Quoting "Vijay K. Gurbani" <v...@bell-labs.com> from ml.p2p.hackers: :On 05/14/2012 11:40 AM, Serguei Osokine wrote: :> So old-fashioned non-DHT trackers should be unaffected by this? : :Yes, but non-DHT trackers are being (have been?) phased out :in BitTorrent for reasons related to the tracker being a good :target to legally hold responsible as the entity that is :distributing the content illegally.
So now that BitTorrent is using solely DHT trackers, what is its advantage over Gnutella exactly? :-) The Gnutella protocol (the modern one in use today, not the old one from 2001) supports swarming, DHT, plus it has a lookup engine. It has merkle trees for spot content verification, naturally finds alternate locations, supports exchanges from firewalled peers and between firewalled peers, etc... The only thing Gnutella does differently is the transfer of files. Instead of a specific protocol, Gnutella uses HTTP. In theory, BitTorrent's justification for using a specific "more efficient" exchange mechanism is correct, in practice it does not hold as the majority of exchanges are bound by the low amount of sharing peers. [From an architectural standpoint, I would say Gnutella's choice of HTTP for file transfers was a smarter decision, but that's a matter of personal taste.] Hence my real question: considering the evolution of BitTorrent over the years and the evolution of Gnutella over the years, aren't we in a situation today where both protocols are "competing" for users in the same "market", hence mining the economic basis of P2P exchanges? Raphael _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
