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Bittorrent Implements Cache Discovery Protocol

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the middlemen-i-wouldn't-want-to-be dept.

An anonymous reader writes "CacheLogic and BitTorrent introduce an open-source Cache Discovery Protocol (CDP) that allows ISP's to cache and seed Bittorrent traffic. Currently, Bittorrent traffic is suffering from bandwidth throttling ISP's that claim that Bittorrent traffic is cluttering their pipes. This motivated the developers of the most popular Bittorrent clients implement protocol encryption to protect bittorrent users from being slowed down by their ISP's. However, Bram Cohen, the founder of Bittorrent doubted that encryption was the solution, and found (together with CacheLogic) a more ISP friendly alternative."

4 of 170 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Off the cuff thought by zhouray · · Score: 5, Informative

    I assumed you didn't read the article. It says "only for commercially licensed content".

  2. Re:Possible legal problems by Bogtha · · Score: 4, Informative

    Given that a lot of torrents are copyrighted content, are ISPs really going to want to do this? The moment they start caching these files on their servers, they become a huge target for lawsuits.

    They already do it with HTTP proxies and Usenet servers without getting sued. So long as they are simply complying with a content-neutral communications protocol - which is basically the whole point of an ISP, I don't see how they could be held accountable. Their business is to transport bits in a particular fashion. It's not up to them to decide which bits are "good" bits and which bits are "naughty" bits.

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    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  3. Re:Off the cuff thought by silas_moeckel · · Score: 3, Informative

    They are allready allocated. Modern multicast uses a source IP / port, multicast destination address /port tuple(sp?) so realy you can pick any of the piles of multicast addresses to use traffic is split up based upon the tuple that you joined. Lower end gear hasent been as specific as higher end gear in splitting up traffic leasing the OS to remove anything unwanted but modern switches listen in on multicast setup to be more specific but those times are going away as the old gear gets aged out (managed 100bt gear is about the newest stuff that would do this)

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    No sir I dont like it.
  4. Re:Off the cuff thought by matts-reign · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'll give you an example how it would be used in a bittorrent style network application:

    I am peer 1. I have section 4 of "the file". In current bittorrent, I upload this file to peer 2. However, peers 3, 7, 24, 23, and 15 need that chunk too. With multicast, I can send the file to all of them at once.

    Sure, it has to be at the same time. There may be times when a portion of a file is sent to only 1 user. But with significantly large peer swarms, it is useful.

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    Waffles rock.