[ih] reinventing the wheel, was Internet History Lives on the Internet?

Miles Fidelman mfidelman at meetinghouse.net
Mon Feb 25 12:42:36 PST 2019


Well yes, but torrent is a distribution mechanism - it's not an 
infrastructure for maintaining or mirroring files.  It's essentially 
another, sometimes more efficient, option for click-to-download (e.g., 
ftp, http, bittorrent).  And it's only more efficient if multiple people 
are downloading at the same time.

Miles

On 2/25/19 12:28 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
> No, Bittorrent uses DHTs and accesses as many copies of a given file 
> as users choose to share. It has to be running to serve files, however.
>
> RB
>
>> On Feb 25, 2019, at 9:59 AM, Miles Fidelman 
>> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>> wrote:
>>
>> On 2/24/19 9:53 PM, John Levine wrote:
>>
>>>> That's what I find intriguing about my Benevolent BotNet notion. Rather
>>>> than depending on finding an institution interested in, competent at,
>>>> and willing to save history, and hoping that it has longevity, you rely
>>>> on a network of volunteers to provide that survivable infrastructure by
>>>> volunteering their excess computing resources.
>>> Hi again.  Please look at Bittorrent and tell us how it is different
>>> from what you're proposing.
>>>
>>> Bittorrent has the advantage of already existing and being deployed
>>> all over the world.  It's notorious for pirated music but it's also
>>> widely used for sharing linux distributions and the like.
>>>
>> Bit torrent is transient.  It's more like an ad-hoc multi-cast
>> streaming.  When nobody is downloading, there may be only one copy of
>> the file.
>>
>> Now gnutella, and some of the other P2P file sharing systems - that
>> replicate copies, or distribute files across a distributed hash table -
>> that's another story entirely.
>>
>> -- 
>> In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
>> In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra
>>
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>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>
>> Richard Bennett
> High Tech Forum <http://hightechforum.org> Founder
> Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator
>
> Internet Policy Consultant
>
-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

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