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

Tue Feb 26 14:18:54 PST 2019

Hi Guy,

Didn't see this before posting my own reply - you put it well.

Another way of looking at it is setting up ad-hoc spanning trees, for 
the length of a collection of downloads.  All at the application layer.  
(Not exactly what torrent does, but analogous).

Cheers,

Miles

On 2/26/19 4:16 PM, Guy Almes wrote:

> Richard,
>   If you do multicast at the network layer, you get IP multicast, 
> Steve Deering's thesis project that escaped from the lab and has 
> challenged network engineers ever since.
>   But if you do multicast at the application layer, you get lots of 
> (IP) unicast traffic, but with some of the properties of IP multicast 
> and also with some of the advantages of TCP and without the 
> challenging routing issues of IP multicast.  Examples include 
> BitTorrent, Unidata's LDM/IDD software, and the USENET netnews utility.
>   Oh, and you can also do multicast at the Ethernet level. 
> Historically, it was the multicast feature of the then-new 10Mb/s 
> Ethernet that triggered Deering's considering the possibility of 
> multicast at the network layer.
>
>   So IMHO the term multicast can be used appropriately without 
> necessarily referring to network-layer IP multicast.
>
>   Back to the primary topic,
>     -- Guy
>
> On 2/26/19 15:35, Richard Bennett wrote:
>> Perhaps you can explain that the term "EFFECTIVELY multicast” means 
>> to you, and how it applies to BitTorrent. Every time I’ve looked at 
>> it in Wireshark I see nothing but unicast.
>>
>> RB
>>
>>> On Feb 26, 2019, at 10:01 AM, Miles Fidelman 
>>> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, that's not how it's supposed to work.  Or claimed to work.
>>>
>>> On 2/25/19 8:27 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>>>> Naw, it’s all unicast with plenty of redundant traffic moving along 
>>>> long routes.
>>>>
>>>>> On Feb 25, 2019, at 5:49 PM, Miles Fidelman 
>>>>> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>> 
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> That's not what anybody said.  It's EFFECTIVELY multicast - 
>>>>> avoiding redundant traffic when more than one destination is 
>>>>> downloading the same file, at the same time.  That's its whole 
>>>>> point.  (Or as someone else put it, it's a caching mechanism.)
>>>>>
>>>>> Miles
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2/25/19 4:24 PM, Richard Bennett wrote:
>>>>>> Bittorrent doesn’t use multicast.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Feb 25, 2019, at 1:42 PM, Miles Fidelman 
>>>>>>> <mfidelman at meetinghouse.net <mailto:mfidelman at meetinghouse.net>> 
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> _______
>>>>>>>>> internet-history mailing list
>>>>>>>>> internet-history at postel.org <mailto:internet-history at postel.org>
>>>>>>>>> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>>>>>>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> —
>>>>>>>> Richard Bennett
>>>>>>>> High Tech Forum 
>>>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__hightechforum.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=ODFT-G5SujMiGrKuoJJjVg&r=R09ttqQsnYaGPTsoYTZvLQ&m=L_GuN-mjLyb3nq7400xTV8D7FqWBXEnvfamqUrl6ys4&s=5sVVbAboWDOn4Em7VNOaohMIw5oSQNOpdgpOgTEb2co&e=> 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
>>>>>>
>>>>>> —
>>>>>> Richard Bennett
>>>>>> High Tech Forum 
>>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__hightechforum.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=ODFT-G5SujMiGrKuoJJjVg&r=R09ttqQsnYaGPTsoYTZvLQ&m=L_GuN-mjLyb3nq7400xTV8D7FqWBXEnvfamqUrl6ys4&s=5sVVbAboWDOn4Em7VNOaohMIw5oSQNOpdgpOgTEb2co&e=> 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
>>>>> _______
>>>>> internet-history mailing list
>>>>> internet-history at postel.org <mailto:internet-history at postel.org>
>>>>> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>>>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>>>
>>>> —
>>>> Richard Bennett
>>>> High Tech Forum 
>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__hightechforum.org_&d=DwMFaQ&c=ODFT-G5SujMiGrKuoJJjVg&r=R09ttqQsnYaGPTsoYTZvLQ&m=L_GuN-mjLyb3nq7400xTV8D7FqWBXEnvfamqUrl6ys4&s=5sVVbAboWDOn4Em7VNOaohMIw5oSQNOpdgpOgTEb2co&e=> 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
>>> _______
>>> internet-history mailing list
>>> internet-history at postel.org <mailto:internet-history at postel.org>
>>> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>
>> —
>> Richard Bennett
>> High Tech Forum 
>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__hightechforum.org&d=DwMFaQ&c=ODFT-G5SujMiGrKuoJJjVg&r=R09ttqQsnYaGPTsoYTZvLQ&m=L_GuN-mjLyb3nq7400xTV8D7FqWBXEnvfamqUrl6ys4&s=LZmy5fQZwLAb8wV6BIqZQ4PoPWOZ9QTG2meSKhwn4gc&e=> Founder
>> Ethernet & Wi-Fi standards co-creator
>>
>> Internet Policy Consultant
>>
>>
>> _______
>> internet-history mailing list
>> internet-history at postel.org
>> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
>> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
>>
-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra