One thing I keep hearing from ISPs is that "P2P expands to fill all available bandwidth."
This gave me pause for a while, because on the SURFACE, it sounds like, yes, it'd be a problem. You add more infrastructure to your system (lay cables, etc...) and then what happens? P2P just gobbles up that resource and you're back to square one...
Except that its not true at all. Its a complete fabrication. Here's why.
P2P expands to fill allotted bandwidth, not available bandwidth.
If you have 100mbit total, and say 100 users, and you give each user a hard cap at 1mbit, then there's absolutely no way, even if all your users ran maximum p2p, 24/7, that they'd step on each others toes.
Unfortunately, the real scenario here is that ISPs have, for example, 100mbit total, and they accept EVERY USER THEY CAN (obviously), and then allot them far more bandwidth than they have. So they'd have 100mbit total (for example) and they'd allot each user 10mbit... and have 10,000 users.
The only reason they say 'p2p expands to fill all available bandwidth' is because they've so vastly oversold the available bandwidth, and allotted it so deeply overlapped, that a couple users fully utilizing the bandwidth they have been allotted can hit the limit.
This is not a case of P2P expanding, this is a case of deep overlap and overselling of resources, instead of infrastructure upgrading and proper resource management.
And in a couple years its just going to get worse. We're seeing the start of a trend that shows that ordinary users, the ones that you could count on to never use their bandwidth, are starting to go download HD movies, be it from netflix, itunes, pirated copies, Miro, a plethora of other services. The content is getting bigger and this time "ordinary" users are consuming it.
This means that 'headroom' that ISPs have for the number of people they can pack onto the same segment of bandwidth, the number of times they can sell the same thing to different people, is shrinking rapidly.
P2P might be the scapegoat now, but in a year or so its going to be 'online video', something which many of the cable providers have direct competitors for.
To say that P2P expands to fill all available bandwidth is just not true. P2P expands to fill all allotted bandwidth.
The only reason it currently expands to fill all "available" bandwidth is that ISPs are vastly overselling the actual bandwidth they have, allotting 100 people the bandwidth of 10. So if 10 use P2P, it uses "all available bandwidth".
ISPs can cap bandwidth. They already do. They just currently allot people a hell of a lot more bandwidth then they actually HAVE, and then get upset when people use it.
If you limit a user to 32k/s then there's nothing P2P can do to 'use all available bandwidth'! They can use at most 32k/s! There is no 'expand to fill all available' effect here. They can't expand more than the headroom that ISPs give them.
The problem is that its too easy to oversell and then blame P2P. In a couple years everyone will be downloading hi def video through VUSE, MIRO, JOOST, HULU, TIVO, ITUNES, YOUTUBE, and a giant bunch of others. This includes the naive users that previously didn't do much before. The bandwidth is going to go through the roof even for regular users, and I just don't think ISPs are ready. It will be interesting to see what they blame then...
This is not surprising. The amount of people (kids) playing this game has been steadily increasing, especially as parents start to actually worry about what their children are playing...
as http://www.mmogchart.com/ shows... its recently surpassed 100,000 subscribers, twice as much as AC2 had even at its peak... and its still in that 'growth' area.
As a programmer of both DirectX and OpenGL, I can imagine that the real reason they might do this is because they want control of what OpenGL does to their desktop.
You see, they are rendering the desktop using DirectX - the video card - all the time, in Vista. This means that any other 3D app running MUST play nice with the desktop, for example, if its running in a window, it has to use resources in a certain way in order not to mess desktop rendering up.
Since DirectX is theirs, they can write it in such a way that it's not possible to screw up window rendering by using DirectX calls.
However, they have no control over OpenGL. By tunneling OpenGL through their DirectX 'safeguards', they can ensure that OpenGL cannot mess up the desktop or screw up other apps.
Their other alternative would have to be to write their very own OpenGL implementation that includes all the bits and pieces that make DirectX work on desktop and in Windowed 3D apps at the same time, and as far as I know, Microsoft doesn't exactly LIKE OpenGL. It probably didn't seem worthwhile compared to just tunneling it.
Just my analysis.
So she's already started her bid for 2008
Unfortunately, she's already started it WRONG.
Looks like another 4 years of republicans for this place. I would sooner vote for greens than vote for someone who would open their mouth while so amazingly misinformed about the thing.
The point of the article I think is that E3 used to be a 'trade' show, and now its a 'hype' show, and thus useless as a tradeshow. Its for organized PR teams to hype products to consumers, not for individuals in the trade to conference with each others (publishers & programmers, programmers & middleware)
I've gone to a few E3's. There's honestly no point to E3. Publishers aren't really there, at least, not accessible. The people you see out there are promoters, hired to generate hype. They are promotion and PR firms. If a developer is there and willing to talk to you not as part of hype-generation, you're extremely lucky.
Don't get me wrong, its an 'impressive' show, but its not really a trade show. Its more like walking down advertizement lane than any actual trade.
I recently switched over to blender from the more 'expensive' tools due to its extreme flexibility, open source nature, but also because it actually makes a lot of the big tasks pretty simple. It takes a little longer to learn the interface, but as people are starting to learn, different is not necissarily bad.
Blender3D and the amazing "Wings 3D" winged-edge modeller make a powerful team.
Are these people complaining the ones responsible for the fact that at my university, the only way to get some info about something published in a journal was to log into some arcane heavily protected system and be told that the journal you are looking for is at another university, four stories underground, and protected by forcefields?
Are they the ones that feel that its justified to charge 200 dollars for a 5 dollar-value book ('journal') because they control the distribution... in which case... I hope they DO lose out.
Slashdot Mirror
This gave me pause for a while, because on the SURFACE, it sounds like, yes, it'd be a problem. You add more infrastructure to your system (lay cables, etc...) and then what happens? P2P just gobbles up that resource and you're back to square one...
Except that its not true at all. Its a complete fabrication. Here's why.
P2P expands to fill allotted bandwidth, not available bandwidth.
If you have 100mbit total, and say 100 users, and you give each user a hard cap at 1mbit, then there's absolutely no way, even if all your users ran maximum p2p, 24/7, that they'd step on each others toes.
Unfortunately, the real scenario here is that ISPs have, for example, 100mbit total, and they accept EVERY USER THEY CAN (obviously), and then allot them far more bandwidth than they have. So they'd have 100mbit total (for example) and they'd allot each user 10mbit... and have 10,000 users.
The only reason they say 'p2p expands to fill all available bandwidth' is because they've so vastly oversold the available bandwidth, and allotted it so deeply overlapped, that a couple users fully utilizing the bandwidth they have been allotted can hit the limit.
This is not a case of P2P expanding, this is a case of deep overlap and overselling of resources, instead of infrastructure upgrading and proper resource management.
And in a couple years its just going to get worse. We're seeing the start of a trend that shows that ordinary users, the ones that you could count on to never use their bandwidth, are starting to go download HD movies, be it from netflix, itunes, pirated copies, Miro, a plethora of other services. The content is getting bigger and this time "ordinary" users are consuming it.
This means that 'headroom' that ISPs have for the number of people they can pack onto the same segment of bandwidth, the number of times they can sell the same thing to different people, is shrinking rapidly.
P2P might be the scapegoat now, but in a year or so its going to be 'online video', something which many of the cable providers have direct competitors for.
To say that P2P expands to fill all available bandwidth is just not true. P2P expands to fill all allotted bandwidth. The only reason it currently expands to fill all "available" bandwidth is that ISPs are vastly overselling the actual bandwidth they have, allotting 100 people the bandwidth of 10. So if 10 use P2P, it uses "all available bandwidth". ISPs can cap bandwidth. They already do. They just currently allot people a hell of a lot more bandwidth then they actually HAVE, and then get upset when people use it. If you limit a user to 32k/s then there's nothing P2P can do to 'use all available bandwidth'! They can use at most 32k/s! There is no 'expand to fill all available' effect here. They can't expand more than the headroom that ISPs give them. The problem is that its too easy to oversell and then blame P2P. In a couple years everyone will be downloading hi def video through VUSE, MIRO, JOOST, HULU, TIVO, ITUNES, YOUTUBE, and a giant bunch of others. This includes the naive users that previously didn't do much before. The bandwidth is going to go through the roof even for regular users, and I just don't think ISPs are ready. It will be interesting to see what they blame then...
Somoene quickly put up a torrent of the internet before it's gone.
This is not surprising. The amount of people (kids) playing this game has been steadily increasing, especially as parents start to actually worry about what their children are playing... as http://www.mmogchart.com/ shows... its recently surpassed 100,000 subscribers, twice as much as AC2 had even at its peak... and its still in that 'growth' area.
As a programmer of both DirectX and OpenGL, I can imagine that the real reason they might do this is because they want control of what OpenGL does to their desktop. You see, they are rendering the desktop using DirectX - the video card - all the time, in Vista. This means that any other 3D app running MUST play nice with the desktop, for example, if its running in a window, it has to use resources in a certain way in order not to mess desktop rendering up. Since DirectX is theirs, they can write it in such a way that it's not possible to screw up window rendering by using DirectX calls. However, they have no control over OpenGL. By tunneling OpenGL through their DirectX 'safeguards', they can ensure that OpenGL cannot mess up the desktop or screw up other apps. Their other alternative would have to be to write their very own OpenGL implementation that includes all the bits and pieces that make DirectX work on desktop and in Windowed 3D apps at the same time, and as far as I know, Microsoft doesn't exactly LIKE OpenGL. It probably didn't seem worthwhile compared to just tunneling it. Just my analysis.
That's the way the USA is headed. Just a heads up. What sound ludicrous now, sounds normal later.
So she's already started her bid for 2008 Unfortunately, she's already started it WRONG. Looks like another 4 years of republicans for this place. I would sooner vote for greens than vote for someone who would open their mouth while so amazingly misinformed about the thing.
The point of the article I think is that E3 used to be a 'trade' show, and now its a 'hype' show, and thus useless as a tradeshow. Its for organized PR teams to hype products to consumers, not for individuals in the trade to conference with each others (publishers & programmers, programmers & middleware)
I've gone to a few E3's. There's honestly no point to E3. Publishers aren't really there, at least, not accessible. The people you see out there are promoters, hired to generate hype. They are promotion and PR firms. If a developer is there and willing to talk to you not as part of hype-generation, you're extremely lucky. Don't get me wrong, its an 'impressive' show, but its not really a trade show. Its more like walking down advertizement lane than any actual trade.
I recently switched over to blender from the more 'expensive' tools due to its extreme flexibility, open source nature, but also because it actually makes a lot of the big tasks pretty simple. It takes a little longer to learn the interface, but as people are starting to learn, different is not necissarily bad. Blender3D and the amazing "Wings 3D" winged-edge modeller make a powerful team.
Are these people complaining the ones responsible for the fact that at my university, the only way to get some info about something published in a journal was to log into some arcane heavily protected system and be told that the journal you are looking for is at another university, four stories underground, and protected by forcefields?
Are they the ones that feel that its justified to charge 200 dollars for a 5 dollar-value book ('journal') because they control the distribution... in which case... I hope they DO lose out.