If the webserver has adequate bandwidth I agree; I was assuming there were a bunch of underpowered or bandwidth-throttling webservers in use.
Incidentally, does anyone use any of the download managers out there? Out of curiosity I installed wxDownloadFast and did some cursory testing, but it seemed to download files *50% slower* than FireFox. Basically, it took a single big file, split it up into 5 ranges, and then downloaded those in parallel. But presumably due to the TCP competition issues Matthew mentioned, it was far faster to just do it all with a single request. I see reports that these download managers get massive installs -- FlashGot is like the #3 FireFox extension, and it only works if you already have *another* download manager installed; by itself it does nothing. Furthermore, most of the features are variants on "download all the links on this page", which I'm struggling to find a use for. Perhaps it's useful to download from the occasional open file share, but I don't see why this is so Can anyone explain what the draw of these products/features? I can only guess it somehow helps a lot of people get porn or warez, but I'm not seeing it. -david > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:p2p-hackers- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matthew Kaufman > Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 7:31 AM > To: theory and practice of decentralized computer networks > Subject: Re: [p2p-hackers] Xunlei > > David Barrett wrote: > > Wow, very interesting. I can see the value of downloading in parallel > from > > multiple mirrors... > I can't. Assuming they're all servers with public IP addresses and > reasonable outbound bandwidth, having each client load-balanced to a > single specific server and downloading over a single TCP stream is more > efficient for the network -- and provides better download performance > for the user -- than having multiple TCP streams fight over the same > congestion-limited download pipe. > > The only reason to download from multiple sources simultaneously is the > case where upstream capacity of serving nodes is a small fraction of > downstream capacity (see: P2P filesharing network where the files are > only present on ADSL or cable modem connected user machines), and thus > there'd be no way to fill the download pipe otherwise. > > Matthew Kaufman > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > _______________________________________________ > p2p-hackers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
