On 26. July 2004 at 12:10AM -0400, Travis Crump <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Paul Johnson wrote: > > csj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > > > A number of media files I want to download are available > > > only on bittorrent format. I know about the advantages of > > > bittorrent for broadband users with underutilized > > > bandwidth. But I'm on dialup. My bandwidth gets saturated > > > with a simple "wget -c linux.iso" (a 52K modem that feels > > > more like 45K). So are there any disadvantages to using > > > bittorent with a plain dialup line? > > > > > > You will never finish the download. Your connection is too > > slow. > > I routinely finish 200M-350M bittorrent downloads over dialup > plus a 700M knoppix bittorrent download once.Granted it took a > while, but as long as the torrent is popular enough that it > will be available for a while it is doable. Knoppix is "popular enough" that there are more than enough speedy (for dialup users) ftp and http mirrors to download it from. The one time I got the download wrong, I used rsync for two hours. Does bittorrent come with a guarantee that the bits I download are good? > The biggest problems I've run into is that it saturates your > connection much more 'effectively' than normal downloads, it > sometimes dies when you lose your connection and needs to be > restarted [which in turn will cause you to 'lose' a couple of > megs since partial 'pieces' don't seem to resume], and your > download rate will be about half that of a normal download [at > best]. Does this mean the bittorrent upload rate equals the download rate? This doesn't look good. A look at my ppp stats shows that for the 159MB I downloaded this day, I sent out 4MB. This is while downloading (ftp and http) two linux isos, a 27MB video clip (mplayer), surfing (w3m text-mode), and sending out a few emails (no attachments). > But if it is your only source for the file... Sadly it is (theora.org). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]