What ever happened to hiring Bram Cohen (creator of the BitTorrent protocol)? I assumed he'd be in to help them add a P2P aspect to Steam, so that more people downloading means more available bandwidth. Where I live, there's around 4,000 flats in the same development, over 80% have broadband...if you assume one in a hundred gets HL2 (it's likely more than that, considering the demographics), that's 32 people, all sharing on uncluttered 8Mbit lines. Mmm, I love Hong Kong.
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People want to download the game at a constant speed, and then play the game (online) with minimal lag! People will not want to wait around for an hour after they get the file just to help out other people who are still downloading it. I know that is a little extreme, and even if everyone disconnects as soon as they finish downloading it that it will still work, but this system should work better (at least if they have the bandwidth they claim they have
).
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Bit-torr-entComment
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I use bittorrent for anime and software and stuff. I upload because im getting it for free. But im not going to pay 50 dollars for HL2 so I can download it from cheap ass Valve decides to use a bittorrent like system where I have to use my upload bandwidth to get a game that I payed for.Comment
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I think they could use a bittorrent-alike system for their own content server. It's called load balancing. Instead of downloading straight from one server, you'd download different packets from different servers. I'm sure their servers use different backbones, it'd take some weight off of those that are more stressed than others.
But I agree with Urban Terror, it's my bandwith, I only have so much of it. I can't afford to spend my upload on steam. It's a big NO NO.
But I don't think they ever planned to do such a thing anyway. No worries.Comment
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Technical-Joss wrote..
It was definitely in the works a while ago, but I think Valve dropped the idea.
But I don't think they ever planned to do such a thing anyway. No worries.Comment
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A lot of things have been in the works with Valve.... and I'm glad this one was dropped
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Bittorrent would be a great idea because then you could download it off fileplanet etc.. Also maybe download it off other steam users or cyber cafe owners, then servers would not have a strain.Comment
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There are a few issues with a P2P approach - one being that people like to get something and give nothing in return (particularly their bandwidth, no matter how much they'll actually benefit from it by way of faster download speeds), and the other one being the continual bad press about P2P and the efforts being made by various groups to ban any technology that uses the P2P concept.
In my opinion, they're all idiots.Comment
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Fendie wrote..
Yes. If it weren't for this wonderful feature, I'd actually have to go out and buy CZ or download it via bittorrent.
Supersonic^ wrote..
That is one of the things about Steam I actully like
I bought CZ from a shop, but I didn't install from the CD. I put my cd key into Steam and it downloaded it.
What? I'm not spending $30-40 on some marketing trick(CS:CZ) just so I can play in the Source beta. :)Comment
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Wow. Thats mad bandwidth.Comment
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Sounds like they have more than enough bandwidth now. Even despite those huge numbers, I'm gonna be interested to see how it works out, simply because of Valve's track record of constantly underestimating how much bandwidth they'd need.
It could be amusing.Comment
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now if valve would open up a porn steam server...then we'd be in businessComment
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lolComment
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glad that they're trying to avoid the same mistake when they first released steamComment
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