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Microsoft Reinvents Bittorrent
Anon E. Muss writes "Microsoft has a new Secure Content Downloader tool that sounds an awful lot like a Bittorrent clone. It's described as a 'peer-assisted technology' where '[e]ach client downloads content by exchanging parts of the file they're interested in with other clients, in addition to downloading parts from the server.' Right now MSCD is just a time-limited preview, intended to support downloads of select Microsoft beta releases (e.g. Visual Studio 2008). If this test goes well, Microsoft will probably start using MSCD for all their large downloads. How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"
MS didn't reinvent Bittorrent. They built something better: Avalanche. It's more efficient and (I know this phrase is weird to use around MS, but...) more secure. Read the research papers (they touch on BT, its advantages and disadvantages). I imagine most of this stuff is on its way into standard BT, if it hasn't been worked in already.
"How do you feel about subsidizing Microsoft's bandwidth costs?"
Frankly I don't give 2 shits as long as they don't patent the hell out of it (and sue existing P2P solutions). But this came out of MS Research, so I doubt that'll happen (one of the only decent groups at MS).
By the way, MS has been messing around with P2P for years. How do you think Xbox Live works? Every time a game is played multiplayer, at least one Xbox/Xbox 360 is hosting. Not a single MS server hosts a game. Question this all you want (why pay $60 a year then?) but the fact of the matter is that from a technological standpoint, it works well.
0... ^>^ I actually have a huge problem with Blizzard's distribution system for patches. My ISP shapes their traffic and it can take hours for a small four megabyte patch to download. If I go directly to their site and download as a standalone file: about a minute. A distributed download system is a good idea both for Blizzard as it saves them bandwidth and for most of their customers as they get their patches faster (especially when it comes to large patches), but the standard download model has to be available for those who cannot use this type of system.
Lose: misplace or fail || Loose: not bound together
Microsoft is charging a lot of money for their software; there is absolutely no reason anybody but Microsoft should pay for the bandwidth related to their software updates.
From a practical point of view, no matter how "secure" the protocol may be, if this thing is running on a host as part of a P2P network, it is essentially broadcasting to the world that (1) the host is running Windows, and (2) that it's not up to date with its patches. That's not a smart thing to broadcast.
Good, then P2P networks using that protocol can spring up and not be blocked by ISPs.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.