The next BitTorrent?

BitTorrent, as many of my esteemed readers know, is a peer-to-peer technology for making downloads easier. Instead of downloading the whole file from one person, you download bits of the file, in random order, from multiple people.

A new technology based on this means that you can download the bits in sequence, making it useful for streaming video/audio where the order of the bits is essential.

It'll be a while before it hits mainstream - there's a license fee to include the technology in other people's applications, but some hack will just reverse engineer it and make it available to illegitemate (sp?) peer-to-peer apps.

Of course, all this assumes you're not on crappy NTL and can therefore get more than 2 snail paces a week of BitTorrent download.

posted by Blakey UK @ 9:57 am