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story category Bit Torrent CEO on ISP Throttling
Praises 'caching solution' in next 'Allegra' release
(old news - 05:29PM Wednesday May 03 2006)
tags: Fileswapping · software · networking
Slyck has posted an interview with Ashwin Narvin, CEO of BitTorrent. "I sometimes loose the will to live after reading Slyck.com," Ashwin jokes. "The [p2p]community can be brutal." Ashwin speaks on a number of topics, including being attacked by the community for snuggling up to the RIAA & MPAA, ISP traffic shaping, and what's coming down the road.
"We spent an extraordinary amount of time face to face with the largest ISPs in the world who now see anywhere between a third and up to 70% of all their traffic in the BT protocol. [We’re] trying to convince them there’s a better way to manage the BitTorrent protocol then to limit it and to shape it. We’ve been strong advocates of the caching solution in the next version of the (Main Line) BitTorrent client, what we are calling the Allegra release. There’ll be a protocol which allows ISPs to cache BitTorrent content which is a great thing for users. It improves the user experience for downloading with BitTorrent no matter what client it is as long as it’s implemented the Cache Discovery Protocol and it also offers ISPs a cost effective way to allow BT to exist on their networks."
Slick has posted the full transcript of their interview here in Word format.

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Forums » Bit Torrent CEO on ISP Throttling
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johnsea66
Cool Down
Premium
join:2003-01-26
Canada

HAH!

Even if it saves ISPs money (which it won't), they won't do it.

TK Junk Mail
Go ahead, make my day
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Margate City, NJ
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Re: HAH!

said by johnsea66 See Profile :

Even if it saves ISPs money (which it won't), they won't do it.
Of course they will. Because they can control what the BT client can access. When what is allowed is access ONLY to cache servers on their own network with their own content.
We’ve been strong advocates of the caching solution in the next version of the (Main Line) BitTorrent client, what we are calling the Allegra release. There’ll be a protocol which allows ISPs to cache BitTorrent content which is a great thing for users.

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mikef1
Mike

join:2004-10-28
Littlestown, PA

Re: HAH!

said by TK Junk Mail See Profile :

Of course they will. Because they can control what the BT client can access. When what is allowed is access ONLY to cache servers on their own network with their own content.
I disagree.
ISP’s would not want to cache content deemed illegal.
Even if this caching solution allows for selective caching this creates administrative work managing the caching server that ISP’s don’t want to deal with. Who adds the legal content to the caching server?
Also the caching server would not have the bt content (the illegal stuff) that is consuming the majority of the bandwidth so the ISPs would still be stuck limiting and shaping bt traffic.
Bt is great for linux distro iso’s and the like, but what has driven the popularity of bt is the availability of shady to illegal content on the bt network.
--
mike
HouseOfMike

Ignite
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Re: HAH!

You are misunderstanding the point of the caching. It's not to ensure legal compliance it's there to save ISPs upload bandwidth (remote clients served from the cache, not from their users eating up cable modem upstream) and transit costs.

quote:
ISP’s would not want to cache content deemed illegal.
Quite. Which is why they plead ignorance as far as the contents of their news servers goes. They are just message IDs, and that is all the ISP will claim to see them as.

Same goes for the Cachelogic appliances. NTL (the UK cableco trialling) have no idea at all what is on that box. The only data that identifies content is meaningless hashes. This way they have no liability for what is on the caches as they have no way of finding out.

As soon as an ISP admits knowledge of and therefore liability for the content on a server of theirs they open up a whole world of hurt for themselves. No sane ISP will be even considering running a readably indexed P2P cache server, the overheads of running it legally would be monstrous.

PS Guess who I used to work for

mikef1
Mike

join:2004-10-28
Littlestown, PA

Re: HAH!

I still don’t think this would fly over here in the US.

RIAA/MPAA would use the same tactics on ISP’s that they use on consumers.
Use an account with that ISP, get the IP of the caching server, and download illegal content. Show that ISP is providing illegal content and sue.

They can claim ignorance, but IMHO when it gets to court claiming ignorance wont work.
--
mike
HouseOfMike
jarosoup

join:2003-01-14
·Qwest.net


edit:
May 3rd, @08:34PM

Re: HAH!

Even if it would fly (and I agree that the RIAA, MPAA or other party would find a way to make it illegal), I don't see caching BT as feasable. The amount and size of "content" running across BT is almost limitless. Caching web traffic can take up a lot of space...1000's of DVDs, ISOs (legal or not), software, or even "pieces" of torrents, etc. Are ISPs really interested in creating a cache to try to tackle this? We're talking about a lot of space needed to make this even a little effective. It would probably cost them less to buy more bandwidth to support the traffic.
Necronomikro

join:2005-09-01

It is not illegal to provide a caching server, even if 99.999999999% of what is on it is illegal, so long as they don't look at it. They can provide the cache server and just set it and forget it, and so long as they don't check to see if the content is copyrighted, it won't be illegal.

Ignite
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Re: HAH!

said by Necronomikro See Profile :

It is not illegal to provide a caching server, even if 99.999999999% of what is on it is illegal, so long as they don't look at it. They can provide the cache server and just set it and forget it, and so long as they don't check to see if the content is copyrighted, it won't be illegal.
Exactly. There is no difference between running a P2P cache and running news servers. Both have a little legit content and enormous amounts of not so legit content
Goldman

join:2002-06-21
Maumelle, AR

Am I the only one...

...that is sick of seeing the word "lose" misspelled?

“I sometimes loose the will to live after reading Slyck.com,” Ashwin joked. “The community can be brutal.”

Phil
Rojo Sol
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Re: Am I the only one...

said by Goldman See Profile :

...that is sick of seeing the word "lose" misspelled?
Nope.
--
Correcting one "looser" at a time.
MicaTurbo

join:2001-08-27
Ottawa, ON

Re: Am I the only one...

Drives me insane :/
cluth

join:2004-01-06
Anchorage, AK

Re: Am I the only one...

My mind is loosing it's ability to handle people's poor mechanics...

Ignite
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UK
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Uh-Oh

OK Where are the pro-piracy types who think the internet should be free, we should be able to trade whatever we want as fast as we want, and the ISPs are just being ignorant telling us how we should be using our bandwidth, which they shouldn't be charging us for anyway? Information has to be free, even if it's copyrighted and costs the ISPs money to deliver to us.

Negotiation with the evil corporations isn't an option! Negotiation and consideration of ISPs isn't an option! Vive la resistance! Vive la (now detected) BT encryption!

The P2P evangelists should be popping out soon to play. Where are you all?

Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI

Re: Uh-Oh

They are coming...patience.

sapo
Computer Love
Premium
join:2002-09-16
Sacramento, CA
P2P doesn't lose.
Soden_dop

join:2006-03-19
Graham, WA
sure you can keep that right (if you call it your right to be able to do so) but i bet if the ISP could they would refuse to give you the bandwidth that would have the shady content.
LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY

You Can't Read The Full Transcript

Slick has posted the full transcript of their interview here in Word format.
You can read the full transcript ONLY if you pay the Microsoft tax!

People, use open data formats!
»en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_format

--
Support BitTorrent friendly ISPs, like Speakeasy!

sapo
Computer Love
Premium
join:2002-09-16
Sacramento, CA

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

Well it works in OpenOffice, don't really care much more beyond that.
--
I throw bricks at the devil.

toddbs98

join:2000-07-08
North Little Rock, AR
clubs:
Might want to learn a bit about what you are posting before you post.
LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY


edit:
May 3rd, @07:02PM

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

You know what, you are right! Let's put all of our information in a closed, proprietary format that is controlled by a single monopolistic company because the Open Source Community will just reverse engineer it for us!! It doesn't matter that they could be doing about a million other things with their time, energy and money!!! Everybody should just keep using the shitty, closed, proprietary formats that nobody will be able to read in the future!!!!

YOU might want to learn a bit about what you're proposing before YOU POST!

--
Use and support open formats!

dadkins
Go For It
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join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA
·Comcast


edit:
May 3rd, @07:21PM

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

Microsoft Office came pre-installed on this laptop.
There's something to be said for Software Bundles...

Isn't this news item about BT? HELLO!

BTW, it opens in Word Pad!
--
Think outside the Fox... Opera
LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

said by dadkins See Profile :

BTW, it opens in Word Pad!
So, Windows is the ONLY computer operating system in existence and every computer in the entire world has Windows on it! Well that is news to me!! I know of at least 10 million computers that DO NOT have Windows on them!!!

--
No Microsoft software was used in the creation of this post.

dadkins
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Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

No, not EVERY computer, just the good ones!

Ya know, even Knoppix has Open Office included.
--
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LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

said by dadkins See Profile :

Ya know, even Knoppix has Open Office included.
You know what, you are right! Let's put all of our information in a closed, proprietary format that is controlled by a single monopolistic company because the Open Source Community will just reverse engineer it for us!! It doesn't matter that they could be doing about a million other things with their time, energy and money!!! Everybody should just keep using the shitty, closed, proprietary formats that nobody will be able to read in the future!!!!

--
This post is made entirely out of recycled bytes.

dadkins
Go For It
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join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

How far out there are you pal? Knoppix is Open Source(can you say Linux?).

Are you any relation to taylor?
--
Think outside the Fox... Opera
LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

I really need to stop replying to people who can't, won't or don't read. By the way, what's your definition of good? It sounds pretty shitty to me. I've got computers NOT running Windows that are better than yours!

--
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dadkins
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edit:
May 3rd, @08:47PM

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

Read what? You having a hissy fit about a .doc file that can be read with virtually any OS on the planet? Yeah, I read it.

Thing is, this machine can run any OS for the x86 platform... but I'm not whining.

BTW, post typed from within Knoppix.
You have no idea what this machine is or what it can do! LMAO!

Have a great evening taylor!

EDIT: Here, I opened the .doc for you...

Tom: So what do you think one of the biggest misperceptions is from what you read, from what we were talking about before, in the Slyck forums people have of the Bit Torrent Inc. [BT]?

BT: I think the community should understand that BT as an organization and even as a corporate entity values the contributions of all of the engineers and developers who are writing BT clients as well as those who maintain or develop BT communities or participate in them. We’re not viewing BT as a house that with different constituencies but that one that we hope remains united because there’s constructive debates that needs to take place within our community but the bigger debates need to take place between BT and other constituencies via the content industry or the internet service providers and the carriers.

Tom: What do you feel BT as a business is doing for the average BT user that he or she may not even know about or see?

BT: Well BT if it existed as a distributed development project wouldn’t have any legitimacy or role in the future of media distribution. And BT as a company is able to sit at a table and negotiate with movie studios and record labels and ISPs. If we didn’t have an organization around it, it would be easy to dismiss BT as a piracy protocol it really has a much bigger role in the world and its important that there is an organization that people can see, hear and touch.

Tom: A lot of reaction from the community seems to feel that any dealings with the MPAA, or any kind of entertainment industry such as that, is automatically labeled as bad, what would you say the counter of that argument would change the opinion of a lot of people that feel that way?

BT: I can’t blame them its easy to actually I’ll say it differently, it’s easy to come to that conclusion when you see scary press releases from MPAA or RIAA that vilify us as consumers and customers of their product. There are people within these organizations, who, within record labels, within movie studios, within the trade associations that question those tactics as well, so were not, we cant, by coming to the conclusions that you mentioned is not an unreasonable thing to do. The content industry is on the verge of embracing these technologies. In the past the lawyers in these businesses governed the decision making with respect to peer to peer [p2p] and in the coming months the business people and the decision makers outside of the legal organization are going to weigh in and decide how they want to work with p2p developers in general.

Tom: Bandwidth capping, bandwidth bottling: these are all very big concerns for a lot of people, BT’s involvement with that is?

BT: If ISPs treat BT as a faceless enemy and a protocol that can be categorically dismissed,
as a piracy protocol then we all lose, consumers, users, BT users, BT developers, anyone that has any commercial ambition around the torrent protocol…. Phone rings ….So what we’ve spent extraordinary amounts of time…
phone rings.

Continued after phone call

BT: We spent an extraordinary amount of time face to face with the largest ISPs in the world who now see anywhere between a third and up to 70% of all their traffic in the BT protocol. Trying to convince them that there’s a better way to manage the BT protocol then to limit it and to shape it, we’ve been strong advocates of the caching solution in the next version of the BT client, the main line client, what we are calling the Allegra release, there’ll be a protocol which allows ISPs to cache BT content, BT protocol which is a great thing for users. Improves the user experience for downloading with BT no matter what client it is as long as it implemented the Cache Discovery Protocol and it also offers ISPs a cost effective way to allow BT to exist on their networks.

Tom: So this is going to be something that the ISP will be readily able to … the client will already existing its just up to the ISPs whether or not they want to hop on board so to speak.

BT: Right so… a lot of ISPs did not even know there was a caching solution for the BT protocol, and as we’ve taking it upon ourselves to educate them on behalf of our users and all the other developers of the protocol to implement a user friendly way to manage the cost.

Tom: We were talking before a little about if it’s a house divided we all fall. Can you expand on that a little bit?

BT: The number 1 priority for all for us as developers is to maintain the inoperability of the protocol. A forked protocol becomes difficult for ISPs to work with and to cache and all we require is better communication and understanding amongst all of us developers to set a direction for the protocol and to involve in a constructive way or to expose that discussion to the ISPs so that they don’t feel blind sided by the direction of our development so we actually own the domain bittorrent.org which we are now contributing sort of to the community for the purpose of creating a communication mechanism for all of us to hopefully constructively debate different directions, different extensions, the protocol can take. This includes things like encryption, cache discovery; a few of the new extensions that we’ve developed are things like Get Pieces Fast which will have dramatic performance improvements to the BT protocol.

Tom: What is that called again?

BT: Get Pieces Fast

Tom: And what is that exactly?

BT: When you kick off a torrent download there’s a period of time when your client is looking for peers, and so that sluggishness to kick off a download is addressed by Get Pieces Fast. It’s a new extension that we are putting into a new client I think we have documented it on bittorrent.org other developers should feel most welcome to debate whether they think it’s a good thing or not for their implementations.

Tom: Can you just go into a bit more technical detail or is that readily available information?

BT: That’s all completely exposed on .org. and so .org is still in development but in the future you should expect basically a platform for every developer to blog about, discuss and debate developments to the protocol.

Tom: Maybe a year back there was talk about BT 2.0, is that something that still on the table or is this going to be evolution of what’s currently out there?

BT: It was sort of a research project. The big problem with a “BT 2.0” is that it would break inoperability and I think with as many sort of big pressing issues facing us as a community again the most important thing is to maintain our inoperability to present our agenda to the ISPs as one group or one entity or coherent group of developers and to actually see them making investments into a p2p friendly architecture before we start to even think about how to make a new protocol for this kind of delivery. I’m optimistic that in several places in the world that the investments in architecture are already being made to embrace p2p rather than filter it or shape it adversely.

Tom: What are some of the biggest problems and what are some of the more significant solutions that are facing bit torrent right now?

BT: The most important thing is that we get reputable publishers using BT tools to put content on the web deployed with the BT protocol. The more publishing activity that goes on the more difficult it will be for ISPs, for example, to dismiss us categorically. The greatest thing that can happen for all of us as developers, p2p developers, is for Hollywood studios, record labels, independent film makers, independent musicians, software developers, to start deploying their products with BT because now at that point BT will have cemented its self as a protocol that’s not going away, and that the politicians or decision makers within the content industry or the service provider industry, will have to recon with.

Tom: As far as the end user in terms of the performance of the BT protocol what kind of new features can the user be looking forward to?

BT: I think there’s a lot of creativity that’s going on and in the uTorrent implementations, for example, we’re big fans of the work that ludde is up to and some of us at BT actually think that Azureus had some decent ideas on a product level it would be great if their download was a little be more efficient but these are all things we hope to discuss on bittorrent.org what we would like to do on a product level is also serve as an aggregator of content so that publishing activity on the part of independent film makers, media companies and the like would all live in one place and then anyone interested in distributing that content or making that available on their own sites can essentially sublicense that content from bittorrent.com.

Tom: What kind of influence does the entertainment industry primarily the MPAA have on any aspect of the BT protocol?

BT: We were available to the MPAA when they have technical questions we’re also via our search engine able to remove links in our search engine that point to films which they believe are infringing on their copy writes.

Tom: Say you have this new idea will really facilitate the distribution of a file and it can be readily adapted by more organizations, like The Pirate Bay, that are not so interested with playing nice with the entertainment industry, what kind of reaction would BT have if the MPAA asks, maybe don’t implement that idea? Or do they?

BT: BT is an open source project and always will be.

Tom: Right, but say there’s an idea that’s a little on the down low nobody really knows about it would they have any influence whether or not it would come to fruition or not.

BT: Well I mean we have to be able to look people in the eye and explain with honesty and candor why we make certain decisions, it’s the world we live in, and that’s true. What we do when we speak to the developer community as well as the public community. That’s the line we have to walk. And people are developing their own p2p products or sites they can chose to use elements of the protocol that they believe in or not it’s an open book.

Tom (email follow-up): As a follow up to my last question about the MPAA's influence over BitTorrent development; have they, or any other entertainment entity, pressured BitTorrent, Inc. into abandoning a potential feature or direction?

BT: Never. We design our own products and our product strategy and development process has never been coerced by any third party.

--
Think outside the Fox... Opera
LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

said by dadkins See Profile :

Read what? You having a hissy fit about a .doc file that can be read with virtually any OS on the planet? Yeah, I read it.
That's what I do. I'm a liberal astroturfer in case you haven't noticed!

--
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dadkins
Go For It
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join:2003-09-26
Hercules, CA

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

I can deal with that!
wilburyan

join:2002-08-01
M$ also provides a Reader for Word, Excel, and powerpoint documents... free, no tax involved.

download.microsoft.com

gg
LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY


edit:
May 3rd, @07:13PM

Re: You Can't Read The Full Transcript

The Microsoft Tax is for Windows! You need Windows to use that shit!!

Of course, that doesn't seem to matter because Windows is the ONLY computer operating system in existence and every computer in the entire world has Windows on it! Well that is news to me!! I know of at least 10 million computers that DO NOT have Windows on them!!!

--
No Microsoft software was used in the creation of this post.
LiberalWacko

join:2006-05-02
Schenectady, NY

Why Those Misbehaving RGUs

How DARE they actually USE the service they are paying for! Those lying, cheating, stealing revenue generating units are not generating enough revenue!! Internet service is something you are SUPPOSED to have and NOT USE, like INSURANCE!!! Choke off the bandwidth of those revenue generating units that are failing to live up to their names and if they leave, good riddance!!!!

BitTorrent is of the devil! It sucks up 75% of our bandwidth and is responsible for 100% of the customer information subpoenas from the owners of the content that our customers keep stealing!! Those lying, cheating, stealing customers are ABUSING our service and eating into our profits!!! It's all because of that evil, evil BitTorrent!!!!

--
Support liberal ISPs, like Speakeasy!

2lazy2register

@pacbell.net

Re: Why Those Misbehaving RGUs

quote:
BitTorrent is of the devil!
Wrong, people are.

Zeb
Premium
join:2000-07-10
Lewisville, TX

yummy

quote:
I sometimes loose the will to live after reading Slyck.com," Ashwin jokes.
I would, too! Slyck can't even spell "lose".

Maggs
Premium
join:2002-11-29
Woodside, NY
clubs:
·RCN CABLE

I pay the piper, what I do with my connection is my business

Really that is all there is to it. You pay for a service, the company should blindly deliver packets to their destination. Why, cause if they don't then they have "unclean hands".

If I pay upwards of $40 a month for internet access, and I use $200 worth, then change your pricing policy, or deny me total service. Simple as that. No traffic shaping needed.

C0deZer0
Oc'D To Rhythm And Police
Premium
join:2001-10-03
Davenport, FL
·Verizon Online DSL

Re: I pay the piper, what I do with my connection is my business

Except this is america... where it's about as uncool to accept responsibility for your own actions as it is to be homeless.
jebba2005

join:2005-01-13
Portland, ME

33 to 70%

i just find that hard to believe that 33 to 70% of isp traffic is bt. Can anyone who actually works for an isp confirm this?
I read it everywhere. There is no reasonm for me to believe this is a lie or is there? They say bt not all p2p.

Ignite
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UK
clubs:
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Re: 33 to 70%

said by jebba2005 See Profile :

i just find that hard to believe that 33 to 70% of isp traffic is bt. Can anyone who actually works for an isp confirm this?
I read it everywhere. There is no reasonm for me to believe this is a lie or is there? They say bt not all p2p.
I work for an ISP and will (un)happily tell you that at least 50% of our traffic is Bittorrent.
jarosoup

join:2003-01-14

Re: 33 to 70%

As do I, and it is a huge problem...Unfortunately, consumers don't understand (or don't listen). It's interesting that BT is pushing to get more legal uses on BT so that it would be harder to block it and so everyone can suffer from it's effects.
jebba2005

join:2005-01-13
Portland, ME

Re: 33 to 70%

thanks for replies.
Forums » Bit Torrent CEO on ISP Throttling


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