BITTORRENT LIVE STREAMING PROTOCOL DOWNLOAD
I’ve tested couple of available applications available, which work with standard BT protocol, but use sequential download and piece prioritization to stream video file:Īcestream – is not open source, so I did not spent too much time with it but it generally works, remaining pieces (after priority set) – are downloaded with normal priority, sequentially or even can use regular rarest fist piece selection.a small set of pieces including and immediately after current play point (priority set) – are downloaded with highest priority and utilizing preferably high speed peers.pieces before current play point in file are either not downloaded or are seeded if they were downloaded before.There has been also some academic research in this area ( paper1, paper2 ), proposing improvement to BT protocol to help with video streaming, focusing mainly on modifications to piece selection mechanism in client, where pieces are split into 3 sets:
(for curious here is link to US patent for BitTorrent Live – P2P Live Streaming). This project started at 2011, but it seems to be bit stalled now. There is also project BitTorrent Live where BT protocol inventor Bram Cohen comes with enhancement of BT protocol to enable media streaming. Indeed it’s a poor man streaming, because it lacks any advanced features like stream synchronization, stream seeking etc., but in many cases it works just good enough. Key trick is to force sequential download in BT client (normally BT client selects first pieces, that are least available in swarm, which contributes to better distribution of the file, sequential download is playing against it, so it is not enabled in regular BT clients).īut if we force BT client to download sequentially, cache incoming pieces and have enough incoming bandwidth from peers, we can stream incoming video directly into video player. You can demo BitTorrent Live for yourself at the company's website: BitTorrent (BT) protocol was not designed for media streaming, in practice it can be used, with certain extent, to stream a video file from P2P network. Interestingly, DSL Reports noted that their own, recent demonstration was a less than perfect. In 2010, Cohen expressed the inherent difficulties of crafting a satisifactory BitTorrent-based streaming solution. It seems he wants to make certain clients are regulated and play by the rules, but this may also provide a way for Cohen to monetize his invention, as well.īitTorrent Live has endured beta testing since last year and has actually been a work in process for several years. Cohen claims BTL is a "tricky" protocol and misbehaving clients could have a serious, negative impact on the ecosystem. the technology will probably need to be licensed). There is redundancy and some waste in the screaming, but that's kept under control by only using it to get data to a small fraction of the peers."Īlthough bi-lateral usage is slated to be entirely free, third-party client implementations will be limited (i.e. "For the last hop it uses a non-screamer protocol to regain congestion control and efficiency.
High robustness and low latency is achieved by using a screamer protocol between those peers," Cohen explained to TorrentFreak. "To get slightly more technical, the way BitTorrent Live works is by making subsets of peers responsible for subsets of data. Cohen is also the author and inventor of the original BitTorrent protocol. Currently, BitTorrent Live streams broadcasts with relatively low latency (a "few seconds" according to Cohen) which fares better than other P2P streaming technologies which can generate delays best measured in minutes.Ĭohen says some "very unorthodox techniques" were used to bring latencies down - possibly techniques which are covered by his recent patent application.
BITTORRENT LIVE STREAMING PROTOCOL FREE
Today, Cohen shared that BitTorrent Live - despite its possible patent encumbrance - will be entirely free for both users and broadcasters who utilize the P2P service.Ī potential game-changer, BT Live is a BitTorrent-based P2P protocol optimized for streaming live content near-instantaneously. As we noted earlier this month, Bram Cohen hopes his BitTorrent Live protocol will prove to be a major disruptor for the streaming media business.
0 kommentar(er)
