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Cambridge, UK (pte022/22.06.2005/11:46) - Researchers at Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com are working on technology that will assist in the downloading of movie files, TV-on-demand and mammoth software patches.
The scheme, called Avalanche http://research.microsoft.com/~pablo/avalanche.htm , is an improvement on the successful download algorithms used by BitTorrent http://www.bittorrent.com , a tool that facilitates optimal downloads of large amounts of data like software or video files.
BitTorrent speeds up the process by slicing data into chunks and enables users to share them with each other, known as 'peer-to-peer' sharing. This system increases the network bandwidth considerably, even when several users are downloading the file. However, BitTorrent's algorithms don't ensure the speediest of downloads.
Avalanche has been developed by Christos Gkantsidis and Pablo Rodriguez at Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, and is supposed to quicken the process by encoding individual chunks of data with linear equations, passing on the encoded pieces. This allows a reconstruction of original data even if the user doesn't have all the data blocks.
Explaining their research in a project outline, Gkantsidis and Rodriguez write: "Peers do not need to find specific pieces in the system to complete, any encoded piece will suffice. This makes the system very robust as peers disconnect. Also, no peer becomes a bottleneck, since no block is more important than another. Finally, network bandwidth is considerably reduced since the same information does not travel multiple times over bottleneck links."
Copy prevention has been controversial with BitTorrent because even though it is used legally, it enables the sharing of movie files, which are usually copyrighted.
A representative of Microsoft commented on the copy prevention issue by saying: "It includes strong security to ensure content providers are uniquely identifiable, and to prevent unauthorised parties from offering content for download," the spokesperson says. "Avalanche also ensures content downloaded to each client machine is exactly the same as the content shared by the content provider."
However, the technology is not yet faultless, says Adam Langley, a peer-to-peer networking expert in London, UK http://www.imperialviolet.org/ . "I believe that their simulator assumes unlimited processing power and hard drive transfer speeds at the user nodes," he said. "I would suggest that a real-world network would take quite a hit from this."
Bram Cohen, who programmed BitTorrent, said in a weblog that Microsoft researchers may have overestimated some of the fundamental problems of his programme.
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