BitTorrent: ISOs for Everyone — Fast!
Have you ever tried to download the latest ISO images for your favorite Linux distribution during the first week that it’s available? If so, you’ve probably even had trouble finding an up-to-date mirror that’d let you in, and after finding one, you were probably disappointed to see a 20 KB/sec download speed (or worse) on your cable modem or DSL line that normally downloads at 10 times that speed. And as Linux becomes more popular, the problem’s only getting worse.
Sunday, February 15th, 2004
http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent
Have you ever tried to download the latest ISO images for your favorite Linux distribution during the first week that it’s available? If so, you’ve probably even had trouble finding an up-to-date mirror that’d let you in, and after finding one, you were probably disappointed to see a 20 KB/sec download speed (or worse) on your cable modem or DSL line that normally downloads at 10 times that speed. And as Linux becomes more popular, the problem’s only getting worse.
The traditional solution is to add more mirror sites or pony up the cash for a distributed hosting service like Akamai. However, bandwidth for all those mirrors isn’t free and neither is Akamai’s service. It’s difficult for a company like RedHat or Mandrake to justify spending more money so that thousands of users can download software for free. After all, someone has to pay for the plumbing.
Luckily, Bram Cohen has been working on a project called BitTorrent for over two years. BitTorrent fundamentally changes the way large-scale file transfers work. Rather than the traditional model of many computers downloading the file from a very small number of congested sources, BitTorrent uses a peer-to-peer model. It transforms the massive network of downloading nodes into a constantly changing web of uploading and downloading peers (see Figure One).
