Most of you already know what this is. It’s a popular file sharing protocol that actually works pretty good. If you have the time.

I’ve been downloading a 3.5 gb file all day. It’s only available via bittorrent and what the file is isn’t important. So far, in the 12 hours the download has been running, only 1/2 of the file has gotten to me, and it says that there is still another 4 hours to go. I’ve downloaded 1.5 gb files from iTunes and I can tell you they don’t take this long.

For bittorrent to be useful, there has to more than a few users with fast connections. If you try to download something that is only shared by a few users, the download will take forever. Same goes if any of the users sharing are doing so over a dial up connection.

I mention this because it has been tossed around that this might be the wave of the future, the new way to get content from production houses or television networks. No way I’m going to wait 12+ hours to download a movie.

This might work if the content providers have their own seeders on super fast connections. Maybe a server farm someplace with the torrents? Who knows. But something like this might actually work.

For now, I still think it is mostly for the more ‘geekier’ of us. Someday maybe it might be more mainstream, but just not today

3 Responses to “bit torrent as mainstream? I don’t think so”

1. John Says:
   November 3rd, 2006 at 7:06 am

   bit what?

2. db Says:
   November 3rd, 2006 at 7:17 am

   See? That’s what I’m saying.

   Now if I can only figure out how to burn these files to DVD…

3. The Problem with BitTorrent | donburnside.com Says:
   January 5th, 2010 at 6:05 am

   [...] discussed this back in ‘06 and I am here to say that BitTorrent is still not useful. Back then I [...]

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