Evolving Swarms with Swarmstreaming 246
Orasis writes "Applications like Bittorrent have broadly validated swarming technology in the real-world. Now, the inventor of swarming has released a new technology called swarmstreaming that allows smooth progressive playback of content, skipping ahead, and random access without downloading the entire file. It's an HTTP proxy, so browsers, podcasting, and RSS apps should be able to use it transparently. "
How does this work? (Score:3, Insightful)
i wonder how long (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's been done before. (Score:3, Insightful)
Either you missed the word "swarming" here, or I've missed what exactly the QuickTime Streaming Server does.
Re:How does this work? (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's before you even deal with people needing to set up port forwarding.
Swarming + streaming (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing swarmstreaming changes is that it tries to download data in order, so you can use it more quickly, like any other conventional stream-oriented protocol (which is basically anything that uses TCP, along with various streaming media protocols). Now, the innovation is putting together streaming media with the power of swarming--imagine being able to feed a live TV feed from a single stream from the "seed". This is basically what multicast promised, but due to infrastructure problems, has yet to deliver.
Now, the devil is in the details. You're going to have problems with a distributed application that tries to deliver the same data to all nodes in the network at once, since you don't get all those nice properties of randomized distribution of different pieces. Some lossiness would definitely be desirable, meaning you don't really want to use it like a Web proxy. Furthermore, it's physically impossible to deliver data around the planet without many tens or hundreds of milliseconds of latency, so it's not good for interactive applications.
It might be a big win for TV-on-the-Web, though. Imagine if just anyone with a couple hundred kbps could serve a worldwide audience... all those Internet radio stations that are begging for donations to pay bandwidth costs could slash their total bandwidth needs, while upgrading service as well.
I'm not sure if this particular product is going to do the trick (swarmstreaming isn't a new idea, after all, and lots of people have been working on it), but anything that gets people thinking about it should help in the long run.
the concept is appealing BUT... (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, there is a lot of boasting , marketspeak and references to patents, business and whatnot. We're far, far away from GPL territory here. At least bittorrent is opensource.
Suprnova? (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine if instead of having to wait a few hours downloading torrents off of Suprnova, you could simply browse through their catalogue (which I swear is bigger than Blockbuster's, and has music and tv shows), click something you wanted to watch, and BAM, its on.
Welcome to the future of Internet TV. I just hope the law doesn't fuck it up.
Re:Something like this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I dunno... (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a regular listener of the RTHK radio archive (a Hong Kong government funded radio station). The subscription is free. The audio clip contains the news, government ad (like don't throw rubblish blahblah) and the radio show itself... Not one bothers to cut the junk out. In a typical 2-hr session, 20-25 mins are news and other junk... It is just odd and a waste of time sit still and listen to "news" several months or even years ago...
Re:Suprnova? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suprnova? (Score:3, Insightful)
Would be a KILLER app. Being able to download and save, schedule, find 'if you like this you might also like...' shows. Works with tv and movies.
Man, that would be a powerful use of a couple megs of harddrive space.