Microsoft takes on BitTorrent

[Kellanved]

Microsoft has published a research paper outlining new file sharing technology similar to that used by BitTorrent.

Codenamed Avalanche, the software uses a new technique called 'network coding' which breaks data into small, easily transferable packets to accelerate downloading, but includes details on all the other data in the file.

This allows the file to be reconstructed from all available packets in any order, not just sequentially as with current systems.

"The best example of an end-system co-operative architecture is BitTorrent, which became extremely popular as a way of delivering Linux distributions and other popular content," said the report's authors Microsoft's Pablo Rodriguez Rodriguez and Christos Gkantsidis from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

...

http://www.itweek.co.uk/vnunet/news/2138233/microsoft-bittorrent-avalanche

http://www.research.microsoft.com/~pablo/papers/nc_contentdist.pdf

[mainegreen]

1. bwahahahahaha

Imagine the new viruses that will appear! I can see it now:

{... also in the news today, over 30 million people simultaneously were infected with the Narc0Pirate worm, that uses Microsoft's Avalanche software to spread. The virus, uploaded somewhere in eastern Europe, used the built in Visual Basic for Applications functionality to infect the central servers for Avalanche. Then, in a historical first, every active client automatically downloaded the virus from the central servers and infected their computers, automatically opening up outlook, and sending out an email to everyone in the users address book. Numerous ISP simultaneously went down world wide, while the file sharing community has an unprecedented disaster on their hands, with up wards of 80% of all shared files now infected with this virus}

Umm...
Now that I think of it, is the RIAA behind this too?

:evilgrin: :evilgrin: :puke:

[Kellanved]

2. the thought crossed my mind

:evilgrin:

But I know quite a few people over at MS research; they don't have that much to do with the company. It seems to be sorta like an University with better payment. An University where the people are using Word, that is - which probably is an oxymoron, as I don't see how to get a 100+ page paper done with word.