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Bittorrent To Replace Standard Downloads?
Max Sayre writes "Have you ever tried to download an operating system update only to have it fail and have to start all over? What about patches for your favorite games? World of Warcraft already uses Bittorrent technology as a way to distribute large amounts of content at a lower cost to the company and faster speeds to all of their clients. So why haven't they replaced the standard downloading options built into any major OS? Companies like Opera are including the downloading of torrents in their products already and extensions have been written for Firefox to download torrents in-browser. Every day Bittorrent traffic is growing. Sites like OpenBittorrent already exist and DHT doesn't even require a tracker. So why isn't everyone doing it? Is it finally time to see all downloads replaced with Bittorrent?"
Those of us stuck in New Zealand or Australia still have data caps to think about. If every download was a torrent there would be a lot more overhead eating into our precious data caps!
Please, think of the Kiwis.
Because Bittorrent has a reputation issue, for one. The MPAA and RIAA attack it and call it the reason they are losing money (instead of their failing business model).
Try running a perfectly legal BitTorrent tracker. You will find that the MPAA/RIAA criminals both DDOS your server and spam your ISP with DMCA crap regarding files you are not tracking and never heard of. They really dislike BitTorrent.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
There was apt-torrent, but that project appears to be abandoned.
The thing is probably that there is no pressing need. There are many educational facilities that are are willing to provide mirrors for such things, so there's no real reason to implement a system to borrow user's upstream bandwidth.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
In WoW I have to disable bittorrent if I actually want to download a patch. Otherwise it saturates my connection with upload data whilst only downloading at 1% of my max speed.
Blizzard use bittorrent simply because they're cheap. Instead of using their millions in profits to provide bandwidth, they make the players smash their quotas sending data to each other. I had to install a bandwidth limiter to get Wrath of the Lich King to install because otherwise the outrageous upload speeds stopped me actually downloading anything. You'd think $15 a month would be enough to pay for enough bandwidth to allow me to download the game I've just paid for, but no they have to chase every penny...
Most modern bittorrent client support web seeds, that is using an http-hosted file as a seed for the torrent. Ad the speed from that server to the other people who are downloading and you have much better speeds than if you were to simply download straight from the server. Add to this all the other bittorrent features, like resuming a broken download, and improved error checking and you have a very powerful downloading strategy. Just take a look at burnbit: http://burnbit.com/ which takes a normal hosted file on the internet and turns it into a torrent. Everyone wins!
The file sizes of most Linux packages are simply not big enough to warrant the use of bittorrent. The 32 bit x86 kernel(usually one of the biggest packages in a distro) is only about 32 megs or so. By the time you downloaded the tracker, found your peers and actually started downloading something you could have had the whole package d/led already. Most big universities and research institutions have to host the files anyway(for internal updates), its not all that difficult to extend the download service to the general public. Not to mention the fact that in order for the torrent to be effective you would actually have to retain the packages after installation which can quickly become a huge pain in the ass.....
Monstar L
Your acknowledgement packets probably aren't getting through.
http://www.benzedrine.cx/ackpri.html
AC knew what he was talking about. Let me spell it out since you (and the guy who modded you Insightful) clearly don't.
IPs in a swarm are visible to anyone who can join the swarm. If you use it for security updates, you are implicitly announcing (a) the security update in question, and (b) how to join the swarm. Q.E.D., most people attached to a swarm who are not yet seeding (and possibly many of those who are seeding) do not have the update installed and are publishing this along with their IP for anyone on the internet to see.
Why has no one mentioned this?
Because multi-cast doesn't work in practice.
Because almost every gateway router drops multi-cast packets.
Because multi-cast is only efficient if there is more than one recipient on the same subnet downloading the file at the same time.
Because synchronizing the assembly of milti-cast downloads that were initiated at different times (as in, 1 second apart) would require as much work as implementing the bittorent protocol.
Honestly, multi-cast was only really thought out for machines sharing a private network. It wasn't intended for internet-style applications.
Again, traffic shaping. I use Wondershaper, from the Ubuntu repositories. # wondershaper eth1 300 90 Problems solved. Of course, you have to determine your total available bandwidth so that you can determine what speeds will work best for your network. (real speeds, not advertised speeds) You'll likely spend 15 to 30 minutes getting is set up, unless you already know what you are doing. Once done, you'll never have to worry about choking your internet connection again.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br