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Using WebRTC makes the file "live", in that it publishes from the current timestamp instead of when the publishing started. In principle I think BitTorrent can

Using WebRTC makes the file "live", in that it publishes from the current timestamp instead of when the publishing started. In principle I think BitTorrent can be adapted to this, but essentially the output "file" doesn't hash correctly so I think it would be a lot of hacks to the point where it's avoiding actually using most of the parts of BitTorrent anyways. In particular this is evident on the DHT, my understanding is the DHT actually stores fragments of data and BEP44 verifies integrity. In my implementation, the DHT stores some metadata for who can publish the data because the media stream is live and we don't want to broadcast every packet over the DHT. Of course, I'm new to BitTorrent so that's my understanding. I'd love it if I could use more BitTorrent components directly :)

remram 5y ago
I missed the "live" part in "live video cdn". Got it, thanks. I've used apps like Ace Stream and I know BitTorrent Inc launched a live streaming service a few years back [1] but I can definitely see the appeal of better, web-based solutions. I also know PeerTube has a Live feature now, but I have no idea how they do it. I think they use WebTorrent (at least for the non-live videos). [1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/bittorrent-inc-announces-live-streaming-tv-service-powered-by-p2p/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/bitto...
- kevmo314 5y ago
  Yeah I saw that and I tried it out as well, my experience was it was pretty high latency. My understanding is they were shoehorning HLS into BitTorrent so latency is governed by the longest segment length. Unfortunately there's a tradeoff if the segment length is too short then BitTorrent starts not behaving well and if it's too long then HLS will increase in latency. It's really cool tech though and especially doing it back before WebRTC was really a thing was an achievement. My goal for the CDN is to make it lower latency that it could be used for video conferencing. In practice I have more of a one-to-million distribution in mind but it's a cool puzzle. If you're interested, I'd love to talk more! I'm in NYC if you happen to be too, I love meeting people interested in live video :)

remram 5y ago

I missed the "live" part in "live video cdn". Got it, thanks. I've used apps like Ace Stream and I know BitTorrent Inc launched a live streaming service a few years back [1] but I can definitely see the appeal of better, web-based solutions. I also know PeerTube has a Live feature now, but I have no idea how they do it. I think they use WebTorrent (at least for the non-live videos). [1]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/bittorrent-inc-announces-live-streaming-tv-service-powered-by-p2p/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/bitto...

kevmo314 5y ago
Yeah I saw that and I tried it out as well, my experience was it was pretty high latency. My understanding is they were shoehorning HLS into BitTorrent so latency is governed by the longest segment length. Unfortunately there's a tradeoff if the segment length is too short then BitTorrent starts not behaving well and if it's too long then HLS will increase in latency. It's really cool tech though and especially doing it back before WebRTC was really a thing was an achievement. My goal for the CDN is to make it lower latency that it could be used for video conferencing. In practice I have more of a one-to-million distribution in mind but it's a cool puzzle. If you're interested, I'd love to talk more! I'm in NYC if you happen to be too, I love meeting people interested in live video :)