I've had a few requests to make the entire RKO collection available as a one-click-to-download-everything-via-BitTorrent link. While some recent tinkering has made it possible for me to run a tracker on the server I can't run a bittorrent seed on it.
Which means I have to rely on other people to help set up mirrors to make sure that the content doesn't drop off the radar.
If you're unfamiliar with bittorrent the beauty of it is that it scales better as the number of downloaders increase. And even though it uses p2p technology to spread the load it's more of a mirroring solution than a regular p2p network like eDonkey. For example there's none of the 'usual' problems of users inadvertently sharing other files in their folders, and as bittorrent uses SHA1 checksums on content it's not possible for malicious users to poison the network with fake files. Plus it's dead easy to set up an additional mirror - either automatically by downloading the file and leaving ones client to seed it, or in case of people who already have the files - to get the torrent file and point their bittorrent client at the already downloaded file to start seeding it instantly.
Anyway, I'd like to know people's opinion on this. So make yourselves heard.
Last edited by Jan Lund Thomsen on 14/01/2006 - 14:30, edited 1 time in total.
I don't have the time or inclination to start faffing around with P2P stuff. I've downloaded a whole lot of stuff from RKO in my time, and have sent plenty of reviews to this very site; however, if RKO were to go solely down the BitTorrent route, I'd probably never download another track again. Of course, I have absolutely no problem with it being used as an alternate download method, but making it the only download method would, in my opinion, be a very strange decision indeed.
CraigG wrote:I don't have the time or inclination to start faffing around with P2P stuff. I've downloaded a whole lot of stuff from RKO in my time, and have sent plenty of reviews to this very site; however, if RKO were to go solely down the BitTorrent route, I'd probably never download another track again. Of course, I have absolutely no problem with it being used as an alternate download method, but making it the only download method would, in my opinion, be a very strange decision indeed.
(Disclaimer: While some people may read the following as a grumpy comply-or-else rant that isn't what it's about. I'm not about to pull the plug or anything. I just happen to feel passionate about the subject, that's all. )
I didn't have the inclination to deal with BitTorrent (which is a lot more than a P2P network despite what the medias endless stating otherwise) until an open source package I use regularly had their connection speed grind to a halt as its popularity rose. Switching to bittorrent for distribution proved a massive bandwidth saving for them, and they're now doing better than ever. I suppose this was the eye-opener for me.
Now, as long as Baffle is able to give RKO the bandwith it needs everything is fine and dandy. But if the day comes when it's down to switching to distributed downloads or closing up shop I'm all for the distributed model. If people aren't willing to travel down that road then I say that they didn't really want the stuff in the first place.
Some people will no doubt see contributing bandwidth as a nuisance while others will be delighted to be able to give something back - not to RKO but to everyone using the site. At the end of the day balancing the bandwidth load isn't about helping me - it's about helping yourselves.
Howdy, I'd like to add my 2 pennies. RKO requires help from external factors to florish:
1) people composing the remixes
2) a server to distribute the remixes
3) people to download the tunes
4) people to spread the word so that 1, 2 and 3 can continue.
All the above factors are fine, but this is a hobby site. Sure, Jan accepts donations but I doubt they even cover the costs were he to run his own server. So (2) is limited in it's scope and does lead to hoarding: no one gets to see those files once they're on your machine except if you were to email or snail-mail the files to your friends.
Moving to BitTorrent is a viable option because even 4k/s upload per client means a distributed network is worthwhile and can be run locally, rather then from a centralised server. The software is free and it means you're giving something back to the project - keeping it alive so to speak.
Projects like RKO are not about hoarding, but sharing people's hard work.
Janâ€â€I understand your points perfectly, and they make sense. However, that doesn't really change my view, and I don't entirely agree with the "they didn't really want the stuff in the first place" line. My reasoning was more down to the fact that in the few occasions where I have tried P2P apps, they've nearly killed my Mac, or have failed utterly to work. Therefore, unless there is a bullet-proof app for the Mac that can deal with this sort of thing, I cannot afford to risk my works machine.
I'm planning something like a mirror of RKO, evaluating the costs and how to cover them up with advertisements OR hooking an old machine into a friendly net but that's hypothetic at best. This is a very restricted project as I have no extra money for this and only pathetic hardware to do the job.
Got to do some jeditricks on some people to convince them that it was originally their idea... You DO want an RKO mirror...
You DO think it's a great idea...
You DO want sponsoring it...
CraigG wrote:My reasoning was more down to the fact that in the few occasions where I have tried P2P apps, they've nearly killed my Mac, or have failed utterly to work. Therefore, unless there is a bullet-proof app for the Mac that can deal with this sort of thing, I cannot afford to risk my works machine.
Sadly I don't have any real experience with Macs (someone get me a Mac Mini and I'll change that ) but I noticed that OCRemix recommends the official OSX client ( http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/download.html ).
Basically anything that allows you to set how much upstream bandwidth you want to dedicate should do. The official client for windows didn't allow that the last time I checked, so I switched to Azureus ( http://azureus.sourceforge.net/ ) which also has an OSX version available.
Vosla wrote:I'm planning something like a mirror of RKO, evaluating the costs and how to cover them up with advertisements OR hooking an old machine into a friendly net but that's hypothetic at best. This is a very restricted project as I have no extra money for this and only pathetic hardware to do the job.
Got to do some jeditricks on some people to convince them that it was originally their idea...
Vosla, that's the beauty of BitTorrent based distribution - you don't need extra money or posh hardware to set up a mirror. You just set aside the diskspace (currently 6 gigs for everything) and a some upstream bandwidth on your box at home. If you've got everything downloaded already you're ready to go, otherwise your bittorrent client will grab only the files you're missing. The tracker (which is the central server that keeps track of who is online) will then add your machine to its list of mirrors automatically. If you turn it off later - no problem, you don't need to do anything to remove your mirror from the list. This allows everyone to set up their own full or partial mirror.
Unlike conventional web/ftp transfers bittorrent scales really well. The more people are using it, the smaller the load is on the content distributor.
tony.rc wrote:I'm just concerned that p2p is perceived as being something illegal.
Therefore ISP's must HATE BitTorrent
There's loads of illegal stuff available over the web, but ISPs aren't blocking HTTP traffic.
As long as a P2P application like BitTorrent has legal uses they can hate it all they want. And if the powers that be still want to outlaw P2P they should outlaw photocopiers (copyright violation), UPS/FedEx/any form of mail service (parallel import) and the Internet (child pornography) as well.
Jan wrote:Vosla, that's the beauty of BitTorrent based distribution - you don't need extra money or posh hardware to set up a mirror. You just set aside the diskspace (currently 6 gigs for everything) and a some upstream bandwidth on your box at home. If you've got everything downloaded already you're ready to go, otherwise your bittorrent client will grab only the files you're missing. The tracker (which is the central server that keeps track of who is online) will then add your machine to its list of mirrors automatically. If you turn it off later - no problem, you don't need to do anything to remove your mirror from the list. This allows everyone to set up their own full or partial mirror.
Unlike conventional web/ftp transfers bittorrent scales really well. The more people are using it, the smaller the load is on the content distributor.
Jan, with my current setup BitTorrent isn't quite so cool as I'm on and off and don't have enough disk space to hold the 6gb+. If I could manage to hook an old spare into a server array where those extra traffic doesn't matter...
As an alternative download option and to take some of the strain off the main server, I can see it working. New remixes would "seed" quickly as people try them out.
--Anyone want to remix my SIDs?--
merman1974 on Twitter, Steam and Xbox Live
Is there a problem with sharing the individual tracks instead of the whole shebang? 6 GB is still quite a bit, both to download initially and then share.
