On Nov 19, 2007 3:16 PM, Wes Felter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> 1. You can do progressive downloading with BitTorrent using a
> sliding-window rarest-first policy. Thus I'm not convinced that a new
> protocol is a good idea.
>

Any data as to how well this works in practice?

That said, BitTorrent's metafile dependence precludes any sort of true
streaming video (i.e. live multicast/peercast).  The size of the broadcast
and checksums are hardcoded into the metafile, which precludes the size of
the resource changing as data is streamed to the server.

DistribuStream's protocol design has clients check the validity of
individual hashes whenever a chunk transfer completes.  This allows hashes
to be calculated lazily, and also means the resource length can continue to
grow even as it's being transferred.  This isn't supported by the current
implementation, but can be easily added in the future.

2. The PDTP spec is missing the client state machine and server
> connection state machine.
>

Yes, those are noticeable omissions.  The state machine diagrams actually
aren't available anywhere right now.  I'll be sure to get them documented
both in the protocol spec and elsewhere on the site soon.


> 3a. What is the rationale for the server-oriented PDTP design?
>

There's several reasons... it depends what network properties you consider
desirable:

- QoS via server prediction of network behavior
- Enforced uniformity of client behavior
- Central organization for dealing with nasty issues like cross-AS traffic
routing

3b. What is the server bandwidth usage? Intuitively, it will be higher
> than other protocols. If so, PDTP must provide some benefit that
> compensates -- what is it?
>

The client / server protocol is rather lightweight (check out a wire dump on
slide 11 of this:
http://distribustream.org/presentations/distribustream-brg-presentation.pdf)

Each chunk transfer requires only 5 datagrams exchanged between the peers
and the server, the longest of which will top out at around 300 bytes.

4. How is upstream bandwidth managed?
>

Servers may opt to throttle clients which aren't contributing to the network
by not initiating new chunk transfers unless they maintain a certain ratio
or rate of throughput, if that's what you mean.

This can be stored persistently by the server as well, much in the same way
private BitTorrent trackers do today.  However, rather than requiring
registration on a web site, this can all be done ad hoc, so long as the
client provides the same ID every time it connects to the server.

-- 
Tony Arcieri
ClickCaster, Inc.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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