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It's astounding to me that BitTorrent isn't used more often for media distribution. There are entire industries built around distributing content from huge data

It's astounding to me that BitTorrent isn't used more often for media distribution. There are entire industries built around distributing content from huge datacenters, and meanwhile the economics of distributing something through BitTorrent are exactly the opposite of how things traditionally work - content is easier and cheaper to send the more people are interested in it!

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
Many ISPs throttle you when they see BitTorrent activity. It isn't a commercially viable transport.
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  Not sure about many, but most ISPs in the world definitely don't throttle torrents (or you for using torrents).
  - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
    Agree I think that used to be the case when torrents were a major source of traffic- now it’s more likely to be a family with a couple of gamers, Netflix users etc who are using up all the bandwidth
maxxxxx 8y ago
I think it has a bad name and torrent traffic often gets blocked or throttled. I think with some rebranding it could be successful.
- krispbyte 8y ago
  And encryption so your ISP doesn't get to see it is torrent traffic.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    I could be wrong but I don’t think encryption helps in the case of BitTorrent? Encrypted or not, BitTorrent traffic still looks like BitTorrent traffic. The BitTorrent protocol has a peculiar connection pattern.
    - TheDong 8y ago
      Please explain how its traffic pattern looks different than, say, an xbox360 game where one console hosts and the other consoles connect. Or from a webrtc video call / ring [0] call. Or a person downloading a few files from 10 to 20 different websites. I don't see how my computer connecting to 10 ips is characteristic of bit-torrent and not of performing encrypted communication of another type with said ips. [0]: https://ring.cx/ https://ring.cx/
      - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
        I believe I may have mentioned I could be wrong. I'm not expert, but I can imagine how it might be possible to determine BitTorrent traffic from Xbox 360, voice call, or simultaneous downloads from 20 different websites, using flow analysis and some other data points, to a fairly high degree of certainty, in some cases. In support of my amateur assessment I present the following Wikipedia entry on the subject: "Some ISPs are now using more sophisticated measures (e.g. pattern/timing analysis or categorizing ports based on side-channel data) to detect BitTorrent traffic. This means that even encrypted BitTorrent traffic can be throttled. However, with ISPs that continue to use simpler, less costly methods to identify and throttle BitTorrent, the current solution remains effective.[citation needed] Analysis of the BitTorrent protocol encryption (a.k.a. MSE) has shown that statistical measurements of packet sizes and packet directions of the first 100 packets in a TCP session can be used to identify the obfuscated protocol with over 96% accuracy.[22] The Sandvine application uses a different approach to disrupt BitTorrent traffic ..." I guess like everything, it's an arms race; and a sufficiently determined network monitor probably has the average BitTorrent user blocked. Might not be worth the effort though. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption
wmf 8y ago
The history of Joost is instructive. The cost of making swarming really work is now higher than the cost of CDNs. Octoshape seems to still exist in some form but I don't know if it still uses P2P.
- donavanm 8y ago
  See also Red Swoosh. Or the S3 bit torrent support. Hosted perr to peer distribution is/was a reasonable idea. But the adoption/efficiency/variability costs dont appear to be compelling compared to the “dirt cheap” HTTP CDNs of the last decade.
crooked-v 8y ago
World of Warcraft used torrents for update downloads right up until they replaced that with the new combined updater app a few years back.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  Even when they used torrents, they had http mirrors implemented inside of the torrent client. In fact I believe Blizzard pioneered much of the http seeding work that I think eventually got standardized. Haven't kept up with it so someone can correct me...
Thlom 8y ago
"Swarm technology" is heavily used in professional content distribution in the entertainment industry. I'll just leave it at that, I don't think my former employer would be happy if I elaborated more. :-)
- orf 8y ago
  Can you really not elaborate any more?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    Maybe the parent means that movie you just watched on the big screen ... Was actually a torrent. Wouldn’t that be amusing. How would we know any difference?
    - pix64 8y ago
      I was under the impression movies were distributed on encrypted physical media which the key was made available on the release date. Maybe things have changed.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
        I have no idea, I'm just speculating wildly.
      - codazoda 8y ago
        Nope, not at my local theater. I recently went to a small theater to watch a movie. It didn't start. After 10 minutes I went to talk to a manager. They had forgotten to download the licensed movie for the day and that download would take a couple hours. I had to get free passes to come back another time.
        Thlom 8y ago
        Sounds more like they forgot to transfer the movie from their central server to the screen server. Normal workflow has been to get the physical media via courier to the theatre, staff then transfer the content to a storage server and then a courier picks up the film and delivers it to the next theatre. edit: A normal DCP (digital cinema package) is around 100GB, bigger if it's 3D/4K/Atmos. Some of the biggest packages can be 500-600GB with all versions (2D, 3D, dubbed, hard of hearing, atmos, auro, DBOX and so on). So not really feasible to download that via the Internet in a couple of hours.
albertgoeswoof 8y ago
The missing piece is safe browser or app integration. If I link to a torrent movie I download some weird torrent file or get a magnet link, so open them I have to download some malware off sourceforge or whatever comes up when I google torrent downloader, and then when I finally get the files I get a bunch of crap with them, and maybe some malware.
- dcposch 8y ago
  Check out WebTorrent Works today in Chrome, Firefox, edge, etc. In Brave--Brendan Eich's new browser--you can even drop a magnet link directly into the URL bar! Uses WebTorrent under the hood. https://webtorrent.io https://webtorrent.io
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    It's not a problem if you have the expertise to know where to find a safe torrent client. But most people don't have that.
    - AgentME 8y ago
      When you visit a site that uses webtorrent, then you don't need to find your own torrent client. The site's javascript does the torrenting in the user's browser automatically.
- maltalex 8y ago
  That’s just a symptom. The actual problem is that it’s hard(er) to make money off bit torrent, and possibly even p2p in general. If there was a financial incentive every browser would have been capable of downloading files off BT as seamlessly as off HTTP.
vortico 8y ago
It's simple, an HTTPS download is between you and the provider. It would be unprofessional for them to encourage a system which they do not control. Torrents could be unreliable, require the downloader to also upload by default, breach your privacy by announcing your IP to others, and may be throttled by your ISP.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Blizzard torrents WoW updates. They are reliable because Blizzard can just serve downloads like normal as if they just happened to be over the BitTorrent protocol, and clients can join up and help out when they're able. The company can encrypt the payload to maintain a semblance of licensing and run the biggest seeders themselves.
- StudentStuff 8y ago
  Yet both Microsoft and Blizzard have decided P2P file distribution is just fine and dandy to use for their customers. It seems the only downsides are a slight complexity increase to handle torrent downloads for files that most of your customers need, with the upside that those same clients get their files faster thanks to the additional bandwidth gained using P2P tech like BitTorrent. On the reliability side, you can easily include an HTTP web seed, though as long as the company offers the torrent on their fileserver, there isn't much benefit for doing that. Windows 10 P2P Distribution for Updates: https://lifehacker.com/windows-10-uses-your-bandwidth-to-distribute-updates-d-1721091469 https://lifehacker.com/windows-10-uses-your-bandwidth-to-dis... Blizzard/HTTP Web Seed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent
  - blibble 8y ago
    blizzard binned bittorrent in 2015 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/16283439122 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/16283439122
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      That they did, but P2P distribution of files is still alive and well used in numerous industries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Adoption
ChristianBundy 8y ago
You might be interested in Day and the Beaker browser, which apply the same sorts of technology to web content.
jedberg 8y ago
It’s mostly a privacy issue. For example, if Netflix used P2P, you’d be able to track which IPs had parts of which movies and start profiling Netflix customers. That would be bad. The problem with P2P is that you have to make what you have public. That’s fine for a game update where it’s all the same, but for movies there are huge privacy implications.
- atomical 8y ago
  It's a privacy issue either way. How long until shareholders demand that Netflix sell user data?
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    Right, and the data is actually made more valuable by not being public with access controlled by a company like Netflix.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago
  > It’s mostly a privacy issue. There is a simple way to fix that. You wouldn't want to force everyone to upload anyway (some are on metered connections etc.), so what you would do is offer a nominal discount for uploading, but if you choose it then you don't just host what you watch, you host whatever needs more hosting capacity. Then random third parties can't tell what you watch because what you host is random. This reduces the efficiency somewhat, but it's easy to minimize that: Don't give someone a hundred movies to host, give them one movie and have them host it a hundred times (over the course of a year).
  - gruez 8y ago
    residential customers have really poor upload speeds so how many customers would you need to have to replace 1 caching server collocated at an ISP? short of having FTTH, most customers would have < 10Mb/s up. a dedicated server can have multiple 10Gb/s links. you'd be looking at hundreds or thousands of customers per caching box. the "nominal discount" you're offering would have to be tiny for it to make sense financially. so much so that most customers wouldn't even bother.
reaperducer 8y ago
It's astounding to me that BitTorrent isn't used more often for media distribution. A perfect use for it would be to distribute VNR’s (Video News Releases) and other audio and video from public relations firms and large companies. The big obstacle is introducing any new protocol into a large bureaucracy. It took a company I work with eight weeks to get their artist an SFTP program for his computer so he could send material to the printing companies; and another month to convince IT to open the ports in the local network. By then he’d just sent a bunch of DVD’s by messenger.
- harrumph 8y ago
  >A perfect use for it would be to distribute VNR’s (Video News Releases) and other audio and video from public relations firms and large companies. Can you please elaborate a little bit? My business understanding of VNRs is that they are not in demand per se, and are pushed/pitched out-of-band to (hopefully) receptive editors and news directors. Is this true and what does P2P add to this?
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    Yes, and no. It depends a lot on the industry and the publication. For example, if you're a consumer products magazine, you will probably want whatever VNR Procter & Gamble has for its latest dessert topping/floor wax. It would be massively simpler for P&G to provide a torrent link on its website that interested publications could just click. Or, let's say you're a construction company that just built an awesome new bridge. A VNR with drone footage of the construction process on your website that could be downloaded via torrent with a click would be helpful for the TV stations in your market. I sometimes work with real estate developers. At this time, they're all sending video, huge photos, and massive PDF books to print, TV, and web publishers via Dropbox. Some even use Flickr for press photos. Torrenting those would seem to be a better method.
    - harrumph 8y ago
      I see - and thanks for the positively ancient SNL call-back! (dessert topping/floor wax). Being ancient myself, I spotted it right away. Further question: I too work with real estate developers. You're suggesting they publish a link to assets where the browser depends upon a torrent application to complete download, no? Or, alternatively, did things progress while I wasn't looking and now torrents can be completed in-browser?
codebje 8y ago
My network link is asymmetrical - I have very little upload bandwidth compared to download. This is not uncommon. BitTorrent is abysmal for me. It quickly saturates my uplink bandwidth, destroying downlink performance. Or I cap it, or it discovers a cap, and my upload rate is slow enough that I'm labelled a leech in the BitTorrent network and get a slow download rate. World of Warcraft's updater was absolute trash for me. I always got far better transfer rates turning off P2P and sucking up the congestion on the direct download option. BitTorrent simply doesn't work for most of the world's commercially available home links.
- losteric 8y ago
  BitTorrent doesn't necessarily mean everyone seeds, nor that access is free. If there was some kind of micropayments infrastructure for seeders/leechers/content owners, I would happily seed arbitrary-but-legal torrents with my 1000/1000mbps connections in exchange for credits towards media or cash to cover the connection ... While I imagine you'd pay to download using BitTorrent, with some tiny fraction going to me (proportional to resource consumption) but never seeding to others.
  - amingilani 8y ago
    What you're talking about already exists and it's a joy — joystream to be precise [0] [0]: http://joystream.co http://joystream.co
Synaesthesia 8y ago
It is used, for example by Blizzard to distribute their games.
- scrollaway 8y ago
  Was. They use CDNs now.
a-saleh 8y ago
I remember blizzard using this ~7 years ago for at least some of their downloads. Not sure if it still does.
- Tloewald 8y ago
  They used it for WoW patches.
Buge 8y ago
It's sometimes used in game downloaders/updaters. But some people could be potentially mad that their upload data is being used when they don't want it used. Or depending on implementation, that uploading is going on in the background when they expect nothing to be happening. There might also be problems with firewalls or NAT.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Terretta 8y ago
Very early on (10 - 15 years ago), we used swarms across 14 data centers to rapidly distribute the ‘hottest’ video files to all the video servers’ local disk caches. Many companies back then tried to startup based on business model of doing this via end users as you suggest. It was mostly sunk by users’ pretty reasonable opinion they didn’t want to donate their upload bandwidth on their metered plan.
DanBC 8y ago
The BBC trialled peer-to-peer distribution for their early iPlayer. People were very upset about use of bandwidth. This would have been around 2007 when most Internet accounts in the UK had download limits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer#Computer_platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer#Computer_platforms
- GordonS 8y ago
  I remember thinking it was very brave of them at the time, with BitTorrent being branded as a villan then just as much as it is now. P2P is an interesting approach to large scale media distribution, but aside from the bandwidth issues, I imagine they were under immense pressure from copyright holders to steer clear of it.
  - M2Ys4U 8y ago
    BBC R&D even tried using actual bittorrent to deliver content (as part of an EU research project) a while back: https://torrentfreak.com/bbc-trials-bittorrent-powered-hd-video-streaming-091203/ https://torrentfreak.com/bbc-trials-bittorrent-powered-hd-vi...
redm 8y ago
This was tried relatively unsuccessfully by a company named Red Swoosh (Travis Kalnik's baby before Uber). [1] The concept pre-dates BitTorrent, and the technology worked pretty well, I deployed it at scale. There were two big problems. First, users had to install the client which they didn't like doing. Second, users had to share their bandwidth and cache data they may not care about. In the real world, that turned out to be deal breakers, we had to drop Red Swoosh. I think the larger picture here, is if your Netflix, you're happy to centralize, put distro points of ISP networks, etc. to provide a great user experience. How many people would be annoyed about Netflix dragging down their internet connection to make the service a couple of bucks cheaper? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Swoosh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Swoosh
- zzzcpan 8y ago
  > In the real world, that turned out to be deal breakers In the US I presume, where ISPs are monopolies and probably had to be in on this to make it work. > How many people would be annoyed about Netflix dragging down their internet connection Why would it drag down anyone's internet connection? It's not hard to make it behave well and self-throttle, when internet connection is used for something else.
leetcrew 8y ago
it's really unfortunate. i would gladly pay $30/month or so for a legal service that did nothing other than replicate the current experience with torrent trackers. i would pay $100/month if every show/movie were guaranteed to be available in high bitrate 720p, 1080p, and (where applicable) 4K at the official airtime/release date, maybe throw in a few seedboxes for good measure. i don't even care whether the video starts immediately. im perfectly happy to wait ~10mins to get a decent buffer of chunks at the beginning of the file.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago

Many ISPs throttle you when they see BitTorrent activity. It isn't a commercially viable transport.

zzzcpan 8y ago
Not sure about many, but most ISPs in the world definitely don't throttle torrents (or you for using torrents).
- albertgoeswoof 8y ago
  Agree I think that used to be the case when torrents were a major source of traffic- now it’s more likely to be a family with a couple of gamers, Netflix users etc who are using up all the bandwidth

maxxxxx 8y ago

I think it has a bad name and torrent traffic often gets blocked or throttled. I think with some rebranding it could be successful.

krispbyte 8y ago
And encryption so your ISP doesn't get to see it is torrent traffic.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  I could be wrong but I don’t think encryption helps in the case of BitTorrent? Encrypted or not, BitTorrent traffic still looks like BitTorrent traffic. The BitTorrent protocol has a peculiar connection pattern.
  - TheDong 8y ago
    Please explain how its traffic pattern looks different than, say, an xbox360 game where one console hosts and the other consoles connect. Or from a webrtc video call / ring [0] call. Or a person downloading a few files from 10 to 20 different websites. I don't see how my computer connecting to 10 ips is characteristic of bit-torrent and not of performing encrypted communication of another type with said ips. [0]: https://ring.cx/ https://ring.cx/
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      I believe I may have mentioned I could be wrong. I'm not expert, but I can imagine how it might be possible to determine BitTorrent traffic from Xbox 360, voice call, or simultaneous downloads from 20 different websites, using flow analysis and some other data points, to a fairly high degree of certainty, in some cases. In support of my amateur assessment I present the following Wikipedia entry on the subject: "Some ISPs are now using more sophisticated measures (e.g. pattern/timing analysis or categorizing ports based on side-channel data) to detect BitTorrent traffic. This means that even encrypted BitTorrent traffic can be throttled. However, with ISPs that continue to use simpler, less costly methods to identify and throttle BitTorrent, the current solution remains effective.[citation needed] Analysis of the BitTorrent protocol encryption (a.k.a. MSE) has shown that statistical measurements of packet sizes and packet directions of the first 100 packets in a TCP session can be used to identify the obfuscated protocol with over 96% accuracy.[22] The Sandvine application uses a different approach to disrupt BitTorrent traffic ..." I guess like everything, it's an arms race; and a sufficiently determined network monitor probably has the average BitTorrent user blocked. Might not be worth the effort though. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption

wmf 8y ago

The history of Joost is instructive. The cost of making swarming really work is now higher than the cost of CDNs. Octoshape seems to still exist in some form but I don't know if it still uses P2P.

donavanm 8y ago
See also Red Swoosh. Or the S3 bit torrent support. Hosted perr to peer distribution is/was a reasonable idea. But the adoption/efficiency/variability costs dont appear to be compelling compared to the “dirt cheap” HTTP CDNs of the last decade.

crooked-v 8y ago

World of Warcraft used torrents for update downloads right up until they replaced that with the new combined updater app a few years back.

scrollaway 8y ago
Even when they used torrents, they had http mirrors implemented inside of the torrent client. In fact I believe Blizzard pioneered much of the http seeding work that I think eventually got standardized. Haven't kept up with it so someone can correct me...

Thlom 8y ago

"Swarm technology" is heavily used in professional content distribution in the entertainment industry. I'll just leave it at that, I don't think my former employer would be happy if I elaborated more. :-)

orf 8y ago
Can you really not elaborate any more?
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  Maybe the parent means that movie you just watched on the big screen ... Was actually a torrent. Wouldn’t that be amusing. How would we know any difference?
  - pix64 8y ago
    I was under the impression movies were distributed on encrypted physical media which the key was made available on the release date. Maybe things have changed.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      I have no idea, I'm just speculating wildly.
    - codazoda 8y ago
      Nope, not at my local theater. I recently went to a small theater to watch a movie. It didn't start. After 10 minutes I went to talk to a manager. They had forgotten to download the licensed movie for the day and that download would take a couple hours. I had to get free passes to come back another time.
      - Thlom 8y ago
        Sounds more like they forgot to transfer the movie from their central server to the screen server. Normal workflow has been to get the physical media via courier to the theatre, staff then transfer the content to a storage server and then a courier picks up the film and delivers it to the next theatre. edit: A normal DCP (digital cinema package) is around 100GB, bigger if it's 3D/4K/Atmos. Some of the biggest packages can be 500-600GB with all versions (2D, 3D, dubbed, hard of hearing, atmos, auro, DBOX and so on). So not really feasible to download that via the Internet in a couple of hours.

albertgoeswoof 8y ago

The missing piece is safe browser or app integration. If I link to a torrent movie I download some weird torrent file or get a magnet link, so open them I have to download some malware off sourceforge or whatever comes up when I google torrent downloader, and then when I finally get the files I get a bunch of crap with them, and maybe some malware.

dcposch 8y ago
Check out WebTorrent Works today in Chrome, Firefox, edge, etc. In Brave--Brendan Eich's new browser--you can even drop a magnet link directly into the URL bar! Uses WebTorrent under the hood. https://webtorrent.io https://webtorrent.io
- Symmetry 8y ago
  It's not a problem if you have the expertise to know where to find a safe torrent client. But most people don't have that.
  - AgentME 8y ago
    When you visit a site that uses webtorrent, then you don't need to find your own torrent client. The site's javascript does the torrenting in the user's browser automatically.
maltalex 8y ago
That’s just a symptom. The actual problem is that it’s hard(er) to make money off bit torrent, and possibly even p2p in general. If there was a financial incentive every browser would have been capable of downloading files off BT as seamlessly as off HTTP.

vortico 8y ago

It's simple, an HTTPS download is between you and the provider. It would be unprofessional for them to encourage a system which they do not control. Torrents could be unreliable, require the downloader to also upload by default, breach your privacy by announcing your IP to others, and may be throttled by your ISP.

whatshisface 8y ago
Blizzard torrents WoW updates. They are reliable because Blizzard can just serve downloads like normal as if they just happened to be over the BitTorrent protocol, and clients can join up and help out when they're able. The company can encrypt the payload to maintain a semblance of licensing and run the biggest seeders themselves.
StudentStuff 8y ago
Yet both Microsoft and Blizzard have decided P2P file distribution is just fine and dandy to use for their customers. It seems the only downsides are a slight complexity increase to handle torrent downloads for files that most of your customers need, with the upside that those same clients get their files faster thanks to the additional bandwidth gained using P2P tech like BitTorrent. On the reliability side, you can easily include an HTTP web seed, though as long as the company offers the torrent on their fileserver, there isn't much benefit for doing that. Windows 10 P2P Distribution for Updates: https://lifehacker.com/windows-10-uses-your-bandwidth-to-distribute-updates-d-1721091469 https://lifehacker.com/windows-10-uses-your-bandwidth-to-dis... Blizzard/HTTP Web Seed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent
- blibble 8y ago
  blizzard binned bittorrent in 2015 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/16283439122 https://us.battle.net/forums/en/bnet/topic/16283439122
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    That they did, but P2P distribution of files is still alive and well used in numerous industries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent#Adoption

ChristianBundy 8y ago

You might be interested in Day and the Beaker browser, which apply the same sorts of technology to web content.

jedberg 8y ago

It’s mostly a privacy issue. For example, if Netflix used P2P, you’d be able to track which IPs had parts of which movies and start profiling Netflix customers. That would be bad. The problem with P2P is that you have to make what you have public. That’s fine for a game update where it’s all the same, but for movies there are huge privacy implications.

atomical 8y ago
It's a privacy issue either way. How long until shareholders demand that Netflix sell user data?
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Right, and the data is actually made more valuable by not being public with access controlled by a company like Netflix.
AnthonyMouse 8y ago
> It’s mostly a privacy issue. There is a simple way to fix that. You wouldn't want to force everyone to upload anyway (some are on metered connections etc.), so what you would do is offer a nominal discount for uploading, but if you choose it then you don't just host what you watch, you host whatever needs more hosting capacity. Then random third parties can't tell what you watch because what you host is random. This reduces the efficiency somewhat, but it's easy to minimize that: Don't give someone a hundred movies to host, give them one movie and have them host it a hundred times (over the course of a year).
- gruez 8y ago
  residential customers have really poor upload speeds so how many customers would you need to have to replace 1 caching server collocated at an ISP? short of having FTTH, most customers would have < 10Mb/s up. a dedicated server can have multiple 10Gb/s links. you'd be looking at hundreds or thousands of customers per caching box. the "nominal discount" you're offering would have to be tiny for it to make sense financially. so much so that most customers wouldn't even bother.

reaperducer 8y ago

It's astounding to me that BitTorrent isn't used more often for media distribution. A perfect use for it would be to distribute VNR’s (Video News Releases) and other audio and video from public relations firms and large companies. The big obstacle is introducing any new protocol into a large bureaucracy. It took a company I work with eight weeks to get their artist an SFTP program for his computer so he could send material to the printing companies; and another month to convince IT to open the ports in the local network. By then he’d just sent a bunch of DVD’s by messenger.

harrumph 8y ago
>A perfect use for it would be to distribute VNR’s (Video News Releases) and other audio and video from public relations firms and large companies. Can you please elaborate a little bit? My business understanding of VNRs is that they are not in demand per se, and are pushed/pitched out-of-band to (hopefully) receptive editors and news directors. Is this true and what does P2P add to this?
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Yes, and no. It depends a lot on the industry and the publication. For example, if you're a consumer products magazine, you will probably want whatever VNR Procter & Gamble has for its latest dessert topping/floor wax. It would be massively simpler for P&G to provide a torrent link on its website that interested publications could just click. Or, let's say you're a construction company that just built an awesome new bridge. A VNR with drone footage of the construction process on your website that could be downloaded via torrent with a click would be helpful for the TV stations in your market. I sometimes work with real estate developers. At this time, they're all sending video, huge photos, and massive PDF books to print, TV, and web publishers via Dropbox. Some even use Flickr for press photos. Torrenting those would seem to be a better method.
  - harrumph 8y ago
    I see - and thanks for the positively ancient SNL call-back! (dessert topping/floor wax). Being ancient myself, I spotted it right away. Further question: I too work with real estate developers. You're suggesting they publish a link to assets where the browser depends upon a torrent application to complete download, no? Or, alternatively, did things progress while I wasn't looking and now torrents can be completed in-browser?

codebje 8y ago

My network link is asymmetrical - I have very little upload bandwidth compared to download. This is not uncommon. BitTorrent is abysmal for me. It quickly saturates my uplink bandwidth, destroying downlink performance. Or I cap it, or it discovers a cap, and my upload rate is slow enough that I'm labelled a leech in the BitTorrent network and get a slow download rate. World of Warcraft's updater was absolute trash for me. I always got far better transfer rates turning off P2P and sucking up the congestion on the direct download option. BitTorrent simply doesn't work for most of the world's commercially available home links.

losteric 8y ago
BitTorrent doesn't necessarily mean everyone seeds, nor that access is free. If there was some kind of micropayments infrastructure for seeders/leechers/content owners, I would happily seed arbitrary-but-legal torrents with my 1000/1000mbps connections in exchange for credits towards media or cash to cover the connection ... While I imagine you'd pay to download using BitTorrent, with some tiny fraction going to me (proportional to resource consumption) but never seeding to others.
- amingilani 8y ago
  What you're talking about already exists and it's a joy — joystream to be precise [0] [0]: http://joystream.co http://joystream.co

Synaesthesia 8y ago

It is used, for example by Blizzard to distribute their games.

scrollaway 8y ago
Was. They use CDNs now.

a-saleh 8y ago

I remember blizzard using this ~7 years ago for at least some of their downloads. Not sure if it still does.

Tloewald 8y ago
They used it for WoW patches.

Buge 8y ago

It's sometimes used in game downloaders/updaters. But some people could be potentially mad that their upload data is being used when they don't want it used. Or depending on implementation, that uploading is going on in the background when they expect nothing to be happening. There might also be problems with firewalls or NAT.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Terretta 8y ago

Very early on (10 - 15 years ago), we used swarms across 14 data centers to rapidly distribute the ‘hottest’ video files to all the video servers’ local disk caches. Many companies back then tried to startup based on business model of doing this via end users as you suggest. It was mostly sunk by users’ pretty reasonable opinion they didn’t want to donate their upload bandwidth on their metered plan.

DanBC 8y ago

The BBC trialled peer-to-peer distribution for their early iPlayer. People were very upset about use of bandwidth. This would have been around 2007 when most Internet accounts in the UK had download limits. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer#Computer_platforms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_iPlayer#Computer_platforms

GordonS 8y ago
I remember thinking it was very brave of them at the time, with BitTorrent being branded as a villan then just as much as it is now. P2P is an interesting approach to large scale media distribution, but aside from the bandwidth issues, I imagine they were under immense pressure from copyright holders to steer clear of it.
- M2Ys4U 8y ago
  BBC R&D even tried using actual bittorrent to deliver content (as part of an EU research project) a while back: https://torrentfreak.com/bbc-trials-bittorrent-powered-hd-video-streaming-091203/ https://torrentfreak.com/bbc-trials-bittorrent-powered-hd-vi...

redm 8y ago

This was tried relatively unsuccessfully by a company named Red Swoosh (Travis Kalnik's baby before Uber). [1] The concept pre-dates BitTorrent, and the technology worked pretty well, I deployed it at scale. There were two big problems. First, users had to install the client which they didn't like doing. Second, users had to share their bandwidth and cache data they may not care about. In the real world, that turned out to be deal breakers, we had to drop Red Swoosh. I think the larger picture here, is if your Netflix, you're happy to centralize, put distro points of ISP networks, etc. to provide a great user experience. How many people would be annoyed about Netflix dragging down their internet connection to make the service a couple of bucks cheaper? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Swoosh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Swoosh

zzzcpan 8y ago
> In the real world, that turned out to be deal breakers In the US I presume, where ISPs are monopolies and probably had to be in on this to make it work. > How many people would be annoyed about Netflix dragging down their internet connection Why would it drag down anyone's internet connection? It's not hard to make it behave well and self-throttle, when internet connection is used for something else.

leetcrew 8y ago

it's really unfortunate. i would gladly pay $30/month or so for a legal service that did nothing other than replicate the current experience with torrent trackers. i would pay $100/month if every show/movie were guaranteed to be available in high bitrate 720p, 1080p, and (where applicable) 4K at the official airtime/release date, maybe throw in a few seedboxes for good measure. i don't even care whether the video starts immediately. im perfectly happy to wait ~10mins to get a decent buffer of chunks at the beginning of the file.