Mark Cuban to Bram Cohen: "BitTorrent not DOOMED - has challenges"

posted by soulxtc in bittorrent // 584 days 9 hours 53 minutes ago

An interesting discussion took place on Bram Cohen's blog in which they two discussed the future of BitTorrent, its bandwidth challenges, and who the better businessman is.

I first read Bram Cohen's post in his live journal discussing Mark Cuban's previous blog posting about the future of BitTorrent and the challenges it faces in mainstream content distribution and use yesterday but, was taken aback when today I noticed that it had a response from none other than Mark Cuban himself.

Mark Cuban, if you recall, discussed his thoughts about BitTorrent and other P2P technologies a few weeks back, and pointed out that they have a difficult road ahead.

He writes: :

The reason there has been excitement about P2P technologies built around BitTorrent type technology is simple. It saves bandwidth on file distribution and it creates the opportunity to speed the delivery of files, large or small. If it were able to live up to the hype, the notion is that how multimedia is distributed on the net, and its economics would change.

From a business perspective, the important element is that if X number of people request a 1gbs file, rather than a host computer having to deliver files consuming Xgbs, the file is tracked among the peers and delivered using their bandwidth and resources , relieving the host of the bandwidth cost and obligation and hopefully speeding the delivery of the content.

He goes on to rightly point out that if a user is expected to begin paying for content where is the incentive for him to give up his bandwidth without compensation? Additionally, what about the costs to ISPs for having their customers now responsible for distribution bandwidth that the company offering the content was previously responsible for paying?

To summarize his argument he makes 4 important points:

Conflicting Clients. There are a ton of clients, with the number growing all the time. Although they work on basically the same source code and protocols, they all install and operate as if they had exclusive access. They want to control the PC so that they are in charge of what resources are available. When multiple clients are installed on a PC, not only does that create confusion among users, its a "last installed, first in charge" approach. THat approach and lack of respect for other clients will lead to user configuration problems. Thats not going to work. At some point they get considered to be malware and the clients will get uninstalled

End Users dont understand how P2P works, and once they do, they get concerned about giving up bandwidth. Most users dont know how to go in and edit the default settings. So even if they settle on a single client and are happy with just the content available on that network or to that client, they arent going to be happy about their bandwidth being in constant use to save a content provider money .

The P2P model of seeding is a HUGE problem for those using wireless broadband with bandwidth constraints or per bit or per minute costs. People are going to wake up and find that they owe Verizon, Sprint, whoever a lot more than they ever thought possible because they installed a client on their Laptops. That could lead to these networks blocking the protocol.

There is a misconception that there is bandwidth savings for the end user. If you want to download a 1gb size file, 1gb of data will be delivered to your PC. There is no savings of bandwidth on the client side. In fact, the client is charged a bandwidth premium because after they have received the entire file, they are asked to participate in the peering by delivering parts of the file to other users.

After this blog post was made public by myself and others, the real headline that seemed to stick thanks to the magic of Digg, was "Mark Cuban: BitTorrent Doomed."

It was then just yesterday that Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol, decided to speak out about Cuban's bleak outlook for the future of this file-sharing software.

Cohen writes:

I'm not sure what his point is. Despite BitTorrent having 135 million installs and being 55% of all internet traffic, P2P in general 'is a product that tests great. In application however, it has a ton of challenges'. Maybe he's talking trash because he invested $1.7 million in a 'BitTorrent-like' company. He's been transparent about such motivations before. That said, he does has some claim to punditry in the bandwidth space because his $5 billion sale of broadcast.com for yahoo stock set the precedent for valuing bandwidth supply companies based on how quickly they flush money down the toilet. (Amusingly, if you go to broadcast.com today it simply redirects to yahoo.com.)

I not fully aware of all the details regarding Mark Cuban's business investments, or any other situation that may make him biased in his view of BitTorrent, so I cannot comment one way or the other but, Cohen is correct in that BitTorrent does lead the way in terms of its share of overall P2P internet traffic.

Using a bit of sarcastic phrasing, he goes on to point out that when it comes to end users and their difficulty using P2P applications, it's much like PCs and the internet itself that "test great" but, in application, have a "ton of challenges." The last line was taken from Cuban's own words wheree wrote that "P2P is a product that tests great. In application however, it has a ton of challenges"

Cohen then takes Cuban's math musings to task.

Cuban wrote:

If bittorrent client installation doubles or triples, does the pct of internet bandwidth used by torrents go from 55pct to 100pct ? Of course it wont work that way, but the 55pct to current client base ratio raises some very interesting questions about whether torrents truly do save bandwidth and can speed delivery of content

Cohen replied:

If BitTorrent traffic is currently 55% of all internet traffic, and it doubles, would it then be 100%? No it wouldn't. Let's say that BitTorrent traffic is currently 55 zillobits, and everything else is 45 zillobits, for a total of 100 zillobits. BitTorrent would then be 55/100 = 55% of total traffic. If BitTorrent traffic were then to double, it would then be 110 zillobits, out of a total of 110 + 45 = 155 zillobits of traffic, and as a percentage would be 110/155 = 71% of all internet traffic.

I think what Cuban was trying to say was lost on Cohen but, it does make for a interesting read, and boy, does the drama get better.

For Mark Cuban himself then posted a rebuttal to Cohen earlier today titled "Get a Clue." With a title like that you know it's going to be good right?

He first clarifies that he didn't say it was "doomed," which is true, it was a title created for obvious headline and attention grabbing purposes, something which I too am guilty of, but that "...it has challenges."

What he then makes clear is that upstream capacity and bandwidth usage is the real problem, something I previously pointed out from his original post as the thing that will most hold BitTorrent's mainstream implementation back.

Cuban writes:

Internet capacity is not infinite in the last mile. What's more, since flavors of Ethernet is the primary protocol used in the last mile, you get diminishing returns as bandwidth usage increases. So if the number of BT client users on the network segment providing bandwidth to your home or office grows, so that there is a doubling of bandwidth from 55pct, that segment doesn't miraculously expand to absorb the growth. It all slows down. Alot.

Unfortunately for you,ISPs crack down on heavy bandwidth users, particularly uploaders and enforce their TOS.

By definition, seeders create upstream bandwidth. The ISPs don't want to see more upstream usage Bram, i know its a tough concept for you, but in the mind of the ISP, upstream use = bad. MOre upstream b/w use = more bad. Which in turn pushes them not to increase the bandwidth available to end users, but to evaluate where the upstream use is coming from and look at shutting it off and throttling it. Call me crazy, but that equates to a challenge for the BT universe.

His points here are pretty solid in that if a minority of users are responsible for a majority of the traffic, what happens when the minority becomes the majority, and how will the ISPs respond? If network bandwidth is finite, how will they adjust to the demands? Will it be by raising prices, throttling P2P for everybody, or asking P2P content providers like BitTorrent Inc. to pick up the distribution bandwidth costs they suddenly are saddled with? Nobody knows.

Good old Mark, never one to disappoint when it comes to drama, excitement, and controversy, ends his rebuttal by laying out a whole list of additional criticisms about Bram and BitTorrent but, I think I'll leave that for you to read on your own. Lets just say that you can tell that his was pissed off about how Bram critiqued his business savvy and "basic arithmetic."