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Faster P2P By Matching Similiar Files?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-doesn't-jive-here dept.

Andreaskem writes "A Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist says transferring large data files, such as movies and music, over the Internet could be sped up significantly if peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing services were configured to share not only identical files, but also similar files. "SET speeds up data transfers by simultaneously downloading different chunks of a desired data file from multiple sources, rather than downloading an entire file from one slow source. Even then, downloads can be slow because these networks can't find enough sources to use all of a receiver's download bandwidth. That's why SET takes the additional step of identifying files that are similar to the desired file... No one knows the degree of similarity between data files stored in computers around the world, but analyses suggest the types of files most commonly shared are likely to contain a number of similar elements. Many music files, for instance, may differ only in the artist-and-title headers, but are otherwise 99 percent similar.""

4 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Right.... by simm1701 · · Score: 1, Troll

    Sure this is going to work... really

    I'll just splice that bit from that torrent, that bit from that one... it should work, I mean they are all the same TV episode and they are all mpeg4 - the file name says so...

    Hmmm how about which bitrates, codecs, if it was from TV whether it was started at the same time??

    That guy seriously has to be joking - the byte offsets are unlikely to ever specify a suitable join - and even if they rewrote the protocol so it split by seconds rather than fixed file widths you'd still have changing codecs and bitrates to deal with. Personally I'll stick to torrents with decent known trackers

    --
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    1. Re:Right.... by Reason58 · · Score: 0, Troll

      The intuition: people make small changes to files like changing the artist or title in the MP3 header, and then BitTorrent and other systems treat this as a "different" file, when in fact it's 99.9% similar. BitTorrent, as most of you know, doesn't work this way. Files are selected from a server called a "tracker", and only users with that exact file size and hash will be linked with you. The only way you could implement a system like this is to create an entirely new protocol, server software and client software. Given the widespread adoption of BitTorrent I think the performance gains would have to be very substantial for people to migrate.
  2. Snakeoil by Reason58 · · Score: 0, Troll

    Many music files, for instance, may differ only in the artist-and-title headers, but are otherwise 99 percent similar. It's not even 9AM and I have already filled my bullshit quota for the day. The concept itself is dubious, but this statement in particular is ludicrous.
  3. similiar? by mephistophyles · · Score: 0, Troll

    sheesh, it's not even in the summary, it's in TFA title, I also hate to point out the obvious, but I don't need to be a researcher at CMU to realize that if all those split files were put together it would be easier and faster to download the file... talk about pointing out the obvious