Bittorrent always makes me think about transfer-capped Internet connections. It feels like even wireline-based Internet connections in the USA are moving toward being transfer-capped. I don't see how Bittorrent works in that world.
Calling All Broadcasters
21–30 of 51 posts
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#22It's interesting that Bram (I assume it's still Bram's show over there) has finally gone with a new streaming-optimized protocol design. We argued about it years ago.
Here's Bram in 2004 arguing that live streaming is a niche market: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html
In the comments, "streamerp2p" is discussed, which I used as the basis for a proposal for live radio station streams along with Speex, back ~2005, when bandwidth was expensive. It's still around, apparently: http://www.streamerp2p.com/
Bittorrent itself can do streaming of static content: just request the blocks in order. It can also do streaming of live content if you chunk the live content and have an out-of-band way to update the torrent you're looking for, but that's not great.
In my proposal I mention some other systems as well:
Peercast: http://web.archive.org/web/20060207013338/http://www.peercas... (defunct, Internet Archive link)
P2P-Radio: http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/ (defunct)
Allcast: http://web.archive.org/web/20060805040005/http://allcast.com... (defunct, Internet Archive link)
Chaincast (dead and blocked from IA)
Abacast: http://web.archive.org/web/20061017041905/http://www.abacast... (IA link, they're still around but now cloud-based)
Xiph's IceShare: http://wiki.xiph.org/IceShare (defunct)
Robert Haarman's StreamDist prototype: http://inglorion.net.nyud.net:8090/software/#streamdist
Andrew Brampton's research and prototype: http://web.archive.org/web/20100325135652/http://www.lancs.a... (IA link)
Onion Networks' Swarmstreaming (defunct and blocked)
The proposal isn't worth posting any more; all the assumptions and business cases are obsoleted.
Today, rather than use a client at all, I'd probably push for WebRTC P2P support, funding patches in all the browsers and their mobile versions, incentivize people to upgrade their browsers, host with cheap bandwidth for everyone else, and just hold on until enough of the market has upgraded.
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#23It's interesting that Bram (I assume it's still Bram's show over there) has finally gone with a new streaming-optimized protocol design. We argued about it years ago. Here's Bram in 2004 arguing that live streaming is a niche market: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html In the comments, "streamerp2p" is discussed, which I used as the basis for a proposal for live radio station streams along with Speex, back ~20…
http://www.sopcast.com/
mac/win/nix/droid. we use it around olympics/world cup time. nix client is open source, anyone know an open source server?
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#24Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#25I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.
I remember reading about a P2P API inside Chrome, but that may have been just an experimental mode for WebRTC at the time. Having a built-in bittorrent technology would be a big addition to browsers, especially if they intend to use the technology for broadcasts to a lot of people in the future through WebRTC.
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#26I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.
I'm not sure it would be so much a net gain in cost savings so much as moving those costs around to the users and local ISPs who'd upstream traffic would increase. Personally I'd rather the content providers eat those costs.
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#27I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.
Check out Torque, tiny torrent client in the browser written in Javascript:
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#28It's interesting that Bram (I assume it's still Bram's show over there) has finally gone with a new streaming-optimized protocol design. We argued about it years ago. Here's Bram in 2004 arguing that live streaming is a niche market: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html In the comments, "streamerp2p" is discussed, which I used as the basis for a proposal for live radio station streams along with Speex, back ~20…
I agree with you that WebRTC is the obvious choice when it becomes available. It's simply too hard to get people to install a client. For users to install a client, the uses for it must be compelling enough to go through the trouble of installing an application. Dropbox is one example of how people will install software because the product offers something useful enough.
It seems like live streaming client programs simply don't have the critical mass of content available to force people to go to the trouble of installing specialized software.
The web is going to be a very exciting place indeed, once the webRTCPeerConnection.createDataChannel actually works and we can use application logic to send arbitrary payloads to peers over the internet.
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#29I never understood why torrent clients are not built into browsers and the defacto means of download. Would be huge cost savings.
Check out Torque, tiny torrent client in the browser written in Javascript: https://github.com/bittorrenttorque/btapp
It's actually not written in the browser. It's a javascript API that interfaces with a headless local process (communicating with AJAX over 127.0.0.1. It has issues with mixed secure-content warnings, though)
Re: Calling All Broadcasters
#30It's interesting that Bram (I assume it's still Bram's show over there) has finally gone with a new streaming-optimized protocol design. We argued about it years ago. Here's Bram in 2004 arguing that live streaming is a niche market: http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/4294.html In the comments, "streamerp2p" is discussed, which I used as the basis for a proposal for live radio station streams along with Speex, back ~20…
I agree with you that WebRTC is the obvious choice when it becomes available. It's simply too hard to get people to install a client. For users to install a client, the uses for it must be compelling enough to go through the trouble of installing an application. Dropbox is one example of how people will install software because the product offers something useful enough. It seems like live streaming client programs s…
Can someone create a WebRTC web app in this way, so one person can broadcast to millions through P2P technology? Or would the browser vendors need to make certain API's available before they can do that?