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The January 2005 issue of WIRED Magazine arrived this week with an excellent article on BitTorrent and its author Bram Cohen. Definitely worth a read for those who know what BitTorrent is and for those who don't--like me until I read this article. If you've heard about BitTorrent but didn't yet take the time to find out what it is, its a more significant technology than you might suspect. I finally understand why there's so much buzz about it, why “Hollywood Hates it,“ and how it can have a huge impact on how video and other large-scale data files will be delivered in the future.
How it works in a nutshell is that a source file within a group of BitTorrent users (called a swarm) is spread around in pieces so that everyone has a piece to share. After the initial download, those pieces are then uploaded to other needy users, as the rules require every downloader to also do some uploading. Thus, the more people who download, the faster everything is uploaded. Before long, the swarm has shared all the pieces and everyone has their own complete source. Keep in mind that the fact that downloading is much faster than uploading plays a role in this process as well.
Great examples of how BitTorrent was used in the past, like how 3 times as many people watched Jon Stewart's now famous appearance on Crossfire through BitTorrent delivery than on CNN itself.
Interesting profile of Bram Cohen as well.
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