Hi, I am responding to the subject: "what about bittorent for everything?" (rather old mail -- I didn't realize the question until now though, the original subject of the thread was different)) The answer is: No. Bittorrent is not suitable for everything, because 1) P2P is only suitable for large files; but many files are tiny. Its overhead and complexity makes it unattractive for small files. P2P's success is largely based on its ability to escape legal control. 3) P2P is not optimal for networks, when used at large scale. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segmented_downloading for general information, or more specifically, read up on the "Application-Layer Traffic Optimization (ALTO)" problem at http://alto.tilab.com/. Executive summary: P2P technology lacks knowledge about network topology. Metalinks however can be used for everything. They incur very small overhead, and they embrace P2P, in addition to HTTP/FTP, and have additional advantages over those technologies, for example the ability to embed PGP signatures, which is unique. Peter -- "WARNING: This bug is visible to non-employees. Please be respectful!" SUSE LINUX Products GmbH Research & Development