How the death of BitTorrent helped take the edge off broadband growth | Hacker News Reader

How the death of BitTorrent helped take the edge off broadband growth

washingtonpost.com

9 pointsLibertatea16 comments

"Death of Bittorrent"? What a terrible linkbait title.

Somehow, "File-sharing through sites such as BitTorrent has plummeted in North America" = Bittorrent dead.

Meanwhile in Europe and elsewhere, Bittorrent usage continues to grow[1].

Not to mention the likes of Bittorrent Sync, aka Dropbox like service, synced using Bittorrent technology[2].

I believe growth in Bittorrent-derived technologies has huge potential, analogous to how Bitcoin-esque technologies have huge potential[3]. (even though Bitcoin has many flaws and Bitcoin itself may fail like Napster, it will spark creativity, based on ideas that Bitcoin brings together - Digital Signatures, Peer-to-Peer networks, Proof-of-Work meaning no central authority, and a Distributed Ledger).

[1] http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-traffic-drops-in-america-...

[2] http://www.bittorrent.com/sync

[3] http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of-mon...

> File-sharing through sites such as BitTorrent

Yeah, I don't think the know what BitTorrent is...

> Streaming video tends to take up less bandwidth, since people only download as much as they watch rather than downloading the whole thing only to stop in the middle.

How large is the percentage of people stopping in the middle? Also: How do the video bitrates from netflix/hulu compare to the pirated content?

It also tends to be less data overall.

Rephrase middle as middle of season and it may make more sense. How many people downloaded every episode of a tv show then decided they didn't like it after watching only one episode? More generally, you can only stream as much as there are hours in a day. You can download a lot more.

> You can download a lot more.

Not to mention seedboxes running 24/7 at blazing speeds.

I think they refer to people just downloading a few seasons at a time, only to watch half of it (or less), I know I've done that in the past (though I don't use torrents, but that's besides the case)

The real benefit of Netflix/Hulu is not so much a reduction in video bitrate, but that they run cache CDNs closer to the customers, so there is less traffic traversing long distances over the Internet.

Thus, less "Internet" traffic (but more last-mile traffic).

Would it be possible for ISP's to operate a proxy seed box (or network of boxes), that detects which torrents are popular, and and seeds them to customers? In theory these boxes, being much closer to the customer and having less bandwidth bottlenecks, would be the preferred source for bittorent clients.

Has per capita BitTorrent use declined, or just its relative share as streaming services have grown?

A good question that neither this crap article, nor the BBC article it links to on the specific BitTorrent claim, makes any attempt the answer. One would have to go to the single source of the claims - Sandvine - to figure it out. The closest the BBC article comes is this:

  The latest figures suggest that, as well as its share falling,
  there could be less overall BitTorrent traffic on the network.

Could be. How helpful!

Obviously an article proclaiming the "death of BitTorrent" in describing a protocol that continues to represent at least 7% of all traffic is pointless linkbait. If that's "dead", I wonder how we should characterize marketplaces (3.95%) and gaming (3.41%)? The web is clearly on its deathbed at a mere 10%, as well.

The BBC article suggests that BitTorrent's decline may be because "The use of 'dark nets' such as Tor and encrypted digital lockers is growing in popularity." I think that pretty much tells us all we need to know about how useful and accurate these articles are.

My question exactly. If something stays flat and what it's compared to grows 40% a year, it looks like it's collapsing.

Streaming may mean less bandwidth than overnight torrenting, but it means more peak-time bandwidth, and as the article mentions, that's the real killer. I wonder if we'll see Netflix etc. offering to predownload overnight for people whose connections can't keep up with primetime streaming.

Is this why netflix releases their original series all at once?

Years ago, when the media industry was losing its shit over BitTorrent, half of the tech industry said, "This is only happening because you idiots are making your content hard to get to."

Now that they are finally making (some of) their content (somewhat) available at (more or less) reasonable prices and with a (mostly) convenient interface, we get "ZOMG BITTORRENT DYING STOP SEND EXCLAMATION POINTS STOP". By which they mean "BitTorrent traffic has leveled off." Rather than the more reasonable article, which is "Media conglomerates pull heads part-way from asses: 'Air a little better', say execs."

Sad. Journalism is necessary to a functioning democracy, so I look forward to having some again one day.

How is something dead when you just compare percentages?

I guess 60% 10 years ago was in absolute numbers tiny compared to 10% of today.

The pirate bay seems to run better than ever. Massive sharing via torrent is really fast nowadays.

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