BitTorrent Open Sources ‘Improved’ BitTorrent Protocol

http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-open-sources-improved-bittorrent-protocol-100524/

by yanw • 16 years ago

25 7 16 years ago

Locke16893• 16 years ago

If the current BT protocol is TCP, what makes TCP congestion control ineffective?

146• 16 years ago

TCP's congestion control algorithm is mostly reactive, while UTP aims to be predictive. What this basically means is that all the TCP connections that Bittorrent opens up are all pushing the network to failure before backing off, and given how many connections Bittorrent makes, wreaks havoc on your quality of service. UTP on the other hand will attempt to predict the congestion control limits, and (I'm guessing) play nicely and slowly reach up to that limit.

Locke16893• 16 years ago

Very interesting, thanks for taking the time to respond. The first time through I read about congestion control addition and thought that BT used UDP.

dedward2• 16 years ago

I don't think that's the issue.... it's just that when you have. A massive number of sumultaneous tcp sessions, lots of home routers choke up tracking all that state in their nat tables. A custom protocol could do a better job.

Locke16893• 16 years ago

The article specifically mentions additional congestion control as a significant part of the protocol. For the routers themselves, UTP is also an IP protocol so it should have most of the same state requirements (routing tables) as the same number of TCP connections.

krakensden• 16 years ago

Will the UDP version be easier on plastic NATs? One of the major problems with the TCP version of bittorrent is it tends to overwhelm the cheap wireless boxes everyone buys, making performance much worse than it should be.

BitTorrent Open Sources ‘Improved’ BitTorrent Protocol

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