BitTorrent
gives you the same freedom to publish previously
enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment
and lots of money. ("Freedom of the press
is limited to those who own one" -- journalist
A.J. Liebling.)
You have something terrific to publish -- a large
music or video file, software, a game or anything
else that many people would like to have. But
the more popular your file becomes, the more you
are punished by soaring bandwidth costs. If your
file becomes phenomenally successful and a flash
crowd of hundreds or thousands try to get it at
once, your server simply crashes and no one gets
it.
There is a solution to this vicious cycle. BitTorrent,
the result of over two years of intensive development,
is a simple and free software product that addresses
all of these problems.
The key to scaleable and robust distribution
is cooperation. With BitTorrent, those who get
your file tap into their upload capacity to give
the file to others at the same time. Those that
provide the most to others get the best treatment
in return. ("Give and ye shall receive!")
Cooperative distribution can grow almost without
limit, because each new participant brings not
only demand, but also supply. Instead of a vicious
cycle, popularity creates a virtuous circle. And
because each new participant brings new resources
to the distribution, you get limitless scalability
for a nearly fixed cost.
BitTorrent is not just a concept, but has an
easy-to-use implementation capable of swarming
downloads across unreliable networks. BitTorrent
has been embraced by numerous publishers to distribute
to millions of users.
learn more about p2p
A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a
network that relies primarily on the computing
power and bandwidth of the participants in the
network rather than concentrating it in a relatively
low number of servers. P2P networks are typically
used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections.
Such networks are useful for many purposes. Sharing
content files (see file sharing) containing audio,
video, data or anything in digital format is very
common, and realtime data, such as telephony traffic,
is also passed using P2P technology.
A pure peer-to-peer network does not have the
notion of clients or servers, but only equal peer
nodes that simultaneously function as both "clients"
and "servers" to the other nodes on
the network. This model of network arrangement
differs from the client-server model where communication
is usually to and from a central server. A typical
example for a non peer-to-peer file transfer is
an FTP server where the client and server programs
are quite distinct, and the clients initiate the
download/uploads and the servers react to and
satisfy these requests.
Some networks and channels, such as Napster,
OpenNAP, or IRC @find, use a client-server structure
for some tasks (e.g., searching) and a peer-to-peer
structure for others. Networks such as Gnutella
or Freenet use a peer-to-peer structure for all
purposes, and are sometimes referred to as true
peer-to-peer networks, although Gnutella is greatly
facilitated by directory servers that inform peers
of the network addresses of other peers.
This article is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation License. It uses material
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/p2p. |
