(OT) Bit Torrent usage ...

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am Mi, den 27.07.2005 schrieb Mike McCarty um 21:51:

> I see that the Red Hat site suggests Bit Torrent.
> 
> I went to the website, and I don't see where it would
> help. And I don't understand the bit about "if you don't
> allow Bit Torrent to upload from your machine, you won't
> get improved download rates."
> 
> They specifically state that it is a means for publishing
> things from one's own machine to the world.
> 
> Can anyone explain, in ordinary language, what possible
> advantage it would give me over, say, wget?
> 
> Mike

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent

That articles describes BitTorrent and explains many aspects.
To your first question: the idea behind BitTorrent is to bypass a
typical problem with P2P nets: a few stations provides the content and a
lot stations only fetch but do not contribute an upload. BitTorrent
honors the amount / bandwidth a participant offers to others. You just
offer what you get, the torrent you run actually. Nobody can get other
stuff from your host.
Second question: it is both a social question and a technical one. The
social component means that someone using BitTorrent is forced to
provide his part to the swarm - you get and you give. This has too the
effect that classical download offers don't have to carry all the load.
In times many internet users have broadband connections it helps
ftp/http servers and the institutions who run them a lot. The technicals
aspect is that with big swarms you and the other torrent users often get
a better download rate than whenftp/http servers are overloaded. Another
aspect is that big downloaded files can easily be repaired when
somewhere a part is mismatching the source. This comes from the way the
BitTorrent protocol works. Means, if you get a 2,6 GB DVD ISO image file
from an ftp server and you face it does not match the reference sha1sum
you have to redownload it (if not using rsync or even BitTorrent to
repair it). On the other side your BitTorrent will run as long as it has
a full valid copy of the reference source and it only regets very small
parts which failed before.

Alexander


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Alexander Dalloz | Enger, Germany | GPG http://pgp.mit.edu 0xB366A773
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