Money Saver?

ezekialenigma · Post by **ezekialenigma** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 12:33 am

This has probably been posted many times, but why doesn't a-m-v.org use torrents to host the files? Or atleast the new/popular ones? I've heard torrents are easier on the bandwidth.

Kalium · Post by **Kalium** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 1:04 am

I won't bother with a technical explanation. Suffice to say, the BitTorrent model doesn't suit the needs of the Org.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 3:07 am

I've never heard an exact answer that actually made sense other than "it's too much work for too little of a return."

Essentially local hosting means the org servers are (to use analogous terms) the primary seed for every video in the database. Having a torrent structure would not change any of that, and would in fact help by providing alternative bandwidth usage on (at the very least) a small level. Perhaps running a tracker would eat up more bandwidth than it would save, but it most certainly would require more work than it's worth to establish.

Willen · Post by **Willen** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 3:46 am

Do a forum search for 'bittorrent' and select only the Site Feedback forum in your search parameters for some further reading. Here is a thread that discusses the matter with some possible reasons why the .org hasn't adopted the bittorrent model: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/phpBB/v ... hp?t=44882

Basically, to sum up, the majority of videos hosted here locally can't take advantage of any bandwidth savings since there wouldn't be any seeds available for downloading. You'd still be relying on the local video download bandwidth. It may help for the newer popular videos (especially large MEPs), but after a while people stop seeding the file(s), and the situation reverts to that of all the other videos; primary use of local download bandwidth. Even for the more popular videos (like the top 10%), you'd still have to rely on people seeding the files to have them available. If you look at popular torrents, over time the number of people seeding them diminishes, albeit slower than that of the less popular ones. For an AMV, eventually the only person seeding it may only be the one who edited and released it. I'm assuming that the amount of bandwidth savings isn't enough to justify setting up a tracker and maintaining it (mind you, I have no idea what goes in to doing this, especially on the scale of the amount of new videos submitted to the .org daily/weekly/monthly/yearly).

Orwell · Post by **Orwell** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 5:26 am

I suspect, though I'm by no means an expert, more bandwidth would be consumed by ALL amvs being actively seeded by the org bandwidth wise, than only selected ones being hit multiple times.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 3:12 pm

Orwell wrote:I suspect, though I'm by no means an expert, more bandwidth would be consumed by ALL amvs being actively seeded by the org bandwidth wise, than only selected ones being hit multiple times.

This may actually be true, as there is a limit to the number of videos one can download simultaneously - of course that would assume that because of the limit people download less than they would otherwise.

ezekialenigma · Post by **ezekialenigma** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 5:05 pm

Okay, I didn't know that seeding used so much bandwidth, but thanks for all the info.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Mon Jan 01, 2007 6:36 pm

ezekialenigma wrote:Okay, I didn't know that seeding used so much bandwidth, but thanks for all the info.

It's no that torrenting in and of itself uses more bandwidth (if there are ANY seeds it would, by definition, use less); It's just, there's no way to enforce a simultaneous download cap with torrent software (at least that I know of), so people would be able to download several hundred videos at once and the whole system would just crap out.

godix · Post by **godix** » Tue Jan 02, 2007 4:13 am

Actually if someone tried to download hundreds of vids at once it wouldn't be that bad. If they hit their max download rate it doesn't matter if they're downloading one or one thousand vids, it's all the same to the org.

There are two reason BT will probably never be used. First off it's rather useless. When large projects are first released it might be worth doing for a week or two (IE amvhell). Other than that, there's probably less than a dozen videos popular enough for BT to worth doing. It wouldn't really hurt much but it wouldn't help so why bother?

The other reason is probably a lot more important. Phade has stated before that he actively avoids things that might make the org look like it might be involved in piracy. I'm sure he doesn't want to use BT just because one of it's most common uses is piracy.

That being said, I think some user generated BTs might be interesting. IIRC there was a BT for mads a few months ago. I think there was a BT for all videos nominated in VCAs last year as well. Someone could start a BT of the videos in the top 10%. Someone could do a BT of the best of the week, kinda like how AMV TV broadcast new videos when it was still active. I personally would be interested if one of the people who frequently view unknown videos would toss up a BT of the best you never heard of. But any other these ideas would be totally separate from the org. Probably the only thing the org could or should do is not delete BT pack announcements if anyone made one.