Anti-Technology Technologies?

shanen writes "A story from the NYTimes about metering internet traffic caught my eye. I thought the exchange of information over the Internet was supposed to be a good thing? Couldn't we use technology more constructively? For example, if there is too much network traffic for video and radio channels, why don't we offset with the increased use of P2P technologies like BitTorrent? Why don't we use wireless networks to reduce the traffic on the wired infrastructure? Such technologies often have highly desirable properties. For example, BitTorrent is excellent for rapidly increasing the availability of popular files while automatically balancing the network traffic, since the faster and closer connections will automatically wind up being favored. Instead, we have an increasing trend for anti-technology technologies and twisted narrow economic solutions such as those discussed in the NYTimes article, and attempts to restrict the disruptive communications technologies. You may remember how FM radio was delayed for years; part of the security requirements of a major company includes anti-P2P software, as well as locking down the wireless communications extremely tightly — but there are still gaps for the bad guys, while the main victims are the legitimate users of these technologies. Can you think of other examples? Do you have constructive solutions?"

Comments

Popstar technologies != great ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

use wireless networks to reduce the traffic on the wired infrastructure Wireless networks are useful when there is no wired infrastructure, but if you have a wired network, it is orders of magnitude faster than the wireless option, especially where congestion is a problem. Using wireless to offload traffic from the wired network is like walking to avoid traffic jams.

BitTorrent is excellent for rapidly increasing the availability of popular files while automatically balancing the network traffic BitTorrent (and P2P in general) is a kludge. Multicasting is a solution. BitTorrent is an inefficient protocol (from a whole network load point of view.) It bounces the same data around the net in unicasts. The swarm control overhead is bigger than it has to be because with slow upstreams you need more peers for acceptable download speeds.

It is a case of technology being held back by non-technical reasons, but please look beyond popular technologies when you make an assessment about desirable technologies.

Re:Bittorrent is the problem :(

[Anpheus]

How? There isn't enough content to run BitTorrent maxing out my connection 24/7. I'd have to buy a new hard drive every day to do that. Can you propose to me any way of actually utilizing my connection 24/7 with BitTorrent, maintaining a seed ratio and not clogging my hard disks (because I'd need to buy a NAS in short order.)

I think the result would be significantly lower than 100%. For one thing, 100% of people will never use any one technology. For another, even those who do can't possible saturate their connection 100% of the time unless they're on dialup. I have fifteen megabit cable with a realized throughput of around 13000 kbps to the continental US, and can easily get 1.6-1.7 mega-bytes- per second on downloads. Even at just 1 MB/sec, I have to buy another 80GB hard disk a day to fill this line. Heck, I'd run out of content I'd even want to download.