[Nanog] Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics [Was: Re: ATT VP: Internet to hit capacity by 2010]

Tue Apr 22 12:13:24 UTC 2008

On Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:55:58 +0100
<michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:

>  
> > Time to push multicast as transport for bittorrent? 
> 
> Bittorrent clients are already multicast, only they do it in a crude way
> that does not match network topology as well as it could. Moving to use
> IP multicast raises a whole host of technical issues such as lack of
> multicast peering. Solving those technical issues requires ISP
> cooperation, i.e. to support global multicast.
> 
> But there is another way. That is for software developers to build a
> modified client that depends on a topology guru for information on the
> network topology.

<snip>

Isn't TCP already measuring throughput and latency of the network for
RTO etc.? Why not expose those parameters for peers to the local P2P
software, and then have it select the closest peers with either the
lowest latency, the highest throughput, or a weighed combination of
both? I'd think that would create a lot of locality in the traffic.

Regards,
Mark.

-- 

        "Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain constantly
         alert."
                                   - Bruce Schneier, "Beyond Fear"