4 ms·

Possibly, it's been a while since I've used it. Companies make weird decisions all the time, like MS killing Skype's p2p system which destroyed the whole app.

Possibly, it's been a while since I've used it. Companies make weird decisions all the time, like MS killing Skype's p2p system which destroyed the whole app. Quoting mobile as the reason when there was no reason the PC/Mac clients couldn't continue on.

Gigachad 4y ago
Tbh I can't think of a single commercial p2p product left. Mobile was certainly the driving force, but I think better/cheaper cloud infrastructure contributed. These days all the major content distribution companies have static content positioned inside ISP data centers so its fairly cheap and fast to distribute. Even laptops probably contributed. A lot of people are going to be using laptops on the go and connected to mobile hotspots. You'd be pissed off if a game client used all of your battery and data cap in the background. Even the p2p of Skype was a pain, you had to carefully coordinate the transfer of large files. You both had to stay online and manually restart them. While now the central server holds it and it’s way more convenient. Edit: I just remembered that windows lets you opt in to p2p updates but that's the only thing I can think of.
- jaimex2 4y ago
  I think what made Skype popular was it worked everywhere and was quite good at bypassing firewalls/DPI. It was everyone's goto as it had a high chance of success especially in schools/uni. CGNAT could be another explanation. I still don't see why you wouldn't try and have p2p as a back channel that's attempted. If it can increase deployment speeds and improve user experience then its a huge plus. Think of any software updates at schools or Steam updates in a block of units. Most consoles and PC games still spend too much time with loading bars pulling 20 Gb updates.
  - Gigachad 4y ago
    Slow updates isn’t really fixed by p2p though. Steam downloads run as fast as your internet speed. P2P can’t be any faster than that other than some highly unlikely situation that another machine on your local network already has the game. And that’s where p2p died. CDNs got really really fast and the user benefit reduced to nothing while the possible disruption from seeding large files remained. Especially as consumer upload isn’t that great so any uploading can disrupt online games.

Gigachad 4y ago

Tbh I can't think of a single commercial p2p product left. Mobile was certainly the driving force, but I think better/cheaper cloud infrastructure contributed. These days all the major content distribution companies have static content positioned inside ISP data centers so its fairly cheap and fast to distribute. Even laptops probably contributed. A lot of people are going to be using laptops on the go and connected to mobile hotspots. You'd be pissed off if a game client used all of your battery and data cap in the background. Even the p2p of Skype was a pain, you had to carefully coordinate the transfer of large files. You both had to stay online and manually restart them. While now the central server holds it and it’s way more convenient. Edit: I just remembered that windows lets you opt in to p2p updates but that's the only thing I can think of.

jaimex2 4y ago
I think what made Skype popular was it worked everywhere and was quite good at bypassing firewalls/DPI. It was everyone's goto as it had a high chance of success especially in schools/uni. CGNAT could be another explanation. I still don't see why you wouldn't try and have p2p as a back channel that's attempted. If it can increase deployment speeds and improve user experience then its a huge plus. Think of any software updates at schools or Steam updates in a block of units. Most consoles and PC games still spend too much time with loading bars pulling 20 Gb updates.
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Slow updates isn’t really fixed by p2p though. Steam downloads run as fast as your internet speed. P2P can’t be any faster than that other than some highly unlikely situation that another machine on your local network already has the game. And that’s where p2p died. CDNs got really really fast and the user benefit reduced to nothing while the possible disruption from seeding large files remained. Especially as consumer upload isn’t that great so any uploading can disrupt online games.