Usenet NEWS vs. Bittorrent

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Mon, 7/7/08, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 6:05 AM, Leo Mauler
> <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > The seed has to seed itself out to 100% before the
> > *swarm* gets a complete set of parts, so the seeder 
> > really does need to spend days sharing out *all* of 
> > what it has.  By definition all the peers start off 
> > at 0%, so the seeder has to seed out 100% to the 
> > swarm before 100% of the file is available to 
> > everyone in the swarm.
> 
> No, please see above. 

So the original uploader doesn't have to upload *all* (the commonly accepted synonym of "100%") of his parts before he can stop seeding?

The uploader has a set of encyclopedias.  He slowly photocopies and mails out A through M.  The folks he sends these copies to can then make more photocopies with the "original" photocopies and send A through M to other people without him having to do any work.  Regardless, he must still spend the effort sending out photocopies of A through *Z* to a range of someones (commonly known in bittorrent as a "swarm"), meaning he must sit there for days mailing out photocopies of A through Z until the swarm, collectively, possesses photocopies of A through Z.

Which means I am quite correct in what I have said.

> Peers can start uploading almost immediately.

Once they have downloaded some parts from the original seeder, who must spend days waiting until he has uploaded all his original parts.  Until the seeder has sent out 100% of his torrent, he cannot stop seeding if he intends for the swarm to receive, collectively, 100% of his file.

While peers can become 0.01% "seeders" almost immediately, the original seeder will remain the ONLY 100% seeder until he has spent days uploading all (100%) of his file to the swarm.
 
> > You might as well argue that a person can create 
> > a new book that no one else has, then only give 
> > out 80% to everyone else, and yet everyone 
> > somehow manages to get 100% of the book they 
> > didn't have to begin with, using only 80% of the 
> > original book.
> 
> The people with 80% can share out that 80% to others, 
> so that the seeder only has to worry about the 
> remaining 20%.

So in other words, the seeder has to sit there for days uploading his file until he has seeded out 100% of the file (to various people who are, as you say, sharing with others in the swarm).

Thanks to bittorrent being adopted by the porn/warez/piracy crowd (in addition to their prolific NetNews uploads), there are additional wrinkles caused by the anti-piracy crowd.  Should a file upload be considered to be "infringement", it has been documented that the MPAA and RIAA have written "enhancements" to clients they run on their own, which start seeding bad parts to peers in an effort to poison the swarm's copy of the file.  This type of interference can force the original seeder to become the exclusive seeder of the good parts for quite some time.

> > For example, some bittorrent clients permit individual
> > torrent upload bandwidth throttling.  This allows a 
> > peer to download the entire file but share very little, 
> > putting more of an uploading burden on the original 
> > seeder.
> 
> I think most do, including the "basic" Bittorrent
> client.  But many people don't work that way, and most 
> trackers that are worth a damn have share requirements.  

The private ones, you mean.  Public trackers have no share requirements and move most of the bittorrent traffic.

> Also, Average Joe downloader doesn't know anything about 
> this stuff, and he just clicks "okay" in his Bittorrent
> client and doesn't limit his uploads.

Average Joe clicks "ok" on his NetNews binary downloader and he gets the files.  Average Joe clicks "ok" in his bittorrent client, but there's a twist: if he's a good netizen and shares, but most others don't, and the uploader quits in despair because of the bad netizens, Average Joe doesn't get his file no matter how polite he was being.

NetNews allows good netizens not to be penalized for the actions of bad netizens.  Bittorrent punishes the good along with the bad.

Average Joe may not know much about bittorrent clients when he first installs one, but "bad netizen" information (or announcements that it exists on the other end of a Google search) is on every private tracker's forum section.  Average Joe can easily become a member of the Beard Universe.

> Also, I'm not really sure what your point is.  
> Netnews allows someone to post crap and every 
> server is required to pass a copy of it along,
> regardless of popularity.  This puts a heavy 
> burden on all Netnews servers.  Bittorrent has 
> it be that someone that wants to share something 
> has to BEAR THE BURDEN OF DOING SO.

Average Joe doesn't have to bear the burden of bad netizens in Binary NetNews, like he has to in Bittorrent.  Bittorrent is like the welfare system: some people can get free "money" from Average Joe if they work their numbers right.  Binary NetNews won't deny you the sweat of your brow.  Binary NetNews is the ultimate free market, where the weak cannot drag down the strong.  

(yes I've read some Ayn Rand, does it show?)

> What's your point?  Netnews is easily abused, and in
> practice, IT IS, OFTEN.  Bittorrent does not have that 
> problem, if the uploader doesn't like the amount of 
> bandwidth used he can throttle it, or he CAN JUST NOT 
> SEED.

The point, I believe, is that if someone uploads to NetNews, the file remains even if every single person just downloads the file.  With Bittorrent, if everyone downloads and doesn't upload, and the seeder gets fed up, the file essentially vanishes (i.e., will never reach 100%).

Or in other words, NetNews doesn't care about the behavior of the netizens, it just transmits the files.

The NetNews abuse is only of the server, not the end user.  This is not the case with bittorrent.

> If the people downloading aren't being good 
> netizens and sharing at least somewhat, the 
> tracker can boot them.

Except for the public trackers, of course.  Not all torrents are on private trackers, and I suspect most of them are on public trackers.

New accounts are easily obtained, rendering the "punishment" of booting a slap on the wrist.

> Bittorrent is a much better Internet neighbor, 
> and is fairly self-regulating.

Provided you aren't changing any settings to favor yourself over others, acting in an impolite selfish manner, and haven't recoded your client to permit fake transfer data to be sent to the private trackers.
 
> > Also, bittorrent clients which permit encryption have
> > the option of only allowing connections from other
> > encrypted clients.  If the seeder allows for both types 
> > of connections, the seeder is the sole seeder for a peer 
> > which refuses unencrypted connections.

> Again, what's the problem here?  If the seeder isn't 
> happy with the usage, he can NOT SEED, or throttle his 
> uploads.  Or he can require one or the other.  I
> don't see what the big deal is here.

I suppose the point is that NetNews uploaders don't have to care about this sort of thing at all.  They just upload once and disappear.

> > Bittorrent is completely reliant on polite sharing. 
> > If the peer, upon reaching 100%, performs a
> > "hit-and-run" maneuver and disconnects from the
> > swarm, the peer does not become a seeder and all of 
> > his or her parts vanish from the swarm.  If this 
> > means that the only person left with 100% is the 
> > seeder, the seeder must continue seeding even longer.
> 
> No, most good trackers have a share-enforcement strategy. 

The public ones don't, and clients can be recoded to send fake transfer information to the private ones.  New accounts can be created when old ones are banned due to bad netizenry.  Again, Bittorrent applies the blame equally to the bad and the good netizens by making seeders quit in disgust.

> You make it seem like Bittorrent is shitty technology that
> nobody uses.

No, I'm pointing out that its not the Holy Grail you seem to think it is.

> This is clearly not the case, it is enormously
> popular, far more popular than Netnews.

Since you know perfectly well that when there's no public record of downloads from NetNews servers, and bittorrent traffic is equally unverifiable, you can make that statement knowing full well that it is *unverifiable*.  Besides which, its an apples-to-oranges comparison: bittorrent has to go on constantly because of the method used to share files being somewhat slow.  NetNews is a one-time fast transmission, either up to the server from the uploader or away from the server to the downloader.  One is chronic, the other acute.

However, NetNews currently has about 11,000,000 posts a day, of which 99.97% are binary uploads.  Clearly it is still very popular for sharing the same sorts of things which are on BitTorrent.