On 6/17/08, Christopher Morrow <morrowc.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 9:53 AM, Netfortius <netfortius@gmail.com> wrote:

...

Has anybody used (and been successful at) a bit-torrent-like agent for fast distribution of LEGAL software (install programs of large-DVD size), across multiple sites, all over the globe, with bad WAN connectivity?

<snip> most of the larger free-nix's do BT downloads on release day(s).

Revision3 distributes their content via BT. There were rumors of Disney and Apple moving to BT models for their content distribution at one point as well.

<snip> I believe World of Warcraft uses Bittorrent to push out updates as well (Steam may, haven't checked, would make sense though). Something we've been working with for a client is using Amazon's S3 service to host the tracker, as S3 will natively handle serving it (both the content and the tracker, you simply need to append ?torrent to the S3 request). HTH, -brandon

On 18 Jun 2008, at 10:42, Adrian Chadd wrote:

<random type="idea from tonight"> If only there was a way for a SP to run a BitTorrent type service for their clients, subscribing the BT server(s) to known-good (ie, not warez-y) torrents pre-seeded from trusted sources and then leaving it the hell alone and not having to continuously dump specific torrent files into it. </random>

Automatically leeching and then seeding for long periods is trivial to set up if you can get an RSS feed with torrent enclosures. It is my (highly theoretical, naturally) understanding that many BitTorrent trackers make such feeds available. However just because you have a fast, on-net seed for particular torrents doesn't mean that your on-net leechers will necessarily pick it up. The behaviour I have observed with BitTorrent is that clients are handed a relatively short list of potential peers by the tracker, and it's quite common for sensible, close, local peers not to be included. My assumption has been that the set of potential peers passed to the client is assembled randomly. If this behaviour is widespread (i.e. if my observations are valid and my interpretation of those observations reasonable) then the more popular the content, the less likely leechers are to see the seed you want them to see. This relegates your local, on-net, fast seed to be a way of distributing unpopular content (that which is not being seeded by many other people). There has been at least one presentation at NANOG in the past couple of years which describes the benefit to ISPs of p2p, by virtue of keeping traffic for popular content on-net. From memory, however, that presentation was based on a non-deployed p2p protocol which made more of an effort to help peers find local peers than the clients I described above. Joe

On 19/06/2008, at 2:52 AM, Joe Abley wrote:

On 18 Jun 2008, at 10:42, Adrian Chadd wrote:

...

<random type="idea from tonight"> If only there was a way for a SP to run a BitTorrent type service for their clients, subscribing the BT server(s) to known-good (ie, not warez-y) torrents pre-seeded from trusted sources and then leaving it the hell alone and not having to continuously dump specific torrent files into it. </random>

Automatically leeching and then seeding for long periods is trivial to set up if you can get an RSS feed with torrent enclosures. It is my (highly theoretical, naturally) understanding that many BitTorrent trackers make such feeds available.

However just because you have a fast, on-net seed for particular torrents doesn't mean that your on-net leechers will necessarily pick it up. The behaviour I have observed with BitTorrent is that clients are handed a relatively short list of potential peers by the tracker, and it's quite common for sensible, close, local peers not to be included. My assumption has been that the set of potential peers passed to the client is assembled randomly.

If this behaviour is widespread (i.e. if my observations are valid and my interpretation of those observations reasonable) then the more popular the content, the less likely leechers are to see the seed you want them to see. This relegates your local, on-net, fast seed to be a way of distributing unpopular content (that which is not being seeded by many other people).

There has been at least one presentation at NANOG in the past couple of years which describes the benefit to ISPs of p2p, by virtue of keeping traffic for popular content on-net. From memory, however, that presentation was based on a non-deployed p2p protocol which made more of an effort to help peers find local peers than the clients I described above.

There was a product around that would keep track of torrents and fudge the tracker responses to direct you to on-net peers where possible. Not sure what it's called. Inline box thing, much like Sandvine, Allot, etc. I imagine you could either inject the details of a local seed you're running, or keep track of on-net users and inject those. From a tracker software point of view, it would be fairly trivial to weight peer lists to prefer peers within the same ASN I imagine. Perhaps that could be turned in to same country, or what not. Better, combine it with some kind of rough AS adjacency graph and <insert algorithm here> and viola. Is there any data available that would let that happen easily? Obviously routing tables for the ASN/IP mapping, but what about rough ASN adjacency? It doesn't really need to be updated that often - even CAIDA's yearly data that they use to make their pretty pictures could work OK. Seems like win/win/win - linux distribution vendors can pride themselves on how much faster their torrents run, end users get better speeds for their torrents, networks move less traffic off-net. .. this is the part where someone bustles off and makes it go. -- Nathan Ward

On Jun 18, 2008, at 10:42 AM, Adrian Chadd wrote:

On Tue, Jun 17, 2008, Christopher Morrow wrote:

...

most of the larger free-nix's do BT downloads on release day(s). Revision3 distributes their content via BT. There were rumors of Disney and Apple moving to BT models for their content distribution at one point as well.

<random type="idea from tonight"> If only there was a way for a SP to run a BitTorrent type service for their clients, subscribing the BT server(s) to known-good (ie, not warez-y) torrents pre-seeded from trusted sources and then leaving it the hell alone and not having to continuously dump specific torrent files into it. </random>

Ah, if only there was a way for my SP to go and look all over the web and figure out what pages are acceptable for me to browse and block out all of the other stuff like porn and warez and phishing --- and other objectionable content like creationism / evolution [delete whichever is appropriate ], those bastard [insert your least favorite ethnic / religious group here ] and any mention of [insert political party]..... Oh, and anything to do with clowns, they freak me out... Yes, P2P is not the web, but the general principle still applies -- I don't think that handing over the censorship keys to my ISP is a reasonable solution... W

Hm!

Adrian

-- Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. -- J.R.R. Tolkien

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 10:42:22PM +0800, Adrian Chadd wrote: [...]

<random type="idea from tonight"> If only there was a way for a SP to run a BitTorrent type service for their clients, subscribing the BT server(s) to known-good (ie, not warez-y) torrents pre-seeded from trusted sources and then leaving it the hell alone and not having to continuously dump specific torrent files into it. </random>

Modifying the P2P protocols might help find good seeds, etc. However, I always like to take this thought a bit further and combine it with a particular Network Neutrality "solution." Imagine a world where "Net Neutral" means that you have a neutral layer 2 architecture and you're free to choose the layer 3 provider. (Model it on US West/Qwest's original DSL product.) Then, sprinkle in a *bunch* of ISPs that must have transparent layer 3 policies. Let them block/fold/mutilate/spindle/synthesize packets at their whim -- as long as they *tell* the customer what they're going to do. In the end, I can see ISPs that do *nothing* to your traffic, and charge what we would call "normal" pricing. There would be cut-rate ISPs that would promise best-effort, but will throttle if they have congestion issues. If you're an ISP, you might even try to cut a deal with the RIAA and/or MPAA so your customers have *fast* access to legitimate content. As a content provider, I would look seriously into subsidizing the access costs so that I could capture an end user... Guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue...