3 ms·
Not really. In a p2p scenario with n participants, every participant needs to send (n - 1) copies of the packet. In a centralised scenario, each participant s
by jech 6y ago
Not really. In a p2p scenario with n participants, every participant needs to send (n - 1) copies of the packet. In a centralised scenario, each participant sends just one copy of the packet, and the server duplicates it (n - 1) times.
Whether this is wasteful depends on where the server is located. If the server is close to the receivers, it is a net gain. If the server is in the US while all of the participants are in Europe, it's a terrible waste, since all of the packets need to cross the Atlantic.
Server federation solves the issue: you put one server in the US, one in Europe, and each packet crosses the Atlantic exactly once.
- amelius 6y agoShouldn't there be some kind of broadcast mode, where TCP/IP solves the problem of routing (n-1) identical packets in the most efficient way possible? How does this work when e.g. the BBC broadcasts an internet live stream with millions of viewers? Shouldn't a conference call work in essentially the same way?
- jech 6y agoDuplicating a packet in the network is called multicast, and it isn't implemented in the real Internet. Most large-scale broadcasts use technologies such as HTTP Live Streaming (HLS) or MPEG-DASH, which carve a video into 3-second intervals that are then distributed using ordinary HTTP over a CDN. The problem with these technologies is that they have a latency of a few seconds, which means that you cannot have a meaningful conversation over them.