[p2p-hackers] Re: scalability

[Daniel Stutzbach]

On Fri, Dec 02, 2005 at 03:15:45PM -0500, Bryan Turner wrote:
> Gnutella (I believe) doesn't meet #2,3 and partially #4,5:
> 	#2 because it does not cluster related data it will eventually
> 		be overwhelmed with content.
> 	#3 because it performs full-file transfers instead of block
> 		exchanges or partial file transfers
> 	#4/5 because clients don't immediately offer partial downloads,
> 		thus hot spots have a congestion delay measured in
> 		full-file-transfer increments rather than in block
> 		increments (an order of 2 for typical MP3s, easily
> 		reaching multiple days of congestion).

If I am not mistaken, Gnutella has been doing partial file transfers
for two or three years now.  The eDonkey/eMule network does this too.

BitTorrent does not have a monopoly on this feature. :-)

The relevant spec (if it can be called a spec) for Gnutella is here:

http://www.the-gdf.org/wiki/index.php?title=Partial_File_Sharing_Protocol

-- 
Daniel Stutzbach                           Computer Science Ph.D Student
http://www.barsoom.org/~agthorr                     University of Oregon