The new protocol allows the public to send a video stream to millions of people, without having to invest in expensive bandwidth.

Around the same time as BitTorrent Live was launched the underlying patent application was published online. In it, Cohen describes what makes the technology so unique and TorrentFreak caught up with BitTorrent’s creator to find out more.

It took nearly half a decade before BitTorrent’s live stream service was released to the public. One of the main reasons is that it has been quite a challenge to make it work seamlessly. BitTorrent’s inventor is known for his passion for puzzles, and the streaming challenge is probably one of the most difficult puzzles he has solved to date.

“Doing live streaming well on the Internet has long been a problem. Peer to peer live-streaming has always suffered from high latency, meaning there is typically a lot of delay between when a broadcast happens and when end users see it, typically dozens of seconds or minutes,” Cohen told TorrentFreak.

“BitTorrent Live allows a broadcaster to stream to millions of people with just a few seconds of latency. This is new, and unique, and potentially world-changing,” he adds.

Bram Cohen explains that the patent is in no way going to restrict user’ access to the new protocol, quite the contrary. BitTorrent Live will be available to end users for free, and publishers who are using the service and hosting it on their own will not be charged either.

“We want people to use and adopt BitTorrent Live. But we aren’t planning on encouraging alternative implementation because it’s a tricky protocol to implement and poorly behaved peers can impact everyone. We want to ensure a quality experience for all and this is the best approach for us to take,” Cohen told TorrentFreak.

BitTorrent Live is a complex technology but basically works by dividing peers into various “clubs” of peers who share data among each other via a UDP screamer protocol.

“To get slightly more technical, the way BitTorrent Live works is by making subsets of peers responsible for subsets of data. High robustness and low latency is achieved by using a screamer protocol between those peers,” Cohen explains.

“For the last hop it uses a non-screamer protocol to regain congestion control and efficiency. 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.”

Bram Cohen believes that the future of television is on the Internet, and BitTorrent Live can help to deliver live high-definition content to millions of people at once at no cost. This is not just the future for independent broadcasters, but also for the major content companies.

“I believe that inevitably all video streaming will be done over the Internet. It’s simply a better technology for doing so. On a technical level the cable approach is expensive and can only reach subscribers, as opposed to the Internet which can reach anyone,” Cohen told us.

“So far the one thing cable infrastructure has managed to still do better is live broadcasting. But the BitTorrent Live technology makes it practical to move that to the Internet without being cost prohibitive. We plan to shape the future of live broadcasts and want to work with broadcasters to accomplish that.”

While it can’t be expected that all major broadcasters will convert to BitTorrent during the next month, the technology is there and the patent is coming. It will be interesting to see how it develops over time and if it can gain mainstream adoption.

There are not many people who can change the fundamentals of the Internet two times in a row. However, Bram Cohen already did it once with the original BitTorrent protocol, and he believes that BitTorrent Live can have a similar impact.

Those who are interested in trying out BitTorrent Live can do so here. The more people join, the better it gets.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

A decade later and downloading almost seems like an ancient technology. In 2005 video streaming was brought to the mainstream thanks to YouTube, and not much later it became possible to stream content live over the Internet.

The downside of live streaming is that the more people use it, the most costly it gets and the harder it is to guarantee smooth playback for all viewers.

With BitTorrent Live streaming, Bram Cohen and BitTorrent Inc. will solve these bottlenecks.

After years of development BitTorrent Live launches to the public today, allowing people to stream content via BitTorrent with minimal delays. Unlike traditional live streams, reliability improves as more people tune in.

“It’s based on the principles of the BitTorrent protocol. And it’s designed to make real-time reporting, and open expression available to all: eliminating bandwidth, cost, and infrastructure as broadcast barriers,” BitTorrent Inc.’s Justin Knoll told TorrentFreak. “The more people who tune in, the more resilient your stream will be.”

BitTorrent Live aims to prevent annoying “buffering” issues and long broadcast delays.

“It has been designed from scratch as the perfect means of sharing events to the masses in real-time and with low latencies, but without the astronomical bandwidth requirements that traditionally constrain content creators,” Knoll says.

One of the goals of BitTorrent Live is to make it possible for the public to send video to thousands of people, all over the world. From dissidents reporting on uprisings to soccer moms who want to send video of a game to family and friends, everyone is included.

The main upside compared to centralized live streaming services is that BitTorrent Live won’t shut down or be interrupted when the audience becomes ‘too large’.

“Current offerings fail with large audiences but with BitTorrent Live every viewer that joins a swarm extends its reach by sharing pieces of the video to other viewers. It becomes more robust with larger audiences and there are no costs associated with the addition of users,” Knoll told us.

“We’re aiming for this to be a democratization of streaming technology,” he adds.

Viewing live streams requires people to install the BitTorrent Live app, which is used to share video with others who are watching. The install process is pretty straightforward and the streams we were able to check out worked fine.

Readers who are interested in streaming content can create an account at BitTorrent Live. Some knowledge of video streaming is currently needed to get started, and the service requires a computer as a broadcast station. Mobile apps will follow in the future.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

However, a key characteristic of the young Internet is that it constantly evolves, and in 2005 video streaming was brought to the mainstream thanks to YouTube. This online video streaming revolution has hugely increased the use of bandwidth by individual consumers. At the same time it’s also resulting in huge bandwidth bills for streaming sites.

So as we near the 10th anniversary of BitTorrent its inventor Bram Cohen is finalizing a new protocol, this time aimed at P2P-live streaming. Although P2P-live streaming is not something new per se, Cohen thinks that his implementation will set itself apart from competitors with both its efficiency and extremely low latency.

“Doing live properly is a hard problem, and while I could have a working thing relatively quickly, I’m doing everything the ‘right’ way,” Bram Cohen told TorrentFreak last year when he announced his plans. He further explained that the BitTorrent protocol had to be redone to make it compatible with live streams, “including ditching TCP and using congestion control algorithms different from the ones we’ve made for UTP”

In the months that followed Cohen figured out most of this complex puzzle and the technology is now mature enough to show to the public. Although there’s still a lot of secrecy around the technical details, the BitTorrent team agreed to show TorrentFreak a demo in anticipation of the official release later this year.

Although it’s fascinating to see BitTorrent’s inventor waving at a computer, it is impossible to see how this compares to competing technologies without the option of testing a working version and having more technical details.

Over the years we’ve already seen a few working implementations and adaptations of the BitTorrent protocol that allow for P2P live streaming. Most notable is the SwarmPlayer, which has proven to work well with low latencies in real live tests, but usually supported by high bandwidth ‘fall-back peers’.

“The main areas of innovation relate to techniques he is using to manage latency at an unprecedented low while controlling network congestion,” BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management Simon Morris told TorrentFreak in our quest for more information.

“As outlined in the academic literature on live P2P content delivery, the management of live p2p streaming on the open internet requires split second reconfigurations to reroute content delivery in the fewest possible round trips between peers in the event of network hiccups.”

“Bram’s methods to manage network reconfiguration wrap rerouting together with a novel approach to congestion control. Obviously we’ll be happy to share more technical details in due course, but only once the technology reaches a level of maturity that it makes sense to share.”

This means that the wait continues, and we were told that the official release will take at least a few more months. For some reason we think that it might take until July, which makes sense PR-wise because the BitTorrent protocol then officially celebrates its tenth anniversary.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The name Sifonr originates from the word ‘siphon’ which is a U-shaped tube – a YouTube. The service uses the latest P2P capabilities of Adobe’s Flash and is the first site to really show off what it can do for real-time communication and file-sharing. It is not going to be any competition for torrent sites, but the innovative use of P2P technology makes it definitely worth a mention on TorrentFreak.

Aside from video and text chatting, Sifonr allows users to share files in real-time. To top it off the Flash-based Sifons can be embedded just as easily as a YouTube video, so people can post them to Facebook or their blogs (styleable widgets are available) to provide a direct communication channel or discussion platform.

TorrentFreak spoke to Floze, the founder of the site, who sees Sifonr as a potential next generation communication tool.

“Sifonr is about sharing your thoughts and ideas, kinda like on YouTube, only in a more direct and more involved way. It’s not supposed to be another spin-off of some video or live-chat portal, I rather see it as a new way of communication.”

“For me it means the simple and logical ‘next step’ of today’s web-interaction, even if it turns out to be ‘only’ an interesting social experiment in the end,” Floze says. “The borders between author and reader, artist and beholder, broadcaster and consumer have diminished ever since I can remember. Now with Sifonr you are always both at the same time. Just passively enjoy it, or be an active part of it.”

In theory, thousands of people can join and share files in a single Sifon, but this of course will make the video streaming part pretty much unusable. Since the service has no real competitors it will be interesting to see how the public decides to use it. One feature that works well with multiple people is the file-sharing part. Floze told TorrentFreak that adding file-sharing support seemed only logical since the video and audio streaming is P2P based as well.

“File-sharing in a Sifon works pretty much like in any file sharing software – you load (seed) the file, it gets chopped into chunks of data, others get notified of its presence, and the downloaded pieces are immediately shared between peers and put back together when completed. Once a file is loaded into a Sifon, it is available as long as one healthy seeder.”

“The major limitation Adobe put on sharing is that, for security reasons, all shared data needs to be loaded into the system memory instead of being read and written from disc. The ‘official’ limit is supposed to be at 100MB per shared file, but I see no reason why more shouldn’t work if the RAM is sufficient. There shouldn’t be anything keeping you from sharing larger files, at least for stuff up to around 1GB,” Floze explained.

Any type of file can be shared in a Sifon, but FLV (flash video) files that are encoded with the latest magic h.264 and AC3 get a special treatment. These files are played directly and instantly in the Sifon as soon as sufficient data is buffered. Instant MP3 playing is another feature that is currently on the roadmap and will be implemented in the near future.

“I only created a piece of software that I thought was kind of missing, and that I’d use myself because I think it is fun. I hope that people use it to do something productive and enjoyable, though unfortunately I have seen many wanking dicks too [which receive an instant ban from sifonr.com] from people who think it’s all another Chatroulette clone. I hope it’s more than that,” Floze told TorrentFreak.

People who’re interested in trying Sifonr can start their own Sifon in just a few clicks (language can be set to English). The service works as advertised but people should keep in mind that it’s still in startup mode, and caution is advised while browsing Sifons as there’s no 24/7 flesh patrol yet. Adobe Flash Player 10.1 is a requirement as the P2P technology wasn’t implemented in earlier versions.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

“It’s not a secret that the blockade in the Middle East prevents vital resources like water, food and medicines going to the needy people in Palestine. But it is perhaps not as general known that normal people who are traveling out of the area are denied a visa,” the festival organizers write in a blog post commenting on the issue. Luckily, with BitTorrent the filmmaker can still follow the festival.

The Norwegian film festival has close ties to the people of Gaza. The festival’s organizers have previously invited its young filmmakers and after the 2008/2009 siege they continued to collaborate on film workshops over the Internet. This year, due to the political situation, they’re going to take it up a notch by offering a BitTorrent-powered live stream to people all over the world, including Gaza.

The BitTorrent stream that the festival will use is facilitated by The Far North Living Lab which has experience with the technology. Last year the lab kicked off with a spectacular experiment in which they used BitTorrent to stream a 2K resolution film onto the big screen, and a few months later they hosted the first BitTorrent-powered live streamed concert.

The Far North Living Lab start their live stream from the festival tonight during the opening. In order to get the stream to Gaza and other parts of the Internet they’ve set up a BitTorrent-powered live stream (approx 1.1mbit h264, full PAL resolution) that will be transmitting from Norway’s oldest still-used cinema. Similar to the previous projects, the lab’s researchers are using the P2P-Next codebase.

“This is an important opportunity to reach our goal for an international awareness of Youth Cinema,” festival director Hermann Greuel told TorrentFreak.

An important aspect is that through the stream young filmmakers in Gaza can follow the festival. “The current stream will not be possible on a central place or event in Gaza due to special permissions from the Gaza government, but the stream is available in Gaza,” he added.

It’s good to see that there are filmmakers and enthusiasts who put BitTorrent to creative use, rather than simply accusing the technology of facilitating copyright infringement.

Readers who want to check out the stream can do so from 6 PM CET.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Thus far the demand for video continues to grow, and it is even expanding to live video. To keep video services from collapsing and to save bandwidth costs, it seems almost inevitable that content providers will have to look at P2P-based streaming solutions. Last year we reported that CNN had experimented with a P2P-based live stream, and the Tribler research team has already shown that it’s possible to use BitTorrent to stream live footage.

There are currently a few dozen people working on P2P-based live streaming, and they are soon to be joined by Bram Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent. Last week he tweeted that he will beat Tribler’s solution in terms of delay. “Tribler’s live streaming benchmarks are a joke. I’m going for < 5sec delay," Bram wrote.

This comment did of course peak our interest, so we decided to get in touch with Bram Cohen to ask him what he’s up to exactly. He told us that his BitTorrent-powered live streaming implementation is still in an early stage of development, but he hopes to have a working version ready “sometime next year”.

“I think there’s a very large market for live [streaming] in general, and to date noone has proven that a p2p solution can meet the real-world requirements for being an acceptable live solution. I intend on changing that,” Bram told us.

There are still a lot of problems to solve though, before the first version becomes available to the public. Getting BitTorrent to work effectively with live streams requires several major adjustments.

“Doing live properly is a hard problem, and while I could have a working thing relatively quickly, I’m doing everything the ‘right’ way,” Bram told TorrentFreak. He further explained that everything has to be redone in order to make BitTorrent compatible with live streams, “including ditching TCP and using congestion control algorithms different from the ones we’ve made for UTP,” Bram said.

“I am fundamentally a technologist, and am simply not interested in working on something which doesn’t solve the fundamental problem it’s supposed to tackle, especially in a market where there have already been so many bad technologies which failed to succeed based on sales and marketing,” he added

In his tweet Bram Cohen focused on an extremely low latency of less than 5 seconds, so content will not have to buffer for minutes before the stream starts. According to some, such a low latency could mean that a lot of potential upload capacity would go lost. However, Bram disagrees on this, as he explained to TorrentFreak.

“Lower latency doesn’t require extra bandwidth, it just requires that everything be designed from the ground up for low latency. In terms of overhead, I’m shooting for making a swarm able to work with only 20% extra upload capacity, which is subtly different from having 20% extra overhead – because there’s noise in real networks, there needs to be some slop for when things get bad.”

“My actual extra bandwidth used will be less than 10%. This very important benchmark number is generally speaking not even mentioned for most p2p live streaming solutions, and I get the feeling that the developers don’t even know what the value is. I’m taking an approach of viewing all the important benchmarks (latency, extra bandwidth necessary, offload percentage) as central to the whole thing, and running realistic simulations constantly to get a good idea for what they are and help optimize them.”

“Oddly, most live p2p solutions don’t even make coherent claims as to what latency they can provide, and when they do it’s a delay which hardly qualifies as live. My offload of course goes over 99% on large swarms – without that it’s hardly p2p,” Bram said.

The big question is of course how BitTorrent’s inventor will try to solve this puzzle. Many researchers including the Tribler team are looking into P2P-powered live streams, and not all of them agree that the tit-for-tat algorithm based on reciprocity is suited for live streams. However, when we asked Bram whether he is looking into a new algorithm he was very clear.

“No, the low latency requirements basically preclude any competitive algorithms and I’m going with a cooperative approach. It does do a very good job of squeezing out every little bit of upload capacity all the peers have though, and doing it with the same ISP-friendly properties as UTP,” Bram said.

Quite a few ISPs are complaining bitterly about the strain BitTorrent puts on their network, so they will be delighted to hear that they are not being ignored in the development process. If done right, BitTorrent-powered live streams may accelerate the availability of live streams on the Internet.

Not only will existing broadcasters be able to stream their content at low costs, individual users will also be able to stream a live feed to tens of thousands of Internet users from their home connection without having to invest in bandwidth. More than ever the public will be in charge of distribution, while BitTorrent-powered TV moves one step closer to becoming reality.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.