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BitTorrent Beefs Up Network Capabilities

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the defeating-the-purpose dept.

1sockchuck writes "BitTorrent Inc. is boosting its network capacity as it prepares to become a centralized hub for legal video content. In May, BitTorrent announced a deal with Warner Brothers to distribute its TV and movie content via the BT platform. It has now lined up IP transit for streaming videos at one gigabit per second."

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  1. Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let's see, even at a low average bitrate of 2mbps, that would only be able to stream to 500 people simultaneously (then w/ the added capacity bittorrent gives, you will get a little more capacity, but even 500 people uploading at 20KB/s only gives you roughly 1/10th extra capacity.

    Do you know how bittorrent works? The maximum theoretical download speed is the seed speed, regardless of the number of downloaders. With 1 Gbit/s, you can stream 500 different torrents at 2mbps to a any number of people (neglecting tracker bandwidth, as it were). That's assuming that they're all uploading at the same speed that they're downloading.

    If they're uploading significantly slower than they're downloading, yes, the swarm speed will go down. However any intelligent seed will cut your download speed correspondingly. That's how bittorrent works.