Researchers at Microsoft's computer science lab in Cambridge have developed a peer-to-peer filesharing system that they say overcomes the scheduling problems associated with existing distribution protocols such as Bit Torrent.
The researchers claim download times are between 20-30 per cent faster, using their network coding approach, than on systems that only code at the server, and between 200 and 300 per cent faster than distributing un-encoded information.
Naturally, Microsoft is very keen to stress that this technology should be used for distributing legitimate content. It even put that in italics in the press material.
The basic principle of the system, dubbed Avalanche, is pretty much the same as BitTorrent. Certainly the problem it solves is: a large file needs to be distributed to many people. One server does not have the bandwidth to deal with all that traffic, so you need to find another way of getting the file to everyone who needs it.
If the file is broken up into smaller pieces, these can be distributed among a smaller number of people, who can then share the pieces to make sure they all eventually have the complete file.
The problem with this approach, as anyone who has ever tried to download content on the system - legitimate or otherwise - knows, is that towards the end of a download, any one downloader could have a while to wait for the particular pieces he needs. As the number of receivers increases, scheduling traffic also becomes more complex, and the whole process slows down.
Microsoft Research's approach gets around this by re-encoding all the pieces, so that each one that is shared is actually a linear combination of all the pieces, fed into a particular function. The blocks are then distributed with a tag that describes the parameters it contains.
Once you have downloaded a few of these, you can generate new combinations from the ones you have, and send those out to your peers. Collect enough of these pieces, and you will have enough information to reconstruct the whole file. Even if you don't have all the original pieces distributed by the person who held the original version of the file.
Peers can make use of any new piece, instead of having to wait for specific chunks that are missing. This means no one peer can become a bottle neck, since no piece is more important than any other. It also means overall network traffic is lower, since the same information doesn't have to travel back and forth multiple times.
Read the Research Paper from MS (pdf)
Read the complete article
Uh huh, hey Bill, you wouldnt mind if I sent an image of an operating system to a friend would you? J/K
Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.
Heh yea... I think I'll stay with BT
-NEVER ARGUE WITH A FOOL; HE WILL SOON BEAT YOU WITH EXPERIENCE
-EAT AND SLEEP. YOU MIGHT THINK THAT'S A GIVEN BUT NO-IT'S NOT. EAT AND SLEEP. IDIOT.
hmm par 2 files are nice
btw various chunks that are being sent via torrent are in no particular order either
*point is*
i am awesome
This is one bandwagon doomed to failure!
Well, hopefully it gives ideas to our beloved Bittorrent creator and he makes "improvements" to his code and we all benefit without actually using anything extra from Microsoft.
For once, it seems that m$ has actually made something that works pretty nice. Too bad they can't come up with anything new - like every other product they've ever made.
Great. I'll finally have an even faster way to download the latest MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player. Just what I've always wanted.
You Suck~! But back on the topic... The downside of this protocol is that the proprietor of the content must upload 120% of the file size initially, the upside is that this makes 20% or 5x as many peers with the blocks you want available at any one time. In short, this is a redundancy thing, and not really a _great_ improvement over BT. In short you can recreate the original data with a 20% higher success rate of entire file availability.Originally Posted by crackerjacker
"There is a very thin line between genius and madness"
~J.
If this system is for a Distributed computinng network like http://www.lxsystems.com/technology.html
then there will be seed servers so 120% from the seed server isnt that bad .
Peer Impact a online music store is using LX systems to power the network Peer Impact also gives uploader credits for transfering thier inventory.
www.peerimact.com
can anyone say the RIAA are in on this? Microsoft will probably leak all the info to the RIAA who has probably hired Microsoft to do this, and tricking all its users to thinking that this is some revolutionary thing to the P2P World!
i doubt that this is a conspiracy. what this is is a way for microsoft to probably release patches (similar to grid computing) and will probably be in longhorn but you won't even see it. that's my take on the whole thing. I highly doubt they would unleash anything that could get them into any more trouble.
Either that or a way to make lots of money.
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