DJA wrote:
Maybe it's just me, but I have never gotten any speed advantage using
Bittorrent for anything. Ever. It's always been at least a magnitude
faster just to go get the file in the usual way. Makes me suspect that
Cox is one of the growing number of ISP's that squeeze the tube whenever
they suspect a Bittorrent stream.
Encrypt and change the port. That tends to stop bandwidth shaping.
You also have been fortunate to want a file from somebody who has an
upload pipe that's bigger than your download.
However, there is the issue of bandwidth charges. Even if you get your
Linux .ISO at the same speed as a direct download, the BitTorrent
download costs the original source less money since not all of the
traffic comes from their ISP/Colo.
The other big advantage to BitTorrent is when something *really* popular
gets released and everybody hits it *right now*. It's the old bandwidth
vs. latency problem. The latency is still size/upload speed of original
source. The bandwidth is upload speed*time. However, in BitTorrent,
the bandwidth is upload speed*time*number of users.
Thus, in theory, a 10,000 person swarm can get the popular file in the
same amount of time as just 1 person. That's a big advantage. Linux
ISO's tend to have this problem.
Believe me, YouTube would like to be running a "torrent" system of some
form right now. $1 million/month and climbing in bandwidth charges
because they deliver every single stream themselves, that's gotta hurt.
-a
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