Also, all Popcorntime clients want the same blocks first, meaning they will both need and seed the first blocks more. So they do not cause an imbalance, as long as there are always some peers that have the full movie.
This lacks a lot of foresight.
> Also, all Popcorntime clients want the same blocks first, meaning they will both need and seed the first blocks more. So they do not cause an imbalance, as long as there are always some peers that have the full movie.
And this is just plain wrong.
"If everyone streamed every file at the same time, the ecosystem would be negatively affected. That’s why we’ve put in safeguards to protect the ecosystem such as disallowing streaming when there aren’t enough seeders for a file, and preventing users from streaming more than a single file at a time. With these protections, we’ve tested and found no negative effect on the ecosystem. This is a property we’ll continue to monitor and adjust for as streaming becomes more widely used."
I don't understand this. Why does it need to be mutually beneficial? The peers should "pay it forward" by uploading to younger peers, even if the ones they downloaded from are not benefitting.
> On a small swarm this behavior can lead to pieces drop to the 0 availability because some peers concentrate on the first few files while the last peer/seed that has the rare piece in one of the later file quits after doing his fair share, but he only uploaded data for the first few files because the prioritizing peers were interested in those only.
This could be mitigated by using excess bandwidth beyond that needed for streaming to download rare chunks, and ensuring that the streaming application keeps seeding for a while after the video has been watched.
That wouldn't be streaming then, would it?