It appears Valve has hired the author of BitTorrent.

[chocobaR]

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/30504
http://www.nytimes.com/auth/login?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/12/technology/circuits/12shar.html(registration required)

 

[parsley007]

cool...maybe they will distribute their demos faster now

 

[MrBond]

I'm honestly surprised it took someone this long to hire him. This sort of distributed system is exactly what downloadable media services need (like a box where you can "rent" movies by downloading them).

The only real disadvantage is that currently, BT will saturate a connection. If someone has a 15k/sec upload, it'll take it all and make browsing slow.

If that's not fixed for Steam (which is exactly what he'll be working on), it's going to piss a lot of people off when they can't play HL2 online because in the background Steam is distributing the latest patch to other people. They'll have to work in a way to prioritize certain traffic so it doesn't kill a connection.

It'll also get the attention of broadband providers, because the average user won't use all that much of their upload, but when little Johnny downloads HL2 over steam and it starts distributing it to other people who bought the game, it's going to rack up a lot of upload traffic. A constant 10k/upload for an entire month can push almost 26GB of data by my calculations. (10k/sec * 86400sec/day * 30days/month / 1,000,000k/gb)

 

[chocobaR]

I undestand what you mean MrBond but I honestly don't think that we will be uploading for other people because that would just be ridiculous.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: chocobaR
I undestand what you mean MrBond but I honestly don't think that we will be uploading for other people because that would just be ridiculous.

Okay, we've established that you don't know WTF you're talking about, you can leave this thread now.

- M4H

 

[Kenazo]

I use the experimental bittorent and it allows you to chose your upload rate, which is kind of nice if you want to keep browsing. Doesn't anyone else use it?

 

[ThaGrandCow]

Originally posted by: chocobaR
I undestand what you mean MrBond but I honestly don't think that we will be uploading for other people because that would just be ridiculous.

Have you ever used bittorrent ever?

 

[virtuamike]

Yeah I'm using Shadow BT client, you can set upload. Only problem is that I don't think it works too well (sorta the same way with NetLimiter). OK for browsing but it REALLY lags when playing CS on DSL even when you set it down to 1KB upload. Whatever algorithm they're using to limit packets, it's not working too well.

Actually when 1.6 1st came out, they had it available on BT. Much faster grabbing it through there than through the website or relying on Steam update.

 

[chocobaR]

Yes I use BitTorrent alot.

 

[silverpig]

I read this over at halflife2.net a few days ago, but didn't post it here out of laze

It does look like they're going for a distributed downloading kind of network for steam which will definitely help. It'll probably upload when you've got steam running, but aren't in game (ever tried to play CS with a torrent going? ping goes straight to hell).

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: chocobaR
Yes I use BitTorrent alot.

Okay, then you're just dumb. :beer:

- M4H

 

[Amorphus]

Originally posted by: chocobaR
Yes I use BitTorrent alot.

so why do you talk like one with his head up his arse?

btw, thing about shadow's - each open window takes around 20-25mb of ram. annoying.

 

[silverpig]

Oh and if you look at halflife2.net, it says the expected release date for HL2 is April-November 2004

 

[ebaycj]

Originally posted by: MrBond

The only real disadvantage is that currently, BT will saturate a connection. If someone has a 15k/sec upload, it'll take it all and make browsing slow.

That is a problem with your router and traffic prioritization.

Originally posted by: MrBond

... it's going to rack up a lot of upload traffic. A constant 10k/upload for an entire month can push almost 26GB of data by my calculations. (10k/sec * 86400sec/day * 30days/month / 1,000,000k/gb)

A Nit-pick: its 1,048,576 KBytes/GByte, and there are 30.43 days in the average month.

10240 Bytes/sec *86400 sec/day * 30.43 days/month / 1073741824 Bytes/GByte = > 25.0 GBytes/Month

 

[Sid59]

he's gonna code the special easter egg part. you take yoru character and use bittorrent to download the bootlef copy of Half Life2

 

[Staples]

Glad they hired him to do some legit work, Bit Torrent has done wonders for software pirates.

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: ebaycj

Originally posted by: MrBond

The only real disadvantage is that currently, BT will saturate a connection. If someone has a 15k/sec upload, it'll take it all and make browsing slow.

That is a problem with your router and traffic prioritization.

Originally posted by: MrBond

... it's going to rack up a lot of upload traffic. A constant 10k/upload for an entire month can push almost 26GB of data by my calculations. (10k/sec * 86400sec/day * 30days/month / 1,000,000k/gb)

A Nit-pick: its 1,048,576 KBytes/GByte, and there are 30.43 days in the average month.

10240 Bytes/sec *86400 sec/day * 30.43 days/month / 1073741824 Bytes/GByte = > 25.0 GBytes/Month

Nah, there are 1,048,576 Kibytes/GiB. KB and GB have been changed to 10^x, not 2^x.

 

[zimu]

Originally posted by: Kenazo
I use the experimental bittorent and it allows you to chose your upload rate, which is kind of nice if you want to keep browsing. Doesn't anyone else use it?

:beer:
shadow's experimental here.

 

[GoodRevrnd]

Originally posted by: ebaycj

Originally posted by: MrBond

The only real disadvantage is that currently, BT will saturate a connection. If someone has a 15k/sec upload, it'll take it all and make browsing slow.

That is a problem with your router and traffic prioritization.

What kind of router do you use? I get saturated also even when I limit connections and bandwidth in bittorrent. This has happened w/ a Netgear FVS318, a Webramp700 w/ Sonicwall firmware, and some newer Linksys.

 

[Staples]

Jesus Christ. I just installed a version of BT 3.3 that I downloaded a few weeks ago. Tons of adware crap in it. Can anyone recommend a non crap version of BT?

 

[diamondgoat53]

ABC 2.6.1

it is fantastic

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Staples
Jesus Christ. I just installed a version of BT 3.3 that I downloaded a few weeks ago. Tons of adware crap in it. Can anyone recommend a non crap version of BT?

Azureus

 

[BigJ]

Originally posted by: Staples
Jesus Christ. I just installed a version of BT 3.3 that I downloaded a few weeks ago. Tons of adware crap in it. Can anyone recommend a non crap version of BT?

Azureus

 

[yukichigai]

Originally posted by: MrBond
I'm honestly surprised it took someone this long to hire him. This sort of distributed system is exactly what downloadable media services need (like a box where you can "rent" movies by downloading them).

The only real disadvantage is that currently, BT will saturate a connection. If someone has a 15k/sec upload, it'll take it all and make browsing slow.

If that's not fixed for Steam (which is exactly what he'll be working on), it's going to piss a lot of people off when they can't play HL2 online because in the background Steam is distributing the latest patch to other people. They'll have to work in a way to prioritize certain traffic so it doesn't kill a connection.

It'll also get the attention of broadband providers, because the average user won't use all that much of their upload, but when little Johnny downloads HL2 over steam and it starts distributing it to other people who bought the game, it's going to rack up a lot of upload traffic. A constant 10k/upload for an entire month can push almost 26GB of data by my calculations. (10k/sec * 86400sec/day * 30days/month / 1,000,000k/gb)

I use burst!, which lets you put a cap on your upload speed and the number of simultaneous connections per download. I was sick of people eating 70k of my upload while I got about 15k download combined, probably because of having no open sockets to get any more download speed. :|

 

[Maleficus]

BitTorrent is poopie