(OT) Bit Torrent usage ...

[Mike McCarty]

Phil Schaffner wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 16:21 -0400, Ugo Bellavance wrote:
> 
>>Mike McCarty wrote:
>>
>>>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
>>
>>The most obvious advantage is not for you.  It is that Bit Torrent uses
>>everyone's bandwidth instead of only using the mirror's (which is costly).
>>
>>Bittorrent only "publish" the files you want to publish.
> 
> 
> It can give better effective bandwidth for you on the download by
> getting data from a number of peers rather than from a single server
> with limited IO capacity and bandwidth.  It is also good form to leave
> your client open after the download finishes to "give back" to the
> community by sharing your bandwidth.

Umm, lessee if I understand correctly. (The figures below are the
actual rates wget obtained for me when I downloaded the FC4 CD
ISOs.)

I download some package or other, using Bit Torrent. I have ADSL, and
get 60-80 KBps during the download, using an Australian site. This
maxes out my download (I regularly have 864 Kbps as the download rate).
Then others can pull the same file I downloaded using my machine as
a source (384 Kbps max) for some of the data.

Sounds like a very likely source of a security breach to me, with little
or no advantage offered in return.

I'm not complaining, I'm just trying to uderstand what exactly Bit 
Torrent offers, and to whom, and to ascertain whether it be something
I might find useful. Even if the only reward is an intangible
thing like feeling good about contributing to the general welfare
of the people on Earth.

Mike
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