50x Faster Than BitTorrent? Dream On!
Written by Ernesto on October 17, 2007Yesterday, quite a few websites, such as TechCrunch, quoted Kaiser Kuo, who claims that Blin.cn is working on a P2P-technology that is allegedly 50 times faster than our beloved BitTorrent. Impossible of course, and we will show you why.
First of all, if Kaiser Kuo’s claim is right this would mean that on average, BitTorrent users would use less than 2% of their available bandwidth when downloading. This is an absurd claim, because most people know that it’s fairly easy to max out your connection, even on a private tracker.
It gets even more hilarious if we look at the download speed Kaiser Kuo is bragging about. He tells us that it downloads 2.2% of a DVD quality episode of the TV-series “24″ in only 3 minutes. If we assume that he’s talking about the 700Mb DVD quality file, this means that he reached an average download speed of 88kB/s. I have no clue under what stone Kuo has been living, but 15.4Mb in 3 minutes is not going to impress many people.
TorrentFreak contacted Ashwin Navin, President and Co-Founder of BitTorrent Inc. When confronted with the 50 times faster than BitTorrent claim, he said: “BitTorrent can regularly saturate your downstream capacity, which in layman’s terms means BitTorrent is as fast as you can get. The claim is indicative of the fact that BitTorrent is the global standard for P2P transfers, against which all others are compared. BitTorrent DNA took that standard up significantly, but we don’t run around making sensationalist claims to get buzz.”
Indeed - a sensationalist claim - that’s what it is, nothing more, nothing less. Sure it might be possible to develop a P2P technology that is more efficient than BitTorrent, but the difference would never be bigger than a few percent. Even BitTorrent itself can’t be considered to be twice as fast as any other P2P technology, so claiming that any technology is 50 times faster is just a load of crap.
But wait, perhaps Kuo is talking about the time it takes until you can actually watch the episode. Their service supports streaming, and if you can watch the episode after 2% has downloaded this will mean it is 50x faster. However, this is not really revolutionary, the BitComet BitTorrent client implemented this feature over a year ago, and FoxTorrent has the same functionality.
On top of that, it is impossible to stream a episode of “24″ at the speeds Kuo is suggesting (88kB/s). If he did the math he would have realized that it will take more than 2 hours to download or stream the 45 minute episode, not something I would like to watch.
Last but not least, is the environment for P2P developers that great in China? Kuo says that the anti-piracy watchdogs such as the RIAA and MPAA hamper technological innovation in the US. However, BitTorrent Inc. does a great job with their p2p streaming implementation (beats Blin.cn), and Harvard is implementing the latest economical theories in their BitTorrent client.
Filed in the category: Tor-Rant
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Bwahahahaha.
dead straight, freaking chinese
lolwut? this article is made of load of crap.
You misunderstood a bit, he says it took 3 minutes from his wife started typing the url to the site, not started downloading. This means that the protocol probably is much like the BitTorrent DNA feature. Not more speed but streaming fast enought to watch the whole clip without catching up.
Actually, there is something faster then bit-torrent, which is, bittorent on a chinese connections. Apperently this guy forgets that China broadband is like 50 times faster then USA broadband, which in turn, makes bittorent faster. Wouldn’t it, the faster someone can upload to you the faster you can download something from BT
5 Oct 17, 2007 at 14:31 by crazyheiQuote crazyhei
Actually, there is something faster then bit-torrent, which is, bittorent on a chinese connections. Apperently this guy forgets that China broadband is like 50 times faster then USA broadband, which in turn, makes bittorent faster. Wouldn’t it, the faster someone can upload to you the faster you can download something from BT
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Actually Chinese lines aren’t as fully functional as American lines. If you want to discuss who has the fastest line on record, I strongly suggest you research the 40GB/s line in Sweden.
[quote comment="188932"]You misunderstood a bit, he says it took 3 minutes from his wife started typing the url to the site, not started downloading. This means that the protocol probably is much like the BitTorrent DNA feature. Not more speed but streaming fast enought to watch the whole clip without catching up.[/quote]
That makes sense. However, it is still not different from the other BitTorrent streaming implementations, and certainly not faster than BitTorrent. He’s comparing streaming with downloading, which makes no sense.
Like Ashwin said, they use the BitTorrent buzzword just to get some media attention, and it worked.
Not saying its true, just keep in mind there average connection speed is 100mbit. United stats average is 3mbit I think… If I’m wrong correct me but I know there average is 100mbit.
[quote comment="188976"]Not saying its true, just keep in mind there average connection speed is 100mbit. United stats average is 3mbit I think… If I’m wrong correct me but I know there average is 100mbit.[/quote]
But that says nothing about Bittorrents effectivness as a protocol which is what he’s talking about in the video. 50 times faster then bittorrent must mean the protocol, and not the bandwidth. Remember this is a guy that’s supposed to know his stuff. He’s not making the argument that China has better broadband.
He never mentions the protocol. He states that one network is faster than the other. If most of the users have 100mbit connection over most having a 3mbit connection than yes its going to be faster. It has nothing to do with BT’s protocol, its just the tool resides mostly with Chinese users and they have bigger connections. I don’t think he was trying to say that the Protocol is better than BT’s that is why it’s faster.If so there would be no one thinking what I have.
My reaction watching this video was similar to yours: it’s bullshit and shows a lack of technical understanding of how BT and file sharing protocols in general work.
However, in his defense I interpreted his little anecdote as referring to an entire season of 24 (he says “Season 6 of 24″), not a single episode. So the math probably adds up in terms of being able to stream and watch in real time.
That is all I was trying to say is when you have bigger files 100mbit connection is going to out perform 3mbit easily. Thus making it faster. Has nothing to do with the protocol just peoples connections in china.
[quote comment="188993"]If most of the users have 100mbit connection over most having a 3mbit connection than yes its going to be faster. It has nothing to do with BT’s protocol, its just the tool resides mostly with Chinese users and they have bigger connections. [/quote]
He’s not compairing countries though he just states that it’s fifty times faster the bittorrent, so either he’s talking out of his as or he’s really bad at telling the story he’s trying to tell.
He’s not saying that China is has 50x faster p2p networks then the US. Or he could be saying that, but it’s not a very good argument for evaluating a p2p client. From what I got from it he’s trying to make the point that Blin.cn is much better at stealing network resources and is thus 50x faster.
If his wife was downloading the whole season 6 of 24 we have to opposite effect. If that’s the case the client needs to download half an episode before it can start streaming. And that is not really that impressive.
I think anyone geeky enough to watch that already knew this and can deduce what he meant. Then again maybe I’m wrong and he’s just a big ass. Not what I got out of it though. I see what your saying as well.
He says 50 X faster than bittorrent.
Nothing to do with line speeds at all, as bittorrent on a 100mb/s line can potentially operate at 100mb/s.
He’s claiming something that is impossible.
Nothing can always be 50 times faster than something that maxes out your bandwidth.
Perhaps it is faster than BT in some instances, for example where there are many peers and only a few low bandwidth seeds, but then any high bandwidth streaming server would be faster.
In situations where seed bandwidth exceeds peer bandwidth, nothing can be faster.
In fact, single seed to single peer is a much faster way for me to transfer files to my servers than FTP, as it uses my full upload capacity. FTP uses only about 2/3rds.
“Web 2.0″ should have given the game away though. Those guys like to use fancy words and pretend they are doing something new, when it’s all just reworking what the rest of us have done for years, but with thousands of code lines invested in parsers and 10 times the bandwidth requirements.
AJAX? Flash with dynamically generated flashvars or even csv was working years ago. User generated content? Forums/blogs/journals/homepages, hell, even newsgroups and BBS, all old school.
He could of descoverd some new way to do compression at at 50:1 ratio…. given that video is already seriously uber compressed that would be pretty impressive…
so I seriously don’t thinks so!
Surely he’s just been hitting the same Demonoid torrents as me?
Y’know the ones with a sole seeder who’s trying to push out 6 dvds on a capped ADSL connection?
Mind you, walking across town to watch the movie at a friend’s house would be 50x faster than some Demonoid torrents…
Huh, interesting.
So if China gets ~100 mbs (wierd), and we get ~3 mbs (ah well), then that’s a discrepancy of about 50x.
So, their bandwidth is 50x faster,
but he claims its their protocol which is 50x faster.
get it?
On a different note, I can see Japan having awesome broadband, but China?!? Can anybody post a link that verifies the numbers for typical Chinese bandwidth?
Has anyone here considered the fact that you’re taking the “50x” claim a little too literally? Maybe he just meant “a lot faster”? As in, when you say “this cola is a thousand times better if you cool it”, you don’t literally mean a factor of 1000?
If he is saying he downloads illegally, why then, is he not being pursued by our hate agencies(RIAA
Weird..it cut off half of my comment…… I was trying to say maybe the MPAA or RIAA should go after him if he has openly admitted to downloading copywritten material… In fact I invite a challenge for them to go after him…But they wont…Y??? Prolly because they’re all in bed with each other trying to catch other ppl downloading…Just a thought.
now that it was questionable, next step is to prove us wrong or shut up.
BT Saturating your bandwidth isn’t proof that nothing can be faster.
Of course you’re right that the claims made are false.
However, the fact bittorrent [or anything else] saturates your bandwidth doesn’t mean that something else couldn’t be faster.
Why? Overhead. Not all the data you get and send is the actual file.
I’m nit picking, because obviously BT isn’t that inefficient either, but nevertheless it isn’t 100% effecient either and merely stating “saturated downstream” as a reason nothing else can be faster incorrectly suggests it is.
Raped
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