Re: [opensuse] Feeble of brain


----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard" <rick47@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <opensuse@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2009 12:47 PM
Subject: [opensuse] Feeble of brain


Ok. I admit it. I am old and feeble of brain. Can someone please tell me,
in simple terms, how BitTorrent is "better" for downloading. I have been
trying to download a large file, 11+Gb, using kbittorrent. When it started
it showed 8 hrs remaining and a speed of maybe 65Kb down, as I recall. This
was over a day ago. Ok, I let it run. 4 hours later it shows 7 hrs to go.
Umm, this is progress? Ok, I go to work, return...6 hrs to go. Cheez! Let
it run overnight, now shows 20+ hrs to go. I am no math whiz, but I think I
am a little smarter than a 5th grader, and I would be willing to bet that
this is longer. This does not like progress and I am wondering what either I
am doing wrong, or what might be wrong with the system, or it this just how
it works and there is some hidden benefit that I am not seeing, like for
every hour of download starving children somewhere are fed and clothed.

Thanks for steering me to the light.

Distrubuted file sharing is only "better" in those lucky cases where all the
stars line up in your favor that day.
1 - Lots of other people have to like to use the same distributed system you
are using, bittorrent is just one. In this case, it's pretty popular so we can
consider this one in the bag.
2 - Lots of other people, or at least a few other people who have good upload
speed on their net connections, have to happen to have copies of the file you
want to download. Wups, this one's not so in the bag.
3 - Lots of other people have to be leaving their torrent clients running to
serve up content even when they are not trying to download a file themselves.
Some people do this. I can't really say if it's many or not.
I only rarely use the torrenrt system, but when I do, I do usually leave the
client running for a while afterwards, a few hours or a day maybe, roughly 2
to 4 times however long it took me to get my file, to sort of pay pack the
system. I don't know how many other people think and act that way.

In short, these systems are only better, only even work at all really, by
virtue of a critical mass. If you're not right in the sweet spot doing the
same thing as everyone else, (in other words, if you're not downloading
pirated movies, tv shows, and music) then it's not much use to you.
There are a few legitimate things that are popular enough that it's
worthwhile to get them via torrent, mostly linux install disks.

They have been trying to do the same thing with music streaming
too. It's expensive for internet radio stations to get enough
upload bandwidth to allow lots of users to dowload streams from
them at the same time. So the theory is have every listener also
be a server, and once there are enough users there will be this
big pool of bandwidth that most listeners can pull copies from
each other instead of all pulling directly from the source.
One is called Octoshape. I never could get very good results from
it myself, nor consistent. But last I tried was a couple years ago
and it might have become popular enough by now. But even if it is,
I'd have to want to listen to the same stations as everyone else.
(boring!)

Skype works kinda-sorta this way also. It's a no brainer that skype
is popular enough that usually there is a sufficient pool of
connected-but-idle users to support the active users.

--
Brian K. White brian@xxxxxxxxx http://profile.to/KEYofR
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro BBx Linux SCO FreeBSD #callahans Satriani Filk!

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