The Art and Science in Handling Torrents of Data

By Paul Philleo

It would be an understandable assumption to make that the Streaming Media West trade show held last week at the San Jose Convention Center has little to do with online gaming. Ah, but not so fast, for those who may be scratching their heads. While this particular event is focused on streaming video like YouTube, what that interest has in common with online gaming is that both technologies rely heavily on the reliable and fast transfer of large quantities of data. There was some news and ideas from that show that may impact the way games, especially one ones, are offered, delivered and updated on the Internet

That said, on with the show -- the show coverage at least!

On the first day, the meeting room was packed front to back for the keynote by Ashwin Navin, co-founder of the peer-to-peer (P2P) file transfer giant BitTorrent. The way BitTorrent works is that individual files are disseminated to a recipient in pieces through a potentially large network of users (peers), with the idea in mind that it costs less for a file distributor to have the file transferred and it offers redundancy with so many other peers acting as file source back-ups. Essentially, the more popular the media is, Navin explained, the more accessible it is to the user with so many other peers able to offer the file through the BitTorrent method of peer-to-peer. By contrast, software like Limewire allows users to make direct downloads from a single peer, which may or may not offer a rapid, reliable download.

Ashwin Navin, BitTorrent at the podium for the full-house keynote

To illustrate the kind of bandwidth all P2P networks use, in one month these vast, busy networks pass over an exabyte of data through their pipelines. That's a million terabytes, folks, equal to 1.7 years of total YouTube traffic. For traditional network other than distributed P2P to handle that sort of network traffic, it would either be incredibly expensive or technically improbable. Navin defines the advantages of P2P file distribution as one that offers a better online consumer experience, with higher-quality content because of the high bandwidth ceiling, and cost-effective delivery users help to absorb, among other benefits.

What Navin envisions is a hybrid model where distribution is balanced between traditional content delivery networks (HTTP) and P2P, whose protocol will help absorb any excess bandwidth from file downloading from users. Naturally, BitTorrent has their own solution they're developing as the forerunner to hybrid file distribution models - namely BitTorrent DNA, a closed software solution that's a kind of overlay for existing server infrastructure, to incorporate P2P support in a company's file distribution.



It's not the same to see in a still shot, but this streaming movie file demonstrated how distribution balancing is managed between P2P and conventional servers

How does the BitTorrent DNA archetype affect the online gamer? Potentially, a hybrid file distribution model will make it far easier for try-before-you-buy and advertising-fueled game versions, like those offered on FilePlanet (such as the ad-sponsored version of FarCry), to be made available in larger sizes without the heavy bandwidth costs for file distribution. Conceivably, smaller online game developers will be able to expose new gamers to larger game files and updates online without having to cringe at their server bills at the end of the month, if a functioning hybrid model fully develops, as Navin predicts will happen in North America. Not when individual users are absorbing bits and pieces of these potential massive file transfers to other users.

To the end user who happens to be an online gamer, the result of a hybrid model, whether BitTorrent-run or someone else's version, may be as simple as this: bigger and differently monetized games, new content, patches and more may someday soon be more easily and rapidly and reliably downloaded, without downloading hiccups. Not a bad future, as far getting your games from the Internet is concerned.