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Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

#71

Post by eklavya »

Protostome wrote: post #67
bawolff wrote: post #62

Part of the reason bit torrent works really well is that the file is downloaded in random order. It lets everyone cooperate, while still being robust to bad peers, bad network connections, churn etc. If you want live high quality streaming, a lot of reasons bit torrent works so well goes away. Latency matters. In bit torrent if the peer goes away, no big deal, just try again in 5 minutes with another peer, you are do…

If I remember correctly, PopcornTime was able to stream via BT. Your claims are mostly correct, but I think some compromises can be made to make BT clients streaming proof. For example: 1. locally-randomizing segments download order 2. Create a larger buffer 3. Prioritize parts coming from slower connections

The main difference is liveness of the stream. Live streams are much much more difficult and much less forgiving.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

#73

Post by lordnacho »

Protostome wrote: post #67
bawolff wrote: post #62

Part of the reason bit torrent works really well is that the file is downloaded in random order. It lets everyone cooperate, while still being robust to bad peers, bad network connections, churn etc. If you want live high quality streaming, a lot of reasons bit torrent works so well goes away. Latency matters. In bit torrent if the peer goes away, no big deal, just try again in 5 minutes with another peer, you are do…

If I remember correctly, PopcornTime was able to stream via BT. Your claims are mostly correct, but I think some compromises can be made to make BT clients streaming proof. For example: 1. locally-randomizing segments download order 2. Create a larger buffer 3. Prioritize parts coming from slower connections

This is still just streaming a static file though. Adjusting which segment to get will work, buffering will work, and people don't mind their movie starting a few seconds after they press play.

If I'm streaming live, I need the frame immediately, and it doesn't help much to get later frames after the frame I'm missing.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

#74

Post by sitkack »

memet_rush wrote: post #19
noman-land wrote: post #12

Isn't this what https://webtorrent.io/ is?

kinda but i think that's for files. I am specifically thinking for live content like twitch

The first demo, right on the landing page is streaming a movie from peers.

https://webtorrent.io/

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

#75

Post by rklaehn »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #25
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #24

There's iroh.computer which can use a relay/ do direct nat punching. They use bao hashing which is something that I discovered through them (IIRC) and its really nice. Could create such a protocol though bittorrent/ipfs is fine I once wanted to create a website which was just a static website. and I used some ipfs gateway to push it with my browser and got a link of that static website, all anonymous. Kind of great t…

Shame it's being abused by crypto bros who want to treat it as money. There are other genuinely useful crypto projects (like Monero for privacy and I don't like the idea of smart contracts) I really want to tell you the fact that most crypto is scam. These guys first went into crypto and now I am seeing so much crypto + AI. As someone who genuinely is interested in crypto from a technology (decentralization perspecti…

> Shame it's being abused by crypto bros who want to treat it as money.

Iroh contributor here. I don't know what you are referring to. Iroh is just a library to provide direct QUIC connections between devices, even if they are behind a NAT. We don't have any plans doing a blockchain or an ICO or anything like that.

I am not aware of any project called Iroh that is a scam, but if there is, please provide a link here. It's not us.

I know there have been some scammers trying to make a BLAKE3 coin or something, a year ago.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

#76

Post by jack_pp »

lordnacho wrote: post #73
Protostome wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I remember correctly, PopcornTime was able to stream via BT. Your claims are mostly correct, but I think some compromises can be made to make BT clients streaming proof. For example: 1. locally-randomizing segments download order 2. Create a larger buffer 3. Prioritize parts coming from slower connections

This is still just streaming a static file though. Adjusting which segment to get will work, buffering will work, and people don't mind their movie starting a few seconds after they press play. If I'm streaming live, I need the frame immediately, and it doesn't help much to get later frames after the frame I'm missing.

what if everyone agrees on a 10s delay?

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

#78

Post by pabs3 »

elmerfud wrote: post #2

People have tried to build BitTorrent clients to do this. As far as I know they never took off. The primary problem is you oftentimes don't get people who want to share back or who have firewalls or other connections that don't allow them to share back. So you end up with a few people who end up seeding everything out. The second problem is in order to watch a streaming protocol things need to arrive in order. It is…

https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent/

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

#80

Post by karel-3d »

bawolff wrote: post #62

Part of the reason bit torrent works really well is that the file is downloaded in random order. It lets everyone cooperate, while still being robust to bad peers, bad network connections, churn etc. If you want live high quality streaming, a lot of reasons bit torrent works so well goes away. Latency matters. In bit torrent if the peer goes away, no big deal, just try again in 5 minutes with another peer, you are do…

I am not convinced about the random order stuff. If most people will stream from the start then the start will be more seeded? So it's all good.

And the order is requested by the client, and there are clients that go in the sequential order, like Deluge

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