BitTorrent Flaw?
I haven’t done any serious research into this, but I’ve found something that looks like a flaw in the BitTorrent file-sharing system. Whether this is something into the code itself, or just some oddity caused by users not sharing, I found this configuration of users connected to a certain seed this afternoon.
The file is a few hundred MB in size so even with ADSL I’ve been able to watch as these other users download the data, always with the same pattern. The one user with 100% of the file has been there all day sharing the file. What this seems to show is that despite having access to the entire file, everyone is choosing to download the same segments of the file. While this wouldn’t matter to begin with, the faster the entire file is available in more than one location..
eg.
Instance 1: The Original User
Instance 2: a merger of users 2,3,4,5
the more easily it is distributed. The more easily distrubuted then the less load there is on any one machine and the more efficient the whole process is.
The main benefit of the BitTorrent system is that you can grab different pieces of the one file from different users.. by having every client choosing to download the same piece, you effectively negate this.
There is one possibility that comes to mind, that only one person has access to the User1’s file, and everyone is piggy-backing off of User2.. but without seeing their chart like this, I cant tell.
If this is the case and it’s a human influence causing this, then again there is a problem. The bitTorrent system relies on users sharing the files something that has seemed to be working well. If that goes and the greedier ‘leechers’ start to dominate then you’ve got nothing more than another generic napster/morpheus/grokster/kazaa/winmxsystem.