Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (175 mails)

[Christian Boltz <opensuse@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

on Montag, 21. Juli 2008, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> The Monday 2008-07-21 at 17:09 +0200, Peter Poeml wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I read a study of some European university that contradicted this.
> They experimentally used bittorrent in the intranet to deploy
> software updates to the entire intranet (thousands of computer
> updating (windows?) at the same time, and they discovered that it was
> way faster than having some dedicated update servers in the same
> intranet. They found a legal use for it that was better that the
> normally used solution.

Yes, that's a usecase where p2p fits perfectly:
- _all_ machines in the network need (and seed) the same file
- all machines have 100 MBit upload connections in the intranet
- of course some hundred seeders are faster than a singe server, which 
  is limited by hard disk or (with enough RAM) network interface 
  performance
- assuming the BitTorrent client is clever enough, it can download the 
  files from its direct neigborhood and not from the other "end" of the 
  network

Unfortunately the situation in the internet differs:
- unfortunately ;-) must people still run the other[tm] operating 
  system, so the percentage of people who need and seed the openSUSE 
  updates would be much lower
- internet connection of most people is worse than in an intranet.
  Especially, the upload bandwith is usually quite small.

This doesn't mean that BitTorrent is useless (I'm seeding the 11.0 KDE 
CD - 33 GB uploaded so far ;-)  - but the overhead doesn't make it very 
useful for small files IMHO.


Regards,

Christian Boltz
-- 
[ Yes ] [ No ]
... used for harmless errors or simple questions: "It's high time you
had your cup of coffee! Would you like your KDE to prepare one for you?"
[Lukas Ocilka in opensuse-factory - YaST2 button styleguide]
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