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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?"
Combine this with social networking to allow/deny access to your files and I think you've got a game changer. Files which require no server, and which are unknown/unavailable to anyone who doesn't need to know about them. I could share my mp3 collection or movie collection with only my friends list, which would be much more along the lines of fair use (like tape trading).
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.
Why? because for small files (as I expect most software updates would be), downloading directly is quicker and safer.
Safer? Bittorrent already has built in checksumming which most people don't do with regular downloads anyways. By that metric alone I'd say the BitTorrent is safer than a regular download.
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
MPAA said the same thing about the VCR.
Can we go back to not giving a fuck what the MPAA thinks?
Someday we'll hit the human carrying capacity. And the band will just play on.
Because for security updates, this allows users to find others who don't have the latest patches yet. Just imagine the people watching leecher IPs every time a new remote exploit is patched...
I would like a solution that combines metalinks (one file that contains multiple urls for a download plus the checksum) with Bittorrent.
A client could start a http download from one server, and a bittorrent that requests pieces for the latter chunks. You can also make multiple http request with a offset these days, on another http server or the same one.
This could even be built in magically into http browsers: if the file size is > 50MB, ask the cloud if there are nodes for the given url. That is provided you have a checksum like with metalinks. Appearantly metalink already features this possibility: http://www.metalinker.org/
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Because when you download directly instead of torrenting a file, you aren't basically shouting to the world "HEY I DON'T HAVE THE NEW SECURITY UPDATE YET! ANYONE HAVE THE NEW SECURITY UPDATE?"
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
Bittorrent is great for very large files, and popular files.
But for small files it's really, really bad. Many linux patches involve downloading hundreds of small files, not one big one. Most applications are so small that the setup and teardown time for bittorrent would dwarf the download time. Any download that takes less than 5 will likely have a smoother user experience if it is not done using bittorrent.
Even ignoring tiny files, there is the issue of bandwidth limited users, the significantly higher routing requirements of bittorrent (many home routers flake out when you get 50+ TCP connections going through them), users with heavily asymmetrical connections (5Mbit down/256kbit up), and the more complicated configuration required to get a good bittorrent connection.
In short, bittorrent is nice for its niche (large, popular files), but outside that niche it is often not the best solution. Wider deployment of bittorrent technology would probably help some places, but it's not a silver bullet for all Internet downloads.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Say you've got a CD or DVD that's scratched, or an .iso you spent forever downloading via ftp and discovered to your dismay was corrupted. Assuming a bit-identical image is available online via .torrent, you can 'repair' your data without having to download the whole thing all over again:
Start your bittorrent app and begin downloading a new copy of the image you need. Immediately stop the download and exit your bittorrent app. An .iso file (incomplete, of course) will have been created in the destination folder.
Now rip your [damaged] disc to hard drive, creating an [obviously corrupted] .iso. Copy/paste that .iso into bittorrent's download folder, overwriting the existing .iso.
Fire-up bittorrent and begin your download once again. Bittorrent will analyze the corrupted .iso and immediately download the bits needed to repair (i.e. complete) it. In most cases this will only take a few seconds, even over dial-up, due to the insignificant amount of data usually needed (except, of course, in the event of a heavily scratched disc, which can also take a long time to rip in the first place; having a high-quality optical drive with good firmware and good optics certainly couldn't hurt).
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.
It's because it competes with them. Not as content producers, as distributors. If BitTorrent had a good reputation then indie filmmakers would use it to distribute their films to customers, perhaps as encrypted files with DRM, perhaps not, but in any event in competition with distributing them through official MPAA channels where the big companies get their big cut.
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.
But if the repositories were themselves seeding, then it'd work just fine: Worst case is that it's still at least as fast as HTTP or FTP from the same repository (plus or minus some BT overhead), all else being the same.
Best case is that there's several repositories all seeding the same basic set of random apps, plus a bunch of users who have already downloaded the random app, and things turn both faster and cheaper than they otherwise would have been.
The hash checks performed by BT will do well to prevent errors and/or poisoned apps, as well.
Sounds like a win to me.
Kid-proof tablet..
This. People don't seem to realize that PDF, word documents, and flash will never take off as accepted formats for the layman unless they are baked into every major web-browser.
Wait, what?
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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