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> Try to watch/download a torrent file with small number of seeders and you'll get the experience you will be providing for the end user. I always wondered why

> Try to watch/download a torrent file with small number of seeders and you'll get the experience you will be providing for the end user. I always wondered why not combine the ways the media is served into a hybrid of P2P with the classic way by just using P2P (e.g. BitTorrent) and also seeding yourself (as the hoster). Just run a seedbox of the capacity you want/can and let the audience help you by handling a share of the load they can. Wouldn't this save you some bandwidth while keeping the same service quality?

aasasd 5y ago
Archive.org seems to do something like that with its downloads via torrent: it appears as a web-seed for the torrents, and I usually snatch the files from those seeds faster than DHT seeds usually show up (which kinda undermines the idea, though). Frankly, I never saw any other seeds on Archive's torrents—but one of those I snatched has a ratio of 3 now, so presumably it does work as intended.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
> let the audience help you by handling a share of the load So why should we help these for-profit corporations? We're supposed to just donate our bandwidth to them? Are we getting a discount in exchange or are they just gonna pocket their bandwidth cost savings at our expense? Seeding internet archive data is one thing. Letting corporations invisibly take advantage of resources we pay for is a completely different matter.
- Retric 5y ago
  Pass some of the savings in to the customer via lower prices and it’s a win win. Alternatively, enabling P2P gives faster downloads. That’s rarely noticeable with streaming but people often want to download stuff for offline viewing.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > Pass some of the savings in to the customer via lower prices Does that ever happen? They'll probably keep prices exactly the same.
    - zrm 5y ago
      If they have lower costs, some companies will exist that otherwise couldn't. Then you get options that wouldn't exist and more competition drives down prices.
    - Retric 5y ago
      It happens constantly in IT, look at CDN prices per GB over time for example. It’s only the extreme prevalence of monopolies and free services that confuses the issue.
e9 5y ago
Roku can probably provide this service given they control hardware and can provide SDK for the apps to do it.
elsjaako 5y ago
This is what peertube does. That's why you can watch videos normally despite most not being popular.

aasasd 5y ago

Archive.org seems to do something like that with its downloads via torrent: it appears as a web-seed for the torrents, and I usually snatch the files from those seeds faster than DHT seeds usually show up (which kinda undermines the idea, though). Frankly, I never saw any other seeds on Archive's torrents—but one of those I snatched has a ratio of 3 now, so presumably it does work as intended.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> let the audience help you by handling a share of the load So why should we help these for-profit corporations? We're supposed to just donate our bandwidth to them? Are we getting a discount in exchange or are they just gonna pocket their bandwidth cost savings at our expense? Seeding internet archive data is one thing. Letting corporations invisibly take advantage of resources we pay for is a completely different matter.

Retric 5y ago
Pass some of the savings in to the customer via lower prices and it’s a win win. Alternatively, enabling P2P gives faster downloads. That’s rarely noticeable with streaming but people often want to download stuff for offline viewing.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Pass some of the savings in to the customer via lower prices Does that ever happen? They'll probably keep prices exactly the same.
  - zrm 5y ago
    If they have lower costs, some companies will exist that otherwise couldn't. Then you get options that wouldn't exist and more competition drives down prices.
  - Retric 5y ago
    It happens constantly in IT, look at CDN prices per GB over time for example. It’s only the extreme prevalence of monopolies and free services that confuses the issue.

e9 5y ago

Roku can probably provide this service given they control hardware and can provide SDK for the apps to do it.

elsjaako 5y ago

This is what peertube does. That's why you can watch videos normally despite most not being popular.