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Researchers Test BitTorrent Live Streaming

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the pirating-without-the-pesky-evidence-trail dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TorrentFreak reports that the Swarmplayer, developed by the P2P-Next research group, is now capable of streaming live video in true 4th generation P2P style using a zero-server approach. With a $22 million project budget from the EU and partners, the P2P-Next research group intends to redefine how video is viewed on the Internet. The researchers have launched a streaming experiment where you can tune in to a webcam in Amsterdam, or a 5 minute weather report (not live) from the BBC. More details about how to set up your own BitTorrent live stream are also available."

3 of 129 comments (clear)

  1. Open source? by jaxdahl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is this open source?
    There's already a closed source p2p video system that was used, among other things, for the streaming of the Blizzard WWI event (Diablo III announcement). It's called Octoshape. How does this compare?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octoshape
    http://www.octoshape.com/

  2. Re:I see some issues here... by Hatta · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why don't they just use multicast? This is what it was designed for.

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  3. Interesting parallels by cheekymatt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is hilarious. The transport layer can theoretically handle this perfectly well, via UDP multicast.

    But here we are, implementing a multicast-like streaming system higher in the stack to overcome the fact that most ISPs have disabled multicast at their routers. If something like this takes off, maybe this would actually encourage ISPs to enable multicast.

    Also, I find this whole development awfully similar to the fact that many firewalls block everything other than HTTP on port 80, so now many apps have just moved to talking HTTP on port 80, or inventing pseudo-protocols on top of HTTP.

    Ahhh, the Internet...