Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

BitTorrent v2

blog.libtorrent.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 576 posts

Re: BitTorrent v2

#261

Post by jandrese »

bonoboTP wrote: post #258
rolleiflex wrote: post #83

I make P2P tools too. [0] Let me tell you this: Bittorrent is one of the few things in the space that actually ... works. It works not in the sense that there is a white paper that should work. Not in the sense that there are a few company-made swarms hosted on industrial servers that keep everyone up and alive, so that the thing gives the impression the 'P2P' network does work. Not in the sense that there is a very-…

Not sure how intentional this was, but for piracy, the killer feature is that curation and quality control could be centralized to well managed trackers, instead of the previous bazaar like situation on Napster/Kazaa/DC++/etc. where everyone shared their inconsistently named mess of files, lots of slightly different versions of the same movie etc. With torrents you can browse the tracker's website and see one canonic…

One thing BitTorrent did that was smart was to completely ignore discovery. We already have the web, and putting tiny files up on web pages is a much better solution than some half baked built-in distributed search service.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#262

Post by gruez »

StavrosK wrote: post #218
bawolff wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tit-for-tat algorithm is what makes bit torrent special and solved a real problem with the previous gnutella-esque generation of p2p file sharing programs. As far as i know emule did not have that at the time.

How does tit-for-tat work? Is it still enabled? I don't think I've seen it much lately.

It's implemented in the choking algorithm. Basically if bandwidth or upload slots are limited, your peer with preferentially upload to peers that have reciprocated to you. AFAIK most clients implement this.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#263

Post by brokenmachine »

Hamuko wrote: post #148
bserge wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't know. I just think about the bandwidth we all use sometimes and it seems extremely wasteful and it bothers me for some reason. I use around ~200-300 GB/month, which I thought was a lot until I saw how much other people use :D

> I use around ~200-300 GB/month Pretty sure I use more than that in a day.

That's a lot of linux isos to download per day.

Seriously, why would you use that much data per day for? Even getting full blu-rays you wouldn't be able to watch that many.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#264

Post by brokenmachine »

geoffmunn wrote: post #155
slyall wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in New Zealand we used to charge-per-byte but as things got cheaper this has largely gone away. Some of the cheaper how fibre accounts have something like a 100G/month limit but I guess it isn't worth the trouble to charge even here where bandwidth is much more expensive than the US.

Flashback: I was on Actrix which charged $5 per megabyte. Downloading Netscape Navigator 2 nearly bankrupted me. I used to browse the internet with images disabled, which ironically gave me an appreciation for accessibility issues which served me well later in life. When Xtra came out at $2.50 per hour, it was a complete game changer.

Netscape Navigator 2 is 8Mb, for anyone who was wondering.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#265

Post by Ericson2314 »

Thorentis wrote: post #248
tomxor wrote: post #215

> not only uses a hash tree, but it forms a hash tree for every file in the torrent [...] > Files that are identical can also more easily be identified across different swarms, since their root hash only depends on the content of the file. Wait, content addressed blobs across swarms... does that mean torrents made by completely different people at different times that happen to contain one or more identical files can…

This right here is the biggest new feature in my opinion, and should have been discussed in more depth in the announcement. I also think they should have pursued this avenue further before releasing v2. Content addressing is one of the big advantages of p2p applications, and IPFS has been pushing it for a long time. Just imagine if this was done all the way down to the piece level. You have two different torrents (sa…

Hopefully it would also be good for interopt between the two, as anything with a small enough block size could be picked up by IPLD.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#266

Post by dane-pgp »

jandrese wrote: post #261
bonoboTP wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how intentional this was, but for piracy, the killer feature is that curation and quality control could be centralized to well managed trackers, instead of the previous bazaar like situation on Napster/Kazaa/DC++/etc. where everyone shared their inconsistently named mess of files, lots of slightly different versions of the same movie etc. With torrents you can browse the tracker's website and see one canonic…

One thing BitTorrent did that was smart was to completely ignore discovery. We already have the web, and putting tiny files up on web pages is a much better solution than some half baked built-in distributed search service.

It was good design to decouple the transfer protocol from the search protocol, to allow different technologies to be explored, but in practice people ended up relying on the "good enough" solution of using the web for search.

Setting the precedent that media companies can seize domain names and force ISPs to block access to search engines if they don't like some of the search results (while ruining the lives of the people running those search engines) is arguably a high price to pay for this improved search service.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#267

Post by sanderjd »

nicbou wrote: post #257
dchuk wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the problem with all cryptocurrency currently. It’s a massive user experience issue, in the sense that users have to experience the technical bullshit of how the currencies work, completely missing the brilliant part of real money: it just works. I hand people money, they give me things. I swipe my credit card, I get things. I can’t remember who aid it originally, but there’s a great test you can give…

It has been a few years, and despite a few attempts, I still don't really understand bitcoin. Yes yes ledgers and proof of work and yada yada, but I still don't know what I would need to do to buy something with bitcoin right now. As I understand I need to do something that's pretty much exactly like opening a bank account, but transactions take forever, they cost money, and the currency is not accepted by any busine…

It's simple: it is an abject failure as a currency. It is fairly successful as a security for the purpose of speculation. If you aren't a financial speculator, you really don't need to pay attention to it.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#268

Post by gkfasdfasdf »

hysan wrote: post #69
mac01021 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't ISPs bill by the gigabyte and be done with it?

Some thought experiments for you to try: - Does this guarantee that you get the speed that you pay for? If not, then should the price during heavy congestion cost less per GB? I’ve had the unfortunate luck of having lived in areas where the internet is unusable for anything other than email and light browsing during peak hours. Bonus: Do you know why this happens? If not, I encourage you to research this. - How will…

I think the answer to most of these questions is, let the market decide. E.g. consider this: congestion during peak hours is bad now, but there is currently no penalty on an ISP for being slow. However if billing was based on bytes moved, for an ISP to underserve during times of demand means lost revenue. Thus ISPs would be incentivized to provide the best service.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#269

Post by xvilka »

dane-pgp wrote: post #266
jandrese wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing BitTorrent did that was smart was to completely ignore discovery. We already have the web, and putting tiny files up on web pages is a much better solution than some half baked built-in distributed search service.

It was good design to decouple the transfer protocol from the search protocol, to allow different technologies to be explored, but in practice people ended up relying on the "good enough" solution of using the web for search. Setting the precedent that media companies can seize domain names and force ISPs to block access to search engines if they don't like some of the search results (while ruining the lives of the p…

Can it be solved with IPFS-based trackers?

Re: BitTorrent v2

#270

Post by sideeffffect »

According to the blog, BitTorrent v2 now tightens the possible block size to power of 2. But does that still allow for the blocks to be variably sized and created by, for example, a rolling hash-based chunker, like Buzzhash or Rabin?

I'm asking, because this would allow for sharing of big files across swarms, even though the files might be slightly different.

Post reply on HN