On Sun, Sep 28, 2003 at 11:54:29AM -0400, Elton Woo wrote:
On September 28, 2003 10:52 am, Michel Alexandre Salim <Michel Alexandre Salim salimma1@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 01:01, Elton Woo wrote:
Bittorrent was *disappointingly slooooow*. I could have latched on to a mirror and gotten the three CD's much faster using mozilla.
You use *Mozilla* instead of a proper FTP client or a downloader like wget to download ISOs? Wow. You must have a really reliable connection
I'm on cable, and in addition, I usually pick one of the European or Far East sites when the ones in the West are busy. With moz, I'd have gotten all three CD's within (at most) 3 1/2 hours, compared to about 5 hours with Bittorrent (ver 3.2).
For me, Bittorrent was much, much faster. I got all three CDs within 45 minutes, compared to an average of 3 hours or so with FTP. And with FTP the mirrors are sometimes full.
Ah, cable. So no doubt your upload speeds are much worse than your download speeds, yes? Bittorrent's algorithm effectively penalizes your download speed for that, since your download speed ends up being proportional to your upload speed in the end. The computers with very fast upload speeds won't want to share with yours that much, since they can't download from you that quickly, AIUI.
BitTorrent is much closer to Pareto optimal overall, though. The process would be eased the more mirror sites (and completed downloads) stayed connected to be used as seeds for everyone.
John Thacker