Torrent is a great idea, but it's really a first release candidate of the idea. There are a number of deficiencies that I could address in a presentation.<br><br>Offhand:<br><br>I believe the protocol has been revised so that strings are /supposed/ to be UTF-8; but many clients fail to create or process files that way (clean 7 bit ASCII always works w/o issue though).<br>
<br>Work is ongoing to spread UDP delivery of data; which is how it should have been from the start (since it detects and recovers errors anyway).<br><br>There are methods of going tracker-less now, but it's still much better with a tracker.<br>
<br>I've always had an issue with the way torrents -strictly- have checksums only on the arbitrary blocks. I'd like additional checksums over the files as wholes. I'd probably accomplish that with an extra array of 'split checksum pairs' in order as well. An alternative would be file checksums of some type.<br>
<br>It would be even nicer if torrent trackers supported multicast on the local network; that would provide for both distributed host sessions on local torrents and allow for efficent use of network media (sharing any parts uploaded among everyone at almost the media speed).<br>
<br>Finally it would be great if suspected partly corrupted blocks could be repaired without resending the whole block, but by operating a par2 style repair on a matrix of non-conforming blocks with a target error rate.<br>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Sep 21, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Joe moo <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:starquestnerd@gmail.com">starquestnerd@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
What about a talk on BitTorrent and how it helps Linux in general!<br>
<br>
Bulletin of possible discussions:<br>
<br>
* How BitTorrent helps save money for Linux distros<br>
* A list of bittorrent clients<br>
* Details on the protocol and how it works (I'd like a volunteer for this one)<br>
* Other alternatives to save hosting costs for Linux (eg. anonymous<br>
file sharing networks like the MUTE network or the RShare network)<br>
* Drawbacks and advantages to P2P for Linux.<br>
<br>
What do you guys think?<br>
<br>
Ps. I don't know if I'll be coming on october 10th ill find out soon though!<br>
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