Harvard Develops P2P Client that uses Bandwidth as “Currency”

Written by Ernesto on August 30, 2007 

Harvard researchers have teamed up with the Tribler team to work on a P2P client with BitTorrent support that uses bandwidth as a global currency. They released Tribler V4.1 yesterday.

Yes, Harvard, the richest University in the world recently started a new line of P2P research. They have an army of law professors to protect them, so unlike others, they must feel safe to do this controversial research in the land of the free and the home of the RIAA/MPAA.

The Harvard project is all about a fresh new approach. To be honest, have we seen a new trick since eMule and Bittorrent started? Things have clearly slowed down in the last years.

The Harvard researchers are currently working on one of hardest P2P problems, ensuring uploads. P2P dies or thrives depending on how much upload people donate. By introducing electronic “currency” for uploads they think they can make P2P HDTV Video on Demand possible. With the minor detail that we all have to switch to their client…

The latest version of Tribler enhances the standard tit-for-tat BitTorrent algorithms with something they call the give-to-get algorithm (PDF article). This new algorithm allows their users to benefit from a good ratio without using a central server like private BitTorrent trackers do.

Tribler users can still join every BitTorrent swarm and play the tit-for-tat game with old-school BitTorrent users. But, when they meet another Tribler peer they switch to give-to-get mode where the currency meter is running. This turns the Tribler network into a private Tracker network without the central server. This basically means, the more you share, the faster your downloads will go.

Every Tribler client keeps an eye on MByte counts of fellow peers. They gossip around about who is a leecher and who is a top dog, without the details of which Hollywood movie it was. The only information displayed about this in the GUI is a list in your profile of the “Top 10 Tribler Uploaders”. For the next version of Tribler they plan to turn that list of top dog uploaders into a decentralized trust system and enable users to correct typos and add tags to the content. In short, BitTorrent would go “2.0″.

But let’s first see if they can really handle network pollution and spam without a central server. It will be quite tricky to get such “Google PageRank” trust algorithms working in P2P.

tribler

If you don't like torrents try MP3 Fiesta. They hold nearly 67,000 albums from nearly 17,000 artists. Prices are around the $0.10 mark for single tracks with full albums coming in at roughly $1.00. Tracks are available from 192kbps and they take major credit cards and PayPal

Previously: ‘Heroes’ Star Recognizes Benefits of BitTorrent

Next: Jamendo: Download Thousands of Free and Legal Music Albums

63 Responses

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51 Sep 08, 2007 at 02:27 by Scott

[quote comment="157102"]the ratio can be demonstrated to suppress the proliferation of the protocol, reduce potential and nominal swarm sizes, and procreate injustice in the system because not all bandwidth users are created equal[/quote]
I see this comment over and over here, and you know what? Not everyone IS equal, but that’s not “injustice”, it’s reality.

By rewarding the people who upload more, however those people manage to do it, even if it’s unfair (LIFE isn’t fair), ratio-based trackers make the whole system work better for EVERYONE.

People are unequal, yes, but that’s not because a capitalist came by and waved a wand and made it so. THAT’S THE WAY IT IS. GET USED TO IT.

If you’re willing to face reality, you’ll realize that this isn’t the political argument you think it is. I suggest you read a book on economics sometime. Fascinating stuff.

52 Sep 08, 2007 at 14:50 by Bustabeedalow

Yah, I know what this means, it means we are moving back to the days of FTP credits. A lot more FAKEZ!!!! You know, people want GTA4. A dude hosts an empty zip file, with 0′z and no compression. People end up getting a lightweight 4 gb file which they downloaded in oh about 10 mins, and the file was padded with zeros so it goes at like 4mbps or so, even on ur 768k cable modem. Meanwhile, uploader gets the credits the downloader spent on him to get it. See how that works? Digital dater theives….

Centralized credit server. This way we could monitor, spot, prevent and/or respond to fakes.

peace

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57 Oct 19, 2007 at 09:01 by herman_m

I could see currency being used to encourage or discourage seeding. For example, if you have 409 seeders with 29 leechers - not all seeders need to be present for optimal download speeds. To discourage seeding, you lower the credit per megabyte in those instances. At the same time, if you have many leechers with few seeds, you boost the credit per megabyte. A boost in credit could also be applied to real-time data such as streams.

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