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This email includes my responses to multiple emails, so keep reading.... |
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|
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On Monday 16 February 2004 10:27 am, Fred Van Andel wrote: |
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> Bittorrent is not a good mechanism for sharing gentoo files for the |
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> following reasons: |
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> |
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> Bitorrent requires a separate instance and a separate open port for every |
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> file that you are sharing. When some people will be sharing hundreds of |
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> files this is simply not a workable approach. |
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|
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This is the work that needs to be done I mentioned. Rather than creating a new |
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p2p system, we could slightly adapt bt to our needs. I think the changes |
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would probably make it back into the official bt too. |
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|
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> Bittorent is optimized towards dealing with a small number of large files |
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> under very high (initial) demand situations. Our needs are different, we |
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> are dealing with large number of much smaller files under moderate demand |
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> and without the initial spike in demand. |
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|
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I am theorizing here without any statistics to back this up, but I think we do |
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have an initial spike in demand when new source tarballs are released. I |
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think we'd need to study the traffic on gentoo mirrors, but my theory would |
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be that most traffic is from what is released in the past 2 or 3 days. We |
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also do have a few large files to deal with such as the ut2004-demo. I also |
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don't think bt would perform any worse with small files than big files. |
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|
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> The reason that bittorrent works so well is that it forces everyone to |
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> share if they want to download, consequently there is a lot of upload |
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> bandwith available on the network. Any system that forces sharing would be |
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> able to work as well. |
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|
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Many systems force people to share to download, but none work as well as |
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bittorrent because they don't use a good algorithm for transfering the file. |
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I think you'd be hard pressed to find a better way. |
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|
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> In theory I am working on a P2P system specific to the needs of gentoo, |
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> however I must admit that I have not worked on it for a while. Will |
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> someone please kick me in the *ss to get me working on it again. |
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|
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Again, why create something totally new and specific to gentoo when bittorrent |
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just needs a few modifications. We'd be contributing to OSS, the entire |
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BitTorrent community, and Gentoo. |
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|
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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On Monday 16 February 2004 05:57 am, purslow@×××××××××.ca wrote: |
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> Bittorrent has more of a place w binary distros, eg Mandrake, |
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> where it was welcomed as a big improvement for downloading a new release. |
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> but there you want to get 3 ISOs all at once, as does everyone else, |
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> whereas here on Gentoo you download much smaller files |
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> & everyone is grabbing different pieces at different times, |
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> so it doesn't seem to have much relevance. |
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|
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I'd like to see traffic statistics from mirrors to back this claim up. I would |
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guess the exact opposite: most people will be downloading whatever has been |
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released in the past few days. |
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|
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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On Monday 16 February 2004 05:36 am, Christian Gut wrote: |
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> Hi Jason! |
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> i would not even think of using that without some strong gpg-like |
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> signing of the source-files. |
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|
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I'd welcome you to read more about how bittorrent works, but you basically put |
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your trust in the source of the torrent file. It contains md5 hashes for |
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every 1k block of the file so you are able to verify every block you download |
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from a source. If a source is giving out bad blocks, it will get forced off |
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the network. I think it is just as secure as the current method of |
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downloading tarballs and trusting the md5 in the ebuild. |
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|
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On Monday 16 February 2004 01:25 am, Svyatogor wrote: |
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> How many users you think, will actually do that? I.e. share their |
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> distfiles dir. I wouldn't do it... |
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> |
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> P.S. That not to mention, that for me Bittorrent always gave lower |
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> speeds than just a descent mirror (ADSL 600 KB/s connection). |
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> |
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> Wkr, |
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|
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I think lots of users would, but it would probably be a good idea to take some |
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kind of poll before putting work into the project. You would of course be |
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able to limit the amount of bandwidth you'd be sharing. I think lots of users |
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would be willing to share 5k/sec or so of bandwidth all the time. The mirrors |
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could even run seeding bittorrent clients, so there would actually be more |
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total bandwidth available and it'd be distributed better. |
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|
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
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On Monday 16 February 2004 01:25 am, Matt Wilson wrote: |
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> I like the idea, don't suppose you've had any other positive feedback? |
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> Could be the start of a new portage branch (well, sort of). |
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|
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I haven't had much positive feedback from this list as you can see. In the |
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#gentoo-amd64 irc channel I got a lot of positive feedback from users who |
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would be willing to donate bandwidth and thought that it was just the sort of |
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progressive idea gentoo is known for. I wouldn't have even proposed the idea |
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here if it wasn't for their encouragement. |
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|
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-- |
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