for distributing Web feeds faster. Instead of polling feeds independently, FeedTree users cooperate to share news updates using multicast in Pastry, a scalable p2p overlay network. FeedTree reduces the update delay for existing RSS and Atom feeds to a few minutes without putting extra stress on the webserver (anyone who's ever been temporarily banned by Slashdot's RSS feed knows this is a real concern). Feed publishers can also choose to push digitally signed updates for immediate, tamper-proof delivery to subscribers. The client software (download) runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows, and works with any desktop feed reader."

Comments

Re:Why?

[idonthack]

It's not "just another p2p", it's a p2p specifically for distributing newsfeeds. Bittorrent doesn't really work to well for that because it doesn't have the infrastructure and downloading the real feed would be easier than downloading the torrent first. This software bypasses any user interaction and grabs it off its established network.