Reaction to BitTorrent story

My article in The Register yesterday about BitTorrent and UDP got some attention. It was a primary article on Techmeme and was Slash-dotted. Here’s the Techmeme link set: Slyck, DSLreports, TorrentFreak, Ars Technica, Icrontic, Joho the Blog, TMCnet, GigaOM, Industry Standard, TechSpot. While most of the discussion went to questions of motivation – I’m alleged … Continue reading “Reaction to BitTorrent story”

My article in The Register yesterday about BitTorrent and UDP got some attention. It was a primary article on Techmeme and was Slash-dotted. Here’s the Techmeme link set: Slyck, DSLreports, TorrentFreak, Ars Technica, Icrontic, Joho the Blog, TMCnet, GigaOM, Industry Standard, TechSpot.

While most of the discussion went to questions of motivation – I’m alleged to be a telco shill for criticizing a system the telcos are OK with – some was actually quite substantial. It’s good to get these issues under the microscope.

More links: Canadian Broadcasting Company, Slashdot, Tales of the Sausage Factory; a few hundred more at Google.

I talked to a couple of the BitTorrent guys today – chief engineer and nemesis Stanislav Shalunov not among them, unfortunately – and they vehemently denied they had any intention of evading the Bell Canada traffic shaping system. Reports from Canada that motivated me to write the piece say the system actually does in fact evade Bell Can’s filters, which will have to be updated as the use of uTorrent 1.9 becomes more widespread, or replaced with more capable equipment.

It remains to be seen whether that upgrade will also catch VoIP and gamers in the throttling net. It’s interesting that the author of the reports on Canada, Karl Bode, is now playing dumb, all the better to be left out of the counter-PR campaign.

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