35% BitTorrent

[EvilAndrew]

Slashdot is reporting (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/04/1749257) the BitTorrent now accounts for up to 35% of the internet’s bandwidth usage.

This is interesting, because it makes it a prime target for the MPAA and RIAA as much of the content is illegal.  It would really stink if these organizations succeeded in stopping BtiTorrent or convincing ISPs to do so.  I use BitTorrent for both personal downloads
http://www.internetvetsfortruth.org/ and work related downloads
http://fedora.redhat.com/ and would hate to see it go.

[Brian Glass]

Wow... I had no idea that it was such a high percentage.
Perhaps a reason that it is so high because people start a big download using a client like ABC and just let it run until they have the full file on their computer.  What would you say is a "big file"?  Movies, Games, CDs, Software, etc.

I believe that it is only a matter of time before the MPAA and RIAA step in, just like with P2P.

[Tyler]

Speaking of that, today the MPAA anounced they're going to start suing people just like the RIAA.  The problem with this is that I think the MPAA has even more money than the RIAA.

Big surprise.

[EvilAndrew]

Just so we are clear, BitTorrent is P2P software.  It is, however, different from most P2P software in two respects.  

1) The "locate" method for content is not necessarily destributed.  It uses ".torrent" files that are usually found using a non-distributed protocol like HTTP.  Although, I have seen ".torrent" files distributed over other P2P systems. ;)

2) The "nameservice" method for finding peers is also not distributed.  Many P2P programs use centralized (non-distributed) name-services but usually they support hundreds of thousands of users with a great number of files.  With BT the name-service is tightly bound to the file locate method.  This provides a faster start to downloads and less stress on the name-server (called a tracker in BT speak) but makes some "community" features impossible.

Some specifics on the BT protocol are posted on the web (here).  One of the interesting aspects of the protocol is its grammatical (not functional) similarity to HTTP.

[Tyler]

It's not related all that much, but I wonder what the porn percentage of bandwidth is.

[Michael Kennedy]

according to my estimates, about 82% of the traffic going to and from my laptop was porn, so i'd guess around that much for the rest of the interweb as well.

[William Grim]

You are a bad bad kid.. haha.   J/K.