BitTorrent Beefs Up Network Capabilities

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."

Comments

Now who will I choose...

[Super Dave Osbourne]

Its hard, to go with the legal BT or the illegal T, somehow like iTunes success we will see the studios wise up and fight the legality battle on the convenience front. Folks are willing to pay, if convenient and easy. Torrents are super fast if you have pipe, and pipe is what BT is going to offer. I'm for one lining up to purchase pay per view streaming with BT when it comes, until then, NetFlix has my butt in a sling.

pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[mr_stinky_britches]

With video that will get chewed through rather quickly. 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. Punish me and mod me down, but I really must inquire.. When did a company signing up for a gigabit line become slashdot worthy? :/

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[SeaDour]

Don't you even know how BitTorrent works? The bandwidth is distributed -- the initial seeds might have to come from the main BT servers, but almost everyone will download their content from other BitTorrent users.

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[SlashChick]

Uh... because a T1 is 1.5Mbit both directions. Your 4Mbit line may be 4Mbit download, but its upload speed is likely... what, 256K? 384K? If you need to serve anything heavier than DNS, you'll want a faster upload speed than that. Hence the need for T1s and larger symmetrical UPLOAD pipes.

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[timeOday]

With video that will get chewed through rather quickly.

I think you are missing the point. Getting bandwidth is the easy part, bandwidth is cheap. In contrast, getting major studios to legally distribute content over bittorrent is a minor miracle. Now the door is open.

Re:pft...1Gbit/s -1 FLAMEBAIT

[Lehk228]

a T1 is only a meg and a half, though unlike consumer broadband connections you can use your T1 at 100% capacity all the time and nobody will give you shit for it since you pay through the nose for it.

What I want to know is

[Dowda]

will this get me porn any faster?

Re:Bittorrent -- distro paid for by consumers

[x2A]

No, you're paying once, but in two different ways; two different currencies.

If you don't wanna contribute to the upload, you gotta pay them more because they need a bigger out pipe.

Re:Bittorrent -- distro paid for by consumers

[Firehed]

Probably true, but what about the people that do saturate their bandwidth (like myself)? Is WB going to force seeding to 100%, charge you extra or ban you from further downloads if you don't?

The endproduct of this will be more expensive or flaky internet connections. If the oversold bandwidth that was chugging along happily suddenly fills up, everyone connected is screwed. Until the ISP upgrades their stuff accordingly (which could well mean laying new/more fiber), everyone has a crappy connection. Someone's gotta pay for the upgrades, and you can bet that those costs are going to make it to the consumers, and most likely fairly quickly. Either by changing their pricing structure, molesting upload bandwidth into nothingness, or starting a per-bit charge. Or leading up to tiered connections.

However it happens, you pay twice.