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pelletbucket ,

sharing fan edits

sunbeam60 ,

IIRC Steam uses BitTorrent to help users download game assets. There’s an option to switch it off, still, so must still be going.

CharlesReed ,
@CharlesReed@kbin.run avatar

I torrent old out of print books that I can't find anywhere else. The scans are usually pretty good.
There was also a podcast I used to listen to called Caustic Soda. When they ended it, they released all of their episodes through torrenting so the fans could have them.

LWD ,

This might be stretching the definition of “common” and “torrenting,” but BitTorrent created BitTorrent Sync with similar tech for personal file synchronization. It was later rebranded Resilio and still exists today.

www.resilio.com

An open-source alternative that works in a similar fashion, SyncThing, also exists.

syncthing.net

AdamEatsAss ,

I would consider this to be one of the intended functions of torrent files. Torrents started as faster ways to share files peer to peer. If a few people had a large file on their machines they could each upload part to someone who needs it essentially multiplying their upload bandwidth. This became less popular as internet speeds increased, except for “illegal” stuff. I would definitely try one of these…if I had more than one computer.

LWD ,

A common use case for SyncThing is keeping a password file up to date between, say, your PC and your phone. It’ll even work remotely, thanks to the presence of relays.

(The downsides include pretty heavy battery usage )

QuarterSwede ,
@QuarterSwede@lemmy.world avatar

Any large file is going to be much quicker getting through BT as long as there are enough seeders. OS distros, patches, P2P files, 4K anything, etc.

XTL ,

One funny use I discovered when I was cloning a lot of computers is that even on a closed lan, BT with local discovery was stupidly fast in distributing a big set of files across a pile of computers instead of rsync. Also, setting it up was much easier.

redcalcium , (edited )

Downloading actual linux ISOs with bittorrent is soo much faster than downloading them directly from the distro’s mirror. I always use bittorent to download new linux distros I’d like to try.

Also, I believe p2p protocols are still popular in korea because ISPs there actually charge website operators for bandwidth delivered to korean customers. Twitch pulled out of korea because of this. I think their competitors there, e.g. AfreecaTV, uses p2p for their streams.

zerakith ,

Its a really interesting question. I wonder what the underlying economics and ideologies are at play with its decline. Economies of scale for large server farms? Desire for control of the content/copyright? Structure and shape of the network?

I guess it has some implications for stream versus download approaches to content?

ShittyBeatlesFCPres ,

If I recall, Spotify moved away from it just because the client/server model got way cheaper and the P2P model had some limitations for their future business plans. I remember them mentioning that offering a family plan was a challenge with their P2P architecture when people on the same network/account were using it at the same time.

It was probably also part of the move to smartphones. Spotify was just a desktop program for a long time and, while I’m not an expert, I would guess the P2P model made a lot more sense on desktop with a good connection than early smartphones on flaky 2G/3G connections. They might have had to run a client/server model for iOS and/or Android anyway.

zerakith ,

Very interesting, thank you. I guess then the centralised server must have some sort of economy of scale.

In my head, I’m comparing the network to the electricity grid with certain shapes of network making different technologies more or less feasible. I would guess the internet network is probably similar to the electricity grid in most places having fewer hubs and lines of high bandwidth rather than a more evenly distributed network. Maybe the analogy is bad though.

Zagorath ,
@Zagorath@aussie.zone avatar

I podcast I listen to says that they used to distribute episodes by BitTorrent, way back in like 2006, as a way to keep bandwidth costs down when they were new. I’m pretty sure they had stopped that option by the time I started listening in about 2008/9.

maiskanzler ,

There’s Syncthing and it’s proprietary counterpart Resilio that allow you to sync folders between machines and send individual files over p2p. Very neat software.

joewilliams007 ,
@joewilliams007@kbin.melroy.org avatar

i think windows uses it for updates to make them faster, and many games too

Jimmycrackcrack , (edited )

I remember when it was relatively new and controversial BBC’s iPlayer hadn’t been around very long and they said they were going to start using Bittorrent tech for streaming. Guessing that never came to fruition though.

themoonisacheese ,
@themoonisacheese@sh.itjust.works avatar

Not litteral torrenting but the protocols ar e very similar (since they are both P2P data sharing):

Windows updates can downloaded from other computers in your local network

Steam now tries downloading games from other computers you are logged in. You can opt-in thlo serve other accounts in your local network as well.

Ziggurat ,

peertube uses bittorent to stream video.

rtxn ,

Clonezilla uses bittorrent for one of its massive deployment modes. I work at a university, and whenever we have to deploy an OS image, the ten gigabit uplink between the storage server and the classroom switches always gets saturated in unicast/interactive mode. Using bittorrent mode gets around this issue because once a computer has downloaded a chunk of the image, it can seed it for the rest of the computers within the subnet. One massive limitation is that the target computer has to have enough storage space for both the downloaded image and the deployed OS too.

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