(OT) Bit Torrent usage ...

[Adam Gibson]

Mike McCarty wrote:
> Phil Schaffner wrote:
> 
>> On Wed, 2005-07-27 at 16:02 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
>>
>>>> It can give better effective bandwidth for you on the download by
>>>> getting data from a number of peers rather than from a single server
>>>> with limited IO capacity and bandwidth.  It is also good form to
>>>
>>>
>>> leave
>>>
>>>> your client open after the download finishes to "give back" to the
>>>> community by sharing your bandwidth.
>>>
>>>
>>> Umm, lessee if I understand correctly. (The figures below are the
>>> actual rates wget obtained for me when I downloaded the FC4 CD
>>> ISOs.)
>>
>>
>>
>> Seems it would depend on the number of peers operating, their aggregate
>> BW vs that available from a single dedicated server, your ISP's
>> limitations, the particular routing you are getting, load on the
>> server, .......
>>
>> The operative word is "can" - YMMV.
>>
>> Phil
>>
>>
> As I said, my ADSL modem reports downstream connectivity at
> 894 Kbps or so. That corresponds to 110 KBps or so. I'm
> actually getting 60-70 KBps download rate. That's pretty
> much saturation, I think. I don't see how using more than
> one source would increase the download rate, when my modem
> is already just about saturated.
> 
> You didn't actually address whether my understanding be
> correct.
> 
> Mike
> 

Downloading it now will probably be fast from anywhere you get it but 
the real advantage of BitTorrent is when a very popular file is first 
released to the public.  Where ftp/http servers would normally get 
bogged down from tons of requests at once, downloads using BitTorrent 
would be able to spread the file faster because it could use peers bandwith.

Use whatever method gets the file to you the quickest.  With more people 
using BitTorrent it offloads the bandwidth needed from some of the 
ftp/http mirror sites which will give the users that prefer that route 
more bandwidth too.  BitTorrent is a win/win situation.