Will uTorrent Really Kill the Internet?
Written by Ben Jones on December 02, 2008An inflammatory article published by Richard Bennett in The Register makes the claim ‘BitTorrent will kill the Internet’, or at least VoIP and games. However, are Bennett’s claims based in reality, or is it just another round in the FUD war that envelops the Internet?
A lot of buzz around the net today has been generated by Richard Bennett, with his article “BitTorrent declares war on VoIP, gamers”. There’s just one problem with it – it’s utter rubbish.
We’ve mentioned Richard Bennett before, he was at the FCC hearing back in February, dealing with the Comcast-Sandvine issue. At the time, as we noted, he made the statement “If we can’t control network management, we’ll have to shut down the Internet”. With uTorrent’s new transfer protocol (uTP) that’s currently being tested in an early Alpha release of the BitTorrent client, Bennett sees another potential threat.
In his article, a doom scenario is painted where the Internet may collapse, even though uTorrent’s uTP is intended to reduce network congestion. Thankfully, the readers at The Register are a little more diligent in their fact-checking, and pointed out that many of his statements were inaccurate, or simply flat-out ridiculous.
Statements like “UDP was intended for real-time data transfers such as VoIP” and “Bulk data transfers are supposed to use TCP, in large part because it shoulders the burden of congestion control for the Internet’s end-to-end layer”, for example, are simply not true. It is highly unlikely that when UDP was conceived, that VoIP was in the forefront of anyone’s minds. There is also nothing anywhere that can be found that states bulk data transfer is ‘supposed’ to use TCP over UDP. It is preferred to use TCP, because if you’re transferring a lot of data, you want it to be intact. BitTorrent, however, uses several relatively small transfers, and has its own data checking system in place. It doesn’t need TCP’s delivery control as well.
uTorrent Community Manager ‘Firon’ explained to TorrentFreak: “We are using UDP for uTP because it is the only way to provide our own congestion control mechanism. It is designed to better react to changing network conditions and throttle itself back, even with other TCP connections active, such as the user doing video streaming or VoIP while torrenting.” The BitTorrent protocol also has a handshake for P2P communications, so using UDP just removes a duplicate connection handshake. Thus, in many ways, the move to UDP actually reduces traffic, hardly the way to cripple the net.
Bennett also made some other questionable statements, such as “Upset about Bell Canada’s system for allocating bandwidth fairly among Internet users, the developers of the uTorrent P2P application have decided to make the UDP protocol the default transport protocol for file transfers.” However, the truth is quite different. “uTP is not a response to Bell Canada,” said Firon. “It’s been in the works for a long time, since technically, since Ludde (Ludvig Strigeus, the original coder of uTorrent) was working on it.”
In response to concerns from other client developers, Firon mentioned that the specs for uTP will eventually be open. So, perhaps in time when all clients use this – and the Internet doesn’t crash and burn – fearmongers like Bennett be ignored. Of course, had Bennett any serious concerns he, like any of us, would probably have contacted someone at BitTorrent Inc. to express their concern. “No, he hasn’t contacted anyone,” said Firon, “that’s why his article is so blatantly wrong. It is disappointing that his only interest was sensationalism.”
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55 Responses
This guy is a joke, using UDP would reduce the overhead.
Disappointing that the register has become yet another mouthpiece for biassed morons pretending to be experts.
When you search the Bittorrent forums you will find out that “uTP” is based on a shortage of a function by one of the coders.
source: http://forum.bittorrent.org/viewtopic.php?pid=391#p391
As info, didn’t find a Wiki or likewise source by google or yahoo. Will seee after the Alpha’s how it works out and is documented.
Hmmm, I wonder on who’s side he is on: corporations or “average Joe” downloaders…, no prizes for getting the correct answer.
Our verdict: sensationalism/attention whore.
Mummy and daddy probably didn’t like him too much and thought he would grow up and be a bitch, and you know what? they were right!
He’s the new type of bitch, a FUD bitch!
http://www.eZee.se
The only reason I read that guy’s article in the first place was for a few good laughs.
There are those who are meant for journalism, and those who are meant for network administration: Richard Bennett is nether.
Yes, because the only two types of people are corporations and downloaders.
Personally I play games, talk to my mates, _and_ download with bittorrent on my machine. The fact that “tcp is meant for bulk transfers” is technically incorrect is irrelevant and focussing on it is missing the point. At the moment, UDP is used for most real-time systems, and TCP is used for most delay-tolerant ones, so while is statement is technically wrong it describes the state of the internet today.
Using UDP allows the client to use its own congestion control mechanism, making for more efficient use of the line. But that’s another way of saying “when someone else on the same UBR has overly-aggressive bittorrent settings I have even less chance of getting a decent ping in TF2″. Any attempts by ISPs to de-prioritise bulk transfers like bittorrent have been met with attempts to circumvent this. This is not the act of internet good citizens.
Picking holes in the irrelevancies is all very well, but the central question remains: how can network operators ensure real-time traffic isn’t swamped by bulk transfers on a contended network? Today, the answer is they can, if the real-time traffic uses UDP. Tomorrow, what will the answer be?
Some people shouldn’t be allowed to say what they think. They’re just plain stupid and does not contribute with anything constructive to this debate.
Richard Bennett: Please cut out your tongue and cut your internet connection to reduce the load so we can use it a few seconds longer.
oh my! I did not know I was putting the Internet in danger by sharing files. Maybe I will just stop using it so it will not go away.
the answer to congestion concerns is to beef up the pipes. in many areas, especially America, the major ISPs have monopolies over areas and have no incentive to increase the quality of their service. you can especially see this from Comcast whos “largest fiber network” fails to address the Last Mile problem and due to monopolies and lack of consumer outrage, they get away with it.
if an ISP is really concerned with the quality of their service, they should switch to end-to-end fiber and worry about routing performance.
We should never make a system where we pay per gigabyte or whatever, I believe ISPs should upgrade their networks for more users as cheaply and reliably as possible. If we all start charging per bandwidth usages this is the end of prisonplanet, this is the end of secondlife, this is the end of vonage, this is the end of future virtual reality cause money is controlling our future, they are preconditioning us for the shackled and controlled non-innovative internet.
Unrestricted access is why we can defy the RIAA by selling our own music or giving it out for free like independent, if we start limiting and controlling bandwidth we are gonna hurt free artists and free singers. I made a song and shared it on bittorrent for free.
We shouldn’t try to shackle the internet, having it unlimited is what is revolutionizing the internet and paving the way for online TV, online DVR (That means we get free shows, free movies and free music without breaking the law because it’s legal under the home recording act), and we have Secondlife, online radio, and infowars.
Don’t accept anybody who says that we need to charge based on bandwidth usage or else the poor and handycapped will lose the only unmetered entertainment left, the internet. This means poor people can’t have fun, because they can’t afford it.
You must tell people what Alex Jones is saying about preconditioning, they are preconditioning us to accept internet control, to accept Satan/Antichrist worshipping, and worship the wooden idol just to go on Secondlife.
We must resist and fight back against comcast, roadrunner, cox, qwest, and any ISP that is wanting to implement any type of bandwidth metering or filters, that is control. I can understand that they must limit speed but limiting extra bandwidth is unreasonable and goes against the whole beliefs of the internet, of having a place of free innovation, not having to sell your body (like a pornstar) to major corporations, that you don’t have to be rich to produce your own content, limiting bandwidth makes it more costly to non-profit groups and makes us prostitutes and sex slaves to the corporations, let us not forget that bandwidth limits will enslave us.
Wern’t isps given alotta $ to do fullout fiber but didn’t
@8 I hope you are kidding
If you’re going to transfer files over UDP then you need to build some TCP-like protocol on top of it. The article doesn’t say exactly how BT works in this respect, but he’s probably right. There’s no way that BT’s protocol could be as sophisticated as TCP, given its 30+ years of development.
Most people don’t appreciate how amazingly well TCP’s flow control works in terms of maximizing link utilization in a way that is fair to all network users. We really don’t need is an arms race of new, greedier protocols.
However, one thing to realize about P2P is that because there are often dozens of active TCP connections transmitting from one machine, fairness goes pretty much out the window anyway. An alternate protocol could conceivably improve on this by applying flow control to the aggregate throughput for the whole “bundle” of connections, rather than each connection individually. This would improve fairness and also increase efficiency because you wouldn’t have a bunch of TCP streams individually trying to grow their windows, causing packet losses.
http://torrentino.2500mhz.info/
Right, instead of investing in greater infrastructure, let’s just limit our use of the Internet. Awesome!
The rich get richer while the poor get poorer…tell me rich people how will you get rich when theres no poor people to siphon money from anymore…?
Just another lobbed round in the FUD war no doubt. Silliest thing I ever heard and has no foundation what so ever.
jess
http://www.anonymize.us.tc
uTorrent takes up too much of the internet. One day it will brake it.
http://TorrentMoon.com
One day uTorrent will brake the internet.
http://TorrentMoon.com
Just another example of “Never believe anything you read in The Register.”
These idiots like Richard Bennett just contribute to the moronic ISP thinking that they can sell as much bandwith as they want and then just limit it as they please when its sold 50 times over. Maybe IPS should think about renewing the old lines instead of trying to stop people from using the bandwith they are paying for.
Here in finland we have a partially coverment funded “program” to make a 100mb connection available to allmost every person living in the country by 2015. Much smaller county than US, i know. Dont think that will happen but atleast here covernment and companies are thinking of better ways of dealing with the fact that people need more bandwith.
What will ISP’s do when video streaming sites all stream HD video? Just prevent people from using the sites because it takes too much of the ridiculously oversold bandwith? Now is the time to renew and build new lines because there are going to be more and more HD video and other bandwith demanding applications in the near future. Why just make the bandwith problem worse instead of fixing it? It’s all about the money like allways, ISP’s want to make the current amount of bandwith last longer any way they can(bandwith caps, bittorrent bans, download and upload caps…) because they dont want to pay for fixing the bandwith problem. Who knows, maybe the ISP’s know of some new developments in technology and are waiting for cheaper and easier ways of renewing their old infrastructures, but i highly doubt that.
Went pretty much totally off topic put it’s kinda related to the same problem, we need more bandwith.
two mistakes at the end of the forth paragraph
“andl has it’s own”
should be
“and has its own”
If UDP can break the internet, then we build a better one. It’s not that hard to figure out… Tool isn’t up to the task? Get a better tool.
Honestly, TCP is a TERRIBLE fit for BitTorrent. Slow-start takes time to get to the send rates which are achieved on the internet today, and by the time they do the connection is over since BitTorrent exchanges fairly small sized blocks. As long as the people over at BitTorrent are responsible about creating their protocol I really think this will be good for everyone as opposed to bad.
I wrote a post about why this is a GOOD thing here on my blog
http://jmkupferman.blogspot.com/
BitTorrent? Ah the p2p mechanism for the poor
(Usenet) NNTP + SSL > TCP
It’s like I never downloaded heroes.311.hdtv-lol dumped a few minutes ago
Never uploaded 1 byte either, so in my country I stay legal (sharing = uploading = not legal; downloading = legal)
This monkey boy is owned by the mpaa/riaa, why else would he be complaining about bit torrent.
public tracker related -> private tracker people
bittorrent related news -> usenet people
what the fuck? dont you have anything better to do?
you really want to make yourself look cool?
WELL GUESS WHAT YOU ARE NOT
@26
You obviously PAY for Usenet (not the files within).
Excuse me, but isn’t the whole point of pirating supposed to be FREE?!
The author of this article could have called or emailed Bram Cohen before writing this article, but then he wouldn’t have had such sensational tripe to garner page views. If he had, he would have known that he has got it completely wrong. The switch to uTP is actually to make BitTorrent traffic more friendly to Internet traffic. You see, BitTorrent is trying to sell a content delivery service based on their client and the #1 complaint from their customers (businesses with content to deliver) and their customer’s customers (end users) is that the BitTorrent DNA client seeding/downloading in the background hurts the performance of other applications. That’s unacceptable if you’re trying to sell an unobtrusive alternative/complement to traditional CDN.
Yup, good ol TCP is what is causing the problem. That’s because BitTorrent breaks the assumption in TCP that one application needs only one TCP stream to do its work. To solve the problem BitTorrent acquired advanced congestion control techonology and it’s inventors from “Plicto.” The congestion control technology lets BitTorrent work without causing crazy latency for other applications on the box. BitTorrent is the responsible party here, recognizing the need for congestion control and implementing it in their protocol. Compare that to the author of this article who saw that BT was using UDP and assumed it was a naive attempt to get around ISP blocks.
The people who work at BitTorrent are smart enough to know that you can’t beat your ISP by making a new protocol. The ISP sees all and can control all, even if it may lag behind the changes. That’s why BitTorrent has been working to make changes where it can make a lasting difference, in the political layer of the network.
http://xrl.us/oy3g3
All dial up modem users should just get broadband, then the internet will be faster. because then the internet will not be filled with dial up modem packets with a TTL of 4 years or something and thus lost packets will just die and free up the internet instead of having packets floating around taking up valuable space if a sender or receiver have dropped his connection.
“Disappointing that the register has become yet another mouthpiece for biassed morons pretending to be experts.”
2 Dec 02, 2008 at 00:35 by shame
I have never been too impressed by The Register. At best it is a mixed bag. If I want good tech advice I go elsewhere.
@21
Wow, thanks, this whole post was just gibberish until you pointed out that mistake, thanks. :s
Both the author of this article (Ben Jones) and Richard Bennett are heavily distorting facts to make highly politicized statements. The bottom line is that layering the custom congestion control of uTP over UDP rather than TCP is a good design choice and properly makes use of many of the intentions behind the design of UDP.
What Richard Bennett said was largely true although his argument that uTP will destroy the internet is almost certianly a non sequitur. In comparison, Ben Jones is almost just plainly lying and trying to hide it: TCP was in part designed for things like large file transfers and there’s no denying that. TCP might not be right for bittorrent, but please don’t misinform the public.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_Control_Protocol
@29: I see nothing wrong with paying for Usenet access, particularly when I can download unlimited files for only $24.99/month with 240 days of retention (the amount of time that a given article remains on Usenet). Plus, I always max out my connection.
Yet I still use BitTorrent as sometimes content gets there first, and may take a week or more to be uploaded to newsgroups.
Usenet is the way to go with stuff that is currently on the MAFIAA’s radar – you’ll never receive an infringement notice or be targetted by anti-piracy lawyers (like DavenPORN Lyons).
@29 : So apparently you’ve never heard of pay-2-leech topsite accounts. Who the hell said piracy was meant to be free? To get access to topsites you must do or contribute something of some sort.
I disagree about the amount of time it takes content to be uploaded to Usenet. Scene content (apps, movies & TV) is usually up within 15 minutes of pre time, sooner quite often. I use Newzbin to find files on Usenet mostly: the reports may take longet but there’s nothing top stop you looking at all the groups and get it yourself. It doesn’t usually beat good scene trackers but it kicks the shit out of public trackers as far as pre goes.
Usenet is fast – always fast, for every file. I still use BT (private trackers only thank you) but I get most of my content from Usenet.
People will say Usenet is crap but they don’t know how to use it basically. You cannot beat instant, maximum download speed, security and 4.5 million binaries (releases) of content… That’s most scene content and a shitload more user contributed. With an indexer like Newzbin – most people in the know agree this is the best hands down – it’s easier than finding and using torrents.
Try this – download iperf on to two machines on different IPs. Run 2-way flat-out UDP transfers between them. Have a Skype conversation or web browse at the same time between the same two IPs. You may not have the best user experience. This is what could happen if the congestion control on torrents using UDP is not tuned properly.
If I remember correctly the Internet was designed to survive a global thermonuclear war.
I never realised BitTorrent was so dangerous! I’m putting my tinfoil hat on now.
***king bell and putting caps on bandwidth, im an employee with internet discount and no im still paying 50.00 with a 35$ discount!
What is FUD war?
THROTTLING SHOULD BE SEEN AS SUCH:
I PAID 70 EURO A MONTH TO GET 20MBIT PER SECOND.
THROTTLING OF ANY KIND SHOULD BE SEEN AS A BREACH OF CONTRACT.WHICH IT IS.
FAIR USAGE MY BALLSACK.
FAIR IN WHO’S EYES?
+ rs USES HTTP, WHAT CAN THEY DO?
THEY LIMIT TOTAL BANDWIDTH.
NOT LIMIT PROTOCOLS, WHICH I THINK SHOULD BE ILLEGAL.
FOR ANYONE ELSE TO HOST CLIENT SERVER HTTP DL’S THEY GET FUCKED, BUT RAPIDSHARE?
NO NO NEVER, NOT A FELLOW CORPORATION.
Torrents have had the ability to use UDP for awhile now, piratebay is a good example supplying tcp and udp based torrents.
Reducing overhead will help congestion not cause it. Bittorrent is taking the lions share of bandwidth, but that’s not at the expense of other programs or protocols, it just shadows peoples habits, more users use bittorrent, simple as that.
This guy is indeed a joke and apparently doesn’t have a basic grasp of the technology he’s talking about let alone torrents.
UDP was NOT designed with voip in mind. The protocol was designed in the late 70′s early 80s for christ sake.
UDP is a perfect fit for torrents. UDP does not provide reliability or integrity options, it merely chunks and sends data, assuming the application using the protocol is handling error checking and sequencing. Torrents use a built in hash check for error checking, and using TCP is a waste, as UDP seems to fit right into torrents.
To help this jackass get a grasp of this……
UDP would be smaller packets than the same transfer over TCP as UDP uses less bits, simple as that.
The traffic is going to change protocols, it’s not going to shrink or grow by any large margin, it’s merely going to use the most efficient method of delivery for torrented content.
If IPS’s would simply adopt the torrent model into some of their hosting services, we’d see large increases of bandwidth across the board.
Then again, if these telcos used the money they earn selling their service to actually maintain and upgrade their network like the are supposed to, non of this would be a concern.
A FUD war is Like a Jihad only with FUDS.
The hole world is full of nonsense and the internet just makes my brain hurt…….
John Smith, lots of people read Slashdot: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1046869&cid=25944449
I like the sound of this. Anything with the potential to limit the ability for 3rd parties to control, which invariably leads to abuse of power, is a good thing in my eyes. If you allow for controls to form your freedoms are screwed unless in perfect alignment with the controlling powers.
Or something.
This comment: “Some people shouldn’t be allowed to say what they think. They’re just plain stupid and does not contribute with anything constructive to this debate” is the most stupid thing on here.
I’m actually glad that morons – such as this commenter – are able to let the world know how moronic they are. I don’t want them to shut up. I want everyone to know their moronic thoughts. That way everyone else can know never to allow them to be in charge of anything outside of their basement.
@26
AFAIK, NNTP goes over a TCP connection as well, there’s a difference between application protocols and transport protocols.
And it really isn’t worth paying money just to get maybe a 10% faster download, if that. Save your money.
the only way people are going to buy games is if the lower down the price!
c’mon 60$ for a game? if it was 30$ i would buy more games, just like the dvd’s should be 10$.
the publishers say that they won’t lower down the price because of piracy, they should try to low the price for 6 months and see the results.
until then… ahoy! pirates!
These ISPs should increase their bandwidth to support our illegal activity!!!1
What’s the hold up?
The TCP/IP suite is designed for communication ( Natural behaviour! ) capable of surviveing nuclear attacks.
I wish them luck destroying it!
Definitely trying out the alpha version…
I am actually very sceptic about how UDP will work better than TCP for BitTorrent. But I will love to see how it works out and I hope it works.
It does make some sense with stable connections, but stuff get lost and corrupted on the Internet, add wireless to that or maybe a slightly fault router/switch/modem/network adapter that a lot of people have but don’t know because TCP mostly takes care of it and it will likely be a lot slower and more wasteful. Maybe using TCP as a backup for connections that is problematic make it all good.
$hit, I know torrent will kill every single site imagine if there were no torrent site!
upload bebo
@ #29:
(i) I get full-throttle NNTP access completely ‘free’ from my ISP, just for being a customer (how kind of them).
(ii) You’re (probably) on a pay-to-leech private tracker.
Ergo, (iii) Who’s the one violating the ‘sharing is caring’ ethic then whining about piracy here (TINH)?
*COUGH* What Am I saying?!?1! Forget that, definitley_don’t_ Google NNTP/Usenet/News Servers. There’s “NO SUCH THING”(TM)
Stick to torrents – they’re way cooler.
At least Richard Bennett has a point in so far that a massive roll-out of a flawed UDP-based protocol could cause severe congestion issues. Part of the problem is exactly that uTorrent has so many users, probably more than the largest botnet.
The only interesting feature of UDP I’d care about is that UDP hole punching makes it possible to connect two peers behind routers (often mislabeled as “firewalls”) by help of a common third peer. This requires no relaying. LimeWire does it and it sure helps. It’s one of the Gnutella features that still puts most other P2P protocols to shame because those support at best inefficient relaying.
For this reason alone, TCP over UDP would be an excellent idea because it’s well-known and well-understood. At least it’s much better than inventing your own TCP-like protocol unless you know exactly what you’re doing. No sorry, BitTorrent isn’t anywhere near as complex as to be an automatic qualification.
The internet wasn’t designed to survive a nuclear war. That’s urban legendary bullshit. It was designed to support alternative routes for redundancy and reliability. Nothing more, nothing less. In reality most routes are anything but redundant nowadays.
Most of the commenters here should do themselves a favour, drink a warm cup of STFU and read upon TCP/IP before they even dare to open their uneducated mouths in this context. Really, the level of retardedness in most comments here isn’t funny anymore.
Internet crash and burn ? someone has been watching south park lately :P
I have nothing against usenet, I just know that some ISP’s throttle the NNTP bandwidth. Using charter you can only receive news at around 15KBps no matter what connection packagae you purchase.
Wait… lemme guess before reading the article… no?
I was right! It won’t!
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