Double Your P2P File Sharing Speeds
Researchers have developed file sharing software that doubles peer-to-peer (P2P) transfer speeds by identifying nearby computers.
The software is called Ono, and has been deployed for the Azureus BitTorrent P2P file-sharing client.
Ono is open source and does not demand the deployment of additional infrastructure. Since it was made freely and publicly available in March 2007, the software has been downloaded by more than 150,000 users.
It joins a range of recently launched applications aimed at addressing the growing conflict between ISPs and P2P traffic. Unlike others like Verizon’s P4P technology, however, Ono operates without the need for cooperation between ISPs and P2P users.
Ono uses information from content-distribution networks (CDN) and the assumption that two computers sent to the same CDN server are likely to be close to each other.
By linking nearby computers, Ono is expected to benefit Internet Service Providers (ISPs) by reducing costly cross-network traffic, without sacrificing performance for the user.
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, and conducted by Fabián E. Bustamante, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Ph.D. student David Choffnes.
The researchers have found the software to improve transfer speeds by an average of 207 percent on a suitably configured network.
With P2P file sharing services reported to account for as much as 70 percent of Internet traffic worldwide, the researchers hope to increase Ono’s user base in order to improve its effectiveness.
“The more users we have, the better the system works, so we’re just trying make it easy to spread,” Bustamante said.
Isn’t your internet connection fixed at a certain theoritical maximum speed, so essentially this program maximises this speed. It cannot physically double your existing capabilities, can it?
the fundamental maximum speed of your local internet connection (there’s nothing theoretical about it, until you start talking about sqeezing out every last drop of bandwidth when you need to start accounting for protocol overhead) will always be your top speed limit, but when you download stuff the speed YOU ACTUALLY experience will be affected by a range of issues way beyond your control (how much bandwidth does the web-server have and how busy is it, congestion in various networks that your traffic passes through between you and where you’re downloading from, etc).
much to some people’s surprise, “the internet” is _not_ the homogenous collection of pipes so fast that an individual domestic user will always be able to download something from anywhere at the top speed of their own internet connection. if wishing made it so…
this Ono software appears to let (so far Azureus only) P2P software determine which peers are closest to you (from a network perspective, which may or may not relate to geography) and favour them, which reduces the likelyhood of your traffic succumbing to the above issues, which = faster P2P speed. but of course only to the limit of your local internet connection. in other words, if you have a slow connection (eg 512/128kbps) it might be hard to notice the effect of this software).
it also significantly lowers the traffic flowing between 2 competing networks (eg ones who charge each other for traffic exchange imbalance) which lowers their costs too, which will help make them less antagonistic towards P2P users.
perhaps Ray should have posted a little sidebar with this posting… :)
Thanks for posting all that information, techydude.
I was going to explain the idea behind the software and how it works but now that you have done it, and a good job of it, I wont bother.
Thanks a lot!
I see. I got your email, and followed up on your post. Cheers