Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Mon, 6/30/08, Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins at tarcanfel.org> wrote:

> One of the problems with collecting files (say, video) 
> via bittorrent is that it requires that other people be 
> interested in the same file you want at the same time 
> that you want it.  If you missed last week's episode, 
> and just got back to civilization, everybody's gonna be
> sharing this week's episode, and you'll be lucky to get 
> 29 bits per second from someone who has 1/5 of the file.

Since if alt.binaries.* went away it would be no skin off my nose, I feel entirely safe in pointing out that low availability of files through bittorrent channels is no different from Usenet NEWS binary groups.  If the interest isn't there then no one will upload through either transmission channel.

Now, the advantage to Usenet NEWS is that usually the uploader would create, in addition to the actual uploaded file,  a series of PAR2 files which would help rebuild a binary file which was missing Usenet NEWS postings.  If parts went missing a request could be put in for just the PAR2 files to be re-uploaded, and they need only be uploaded once.  Bittorrent suffers from the requirement that someone with 100% of the original file has to sit there for days uploading the file if someone else doesn't have all the bittorrent parts.

> Yes, bittorrent's technology for binary file 
> distribution is way better than NNTP, but Usenet News 
> has, as has been amply explained, a lot of reasons 
> it's still good technology.

> Everest, btw, still has news servers, and I believe it
> costs less for the same bandwidth.

A friend of mine has converted over to Everest.  He says the bandwidth is less for the same money (TWC was handing out 6-7Mbps for the same price that Everest charges for 5Mbps), the news server is quirky with a shorter "life" for news server messages, the new cable modem doesn't like his router at all, and he's not entirely sure there are any analog channels (usable without a cable box).

OTOH, he does have a news server, and their phone service is actually regular phone service, as opposed to "bandwidth-sucking digital phone service that goes out when the power goes out".