S.Korea broadband firm sues Netflix after traffic surge

Tue Oct 12 15:13:39 UTC 2021

Mark Tinka wrote:
> Someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I know BitTorrent to
> work is the file is downloaded to disk, unarchived and then listed as
> ready to watch.
  That's not how it works. Several streaming BitTorrent clients specifically request blocks in order so that you can start watching immediately.
  Not that you need a special client, it works pretty well with the standard client as well on a well seeded torrent, as blocks are generally requested more or less in order.

> It also assumes the device has all the necessary apps
> and codecs needed to render the file.
  Well, yes. Or you could just stream content that is guaranteed to be compatible with the device used.

> On the other hand, BitTorrent could just make an Apple
> TV/PS4/PS5/Xbox/whatever-device-you-use app as well.
  They could, and they might even have, I forget, but there is little demand for such a thing as a centralized CDN strategy works better.

> But I doubt that
> will work, unless someone can think up a clever way to modify BitTorrent
> to suit today's network architectures.
  Unless network topology is somehow exposed, this isn't possible. All anybody can do is use latency, IP and ASN information as a proxy.

  Nothing is stopping a BitTorrent client from being selective about its peers. The current peer selection algorithm optimizes for throughput, not adjecency or topology.

- Jared