BitTorrent:
I checked it out. It has brutal memory leaks under OSX, sucks up tons of horsepower, and is generally badly implemented. However, I get the concept. GNUtella does do this already, although I presume less efficiently.
HTTP would not have gone anywhere as a protocol were it not for Search Engines, DNS and the evolution of
Of the one file I did manage to get going, an old X-Files episode I had no intention of watching, the download ran at about 7k/sec., hardly realizing the benefits of distributed, massively parallel, Peer-2-Peer. So it’s clear that BitTorrent has yet to reach its Tipping Point and spread beyond the community of P2P enthusiasts and slashdotters.
-Ian.
On Sunday, December 8, 2002, at 05:55 PM, Lance Tracey wrote:
> Bram Cohen’s BitTorrent, available in a Mac OS X version, is an
> open-source
> system for distributing high-demand files across a “swarm” of servers:
>
> BitTorrent is a protocol for distributing files. It identifies content
> by
> url and is designed to integrate seamlessly with the web. Its
> advantage over
> plain http is that when multiple downloads of the same file happen
> concurrently, the downloaders upload to each other, making it possible
> for
> the file source to support very large numbers of downloaders with only
> a
> modest increase in its load.
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