On 03/07/07, Ian Betteridge <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On 03/07/07, Brian Butterworth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>
> The whole point of using peer-to-peer networks is that after the first
> copy is grabbed from the initial seeder, all other clients grab their
> "blocks" from other peers, not the initial seed.  The clients are designed
> to collect the least-available blocks from the network first, which causes
> them to no longer be the least available.
>

But the problem is that in practice, demand for a file is very high
initially and tails off quickly - which means that the original seeder is
flooded with a lot of requests at the same time. A case in point is the way
that Blizzard uses P2P to release patches for World of Warcraft. Because the
number of seeders initially (when there is highest demand) is very low,
there is a huge demand from everyone trying to download around the same
time. As anyone who's played WoW will tell you, the best way to get anything
on patch day is for one person to download it, and everyone else download it
directly from them, ignoring P2P completely. Given that iPlayer compresses
demand into a seven-day window, I'd imagine that situation is actually going
to be replicated very widely for popular programmes.



assume= ass out of u and me?

I think you will find that there is a longer window due to "series
stacking".

Has the BBC has used paid-for KDM rather than free-and-open BitTorrent so
they can do traffic shaping?


> Of course.  One advantage of peer-to-peer networks of this type is that
> the clients can grab files from the clients that appear "closest" on the
> network, which means the communications are often local, metropolitan,
> national well before they go onto the slower international links.
>

Actually, the international links are often faster, thanks to the vast
cross-Atlantic bandwidth. It's more often local links which are slow.
Grabbing a file from someone in New York on an academic server (with a nice
fat pipe) is going to be a lot faster than getting something from someone
down the road using a 2Mb down/256Kb up broadband connection.



They might have higher bandwidth but they are shared among more peers...  I
can go into it all, but what I know is commercial confidential...



 TCP/IP is specifically designed to share bandwidth, and that's what it
> will do.
>


TCP/IP on its own is actually incredibly inefficient at sharing bandwidth.
Because all TCP/IP packets are created equally, it doesn't know the
difference between a packet containing voice data (which needs to get to its
destination promptly) and one containing email data (which can be delayed by
a few seconds without any meaningful damage). If you were designing a
protocol from scratch for bandwidth efficiency and considering quality of
service, it would look very different from TCP/IP.



What utter rubbish.  The whole reason the internet exists is TCP/IP.
Otherwise we would all be stuck with our 64k synchronous stuff that the
Telcos wished us to use.


That's why solutions like MPLS are used, effectively enclosing TCP/IP
packets which additional information describing what the packet contains and
how routers should treat it.



It's still better to understand the nature of the network, rather than fight
against it!



 The job of your ISP is to provide you with bandwidth - that is their
> job.  Remember just because you have some crappy copper providing slow
> ADSL to your home, the backbone fiber network has an unlimited speed and
> capacity (in theory).
>

Unfortunately, backbones don't have unlimited bandwidth even in theory -
and, in practice, the demands on them are growing faster than additional
bandwidth can be added. That's why providers run their own backbones are
utilizing Next Generation Networks based on MPLS, so they can categorize
traffic and ensure quality of service for all their users.



There is no real limit to the speed data can be flashed down a fibreoptic
cable - the limitation is the equipment, which can (and has for decades)
been improved by Moores Law.




>
> Thus everyone moaning about the iPlayer!!!!  If we are paying for
> distribution, the BBC's restrictions are offensive!
>

No, they're not. In fact, here's a better deal: No iPlayer at all, and in
five years time you can pay Sky for the privilege of watching TV over the
internet. I assure you that they'll charge you a whole lot more.



I think the title of this post is "BBC Ofcom complaint raised" which was
what I was refering to.

Sky will be dead in five years time, Moores Law will make IP delivery more
capable than satellite - don't forget that Sky doesn't own the satellites,
the uplinks, the encyption/subscription system.

Look at the share of viewing for Sky, no-one is watching Movies or Sky One
anymore

http://ukfree.tv/barb/All_Sky_Movies.png
http://ukfree.tv/barb/Sky_One.png

Only the Sports channels are being watched:

http://ukfree.tv/barb/All_Sky_Sports.png

--

Brian Butterworth
www.ukfree.tv

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