Peercast: Peer-to-Peer Streaming 89
Anonymous Coward writes "peercast is currently in beta for a new p2p client based on the Gnutella protocol. Seems to be alot easier to use than the current "streamers". Linux/Mac on its way."
"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines." -- Bertrand Russell
Gnutella, eh? (Score:1)
It sucks (Score:2)
Anything based on gnutella sucks, I'm sorry but come on!! Gnutella?!
I'm going to stick with streamer myself
http://www.chaotica.u-net.com/page/streamer.htm
Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:2, Offtopic)
I guesse the priorities are getting new software and not paying respect to coder who's contributions help us fight the good fight.
Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:1, Offtopic)
I don't think this is terribly off-topic, as Gnutella is one of the reasons we're at this story, after all.
Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm a little puzzled as to why your post was modded off-topic. It's all related. As you pointed out, Gene has done a lot of work to make P2P what it is today.
Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:2, Troll)
Also, since when do they announce somebody's death after cremating the body?
Mr. Kan's death screams of foul play. That slashdot chose not to run the story is indefensible.
Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:2)
As am I.
I posted about this [slashdot.org] over in another forum that was not quite as related to the story as this one was, yet still managed to see the story modded up to 5 over the course of several hours. I had also posted several replies within the same thread.
In the space of under two minute I watched as all my posts were modded down to -1. It was like 4 AM EST.
Not only do they not want the story posted, they don't want us to talk about it. Sick bastards they are.
Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:1)
I expected it to be here as soon as the news broke.
One reason that it wasn't posted was probably that the deadhwas a suicide.
Re:Interesting how slashdot posts this (Score:1, Troll)
Cable TOS (Score:2, Interesting)
I know they forbid hosting/serving, but does this count?
Anyone read the TOS agreement for Cox recently?
Re:Cable TOS (Score:2)
In other words, they'll just sneak it in when it bugs them.
Gotta wonder why they even bother posting a 'Terms of Service' if they're going to reserve the right to spontaneously change it.
Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:5, Informative)
If this could get bundled with the regular winamp download, I think we'd be on to something.
I think the folks at winamp would be interested in doing this; it's an interesting 'selling' point. Download this player, get instant access to millions (?) of songs instantly and without further downloads.
The gnutella network, if I read things correctly, would benefit from the incremental bandwidth of Joe Sixpack and his brethren.
Win-win situation?
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:1)
One can always wish, though (I know i do...)
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:3, Insightful)
AOL/TW owns the content people will publish, CARP free.
Nullsoft created the original Gnutella, yet abandoned it because of AOL/TW of course...
Nullsoft would attract mindshare, stealing from Windows Media Player, +1 for AOL/TW.
Nullsoft would attract mindshare to shoutcast, and further it's free alternatives such as Icecast, even more stealing mindshare from Windows Media Player.
Yet AOL/TW doesn't want people out there streaming their music without paying up - and other companies would very quickly object to AOL/TW's software allowing people to do the same to them.
The next Winamp "Eula" equivalent would prohibit this type of technology -or- AOL/TW locks down your ability to "copy" streams* by co-developing the technology and it's okay.
*I favor this approach. I would rather the client to not allow stream "ripping". It would make more sense than to charge money for something that isn't even been stolen yet.
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:2)
But if any song is on a label that is owned by a mega-multinational that can collect, then the RIAA will get involved because they have the CARP.
If you are DJ'ing their music then they will destroy this technology, or try like they do with current P2P. This though could be better for them to develop so I don't understand why they would want to fight it. With this P2P you could bring their music to the masses, even to new countries... and it isn't going to be copied if they act now and actually support it.
There is no reason to let someone allow copyrighted music to be copied from the streams, sorry but the law requires it because of it's digital nature. They RIAA assumes that radio over Gnutella would be like a CD, which is funny at best.
By putting funds into clients, and helping their development maybe we would be more inclined to disable features which would make it possible to save their music from a stream. This is a breakthrough like any other - and there is no reason they can't get in on it and sponsor yet again.
Why are they so insane?
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:3, Informative)
I would rather the client to not allow stream "ripping".
Stream ripping is a major problem on my Real and Windows Media servers. We've had people fire off stream rippers to take off a 1 hour stream ("hey it's free, I must be able to save it myself"), however stream rippers are horrible from a provider point of view. For a 1 hour stream, a user in an NYC trading bank (I traced the IP) took 40GB to get the stream. The source file was about 4Mb. As you can imagine, for that hour, other people's experience was not optimal.
Now, imagine on a peer to peer network, some anti-social little sod stealing your stream. All your DSL bandwidth gone.
Of course, someone will write a stream ripper anyway, and people will use it, not caring about other users.
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:2)
If the whole network is built around security, and I'm not talking DRM, then stream ripping would be hard at least. Servlets could identify clients, XMMS and Winamp could not allow saving streams, and M$ would have to catch up.
I just think if they supported the development, developers would be more inclined to leave out those features. A law isn't necessary when you have billions of dollars to pour into the deployment of measures against piracy and in your case "hogging".
There isn't anything, rationally, restrictive about not letting people save copyrighted material. If you are a DJ, and would like to publish your works in a mp3 format or copies of live shows then release them on the regular P2P networks.
There is a sane solution to this mumbo-jumbo. Sites like Soma-FM didn't have to go down. I was actually let down because I was discovering new music with those stations, and now there isn't many places to go because of these actions. Where is it possible to have a choice? Freedom people. That is all I'm talking about.
We can exercise our freedoms in a manner which respects the law, and we can use the explosion of p2p possiblities also while respecting that law. We must make sure this isn't taken away from us.
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:2)
Well they would, if the stream rippers were honest. They're not. They send the HTTP_USERAGENT equivilant of the normal players. ASF recorder identifies itself as Media Player 7.
People, as you say, should be restricted from saving copyrighted streams. Unfortunately, people don't care. It's hard to tell users that just because it's digital doesn't mean it has no value. The example I save was a charity concert by a heavy metal band. It was broadcast live, then put on line by the label for 4 days, so those who missed it could see it. It's coming on DVD eventually. But people still want to steal it.
Of course, as a streaming provider, we provide what the bill payers want, not what the consumer wants.
why not just (Score:2)
you dont have to use a stream ripper at all.
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm confused... why would ripping a stream take any more (or less) of the server's bandwidth than regular streaming-playback? Either way, you just need to download the contents of the stream once, whether you are saving the bytes to disk or just viewing them and then throwing them away shouldn't even be detectable by the server. Or am I missing something?
Now, imagine on a peer to peer network, some anti-social little sod stealing your stream. All your DSL bandwidth gone.
Exactly the opposite, I would think. Instead of every listener having to connect to your server to get the stream, now a good percentage of them are connecting to the "anti-social little sods'" peer-machines, and therefore not using bandwidth on your server. More likely you'd be sitting there with lots of bandwidth free, wondering where everybody went... ;^)
Re:Play it right and p2p goes mainstream (Score:2)
That confused me too. However, think about how streaming works. Dropping packets isn't a big issue, it looks like the stream records pull multiple streams, and go forward and packet over each frame making sure nothing gets dropped. The ripper had 10 simultaneous connections (that can't be well written, if you want to reduce packet loss, you don't open multiple streams)
What's even worse is when someone on a 56k modem rips at 300kps stream. Gaaaahhhh!
Perhaps peer to peer will solve this, but I can't see my customers (who I have to admit include major labels) going for it.
Users armed with a web server. (Score:4, Funny)
For all you lot preparing to cry sercurity, sercurity, security, don't worry it only runs on windows so I'm sure everything is ok.
Ultra short review.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll be taking down my andromeda server and replacing it with a Peercast stream in the next few days. [turnstyle.com]
Re:Ultra short review.... (Score:1)
Re:Ultra short review.... (Score:1)
Hey, I take that personally [turnstyle.com] ;)
fwiw, you can certainly run Andromeda alongside any other system (you don't need to choose). Each will have different advantages for different circumstnaces. -Scott
I still love ya... (Score:2)
Thanks again Scott, I linked to Andromeda [turnstyle.com] so that people would try it. I recommend every one run the PHP version on top of Apache like me. (in the spirit of open source of course)
Re:I still love ya... (Score:1)
Great, I'm glad to hear it. Locking Andromeda down for personal use is one great way to use it. It's all just a matter of finding the right tool for the job, and sometimes that means 'tools'.
Enjoy, -Scott
Another review... (Score:2)
Wow, I'm amazed at this idea. How long has this been around? Why wasn't this done last year when P2P was so hot? It's very cool.
I'm trying it right now and it seems okay. The UI isn't exactly intuitive, so I made the mistake of opening 3 or 4 streams at the same time (this is like downloading 3 or 4 files using a Gnutella servent I gather). Though I was listening to only one, I was downloading others, which cut my bandwidth down quite a bit.
Now that I'm downloading only one stream, Green Dragon Radio, it seems okay, but my bandwidth must not be enough because it keeps starting and stopping (buffering). I've got an ADSL 256 down/128 up so it should be good enough to stream. Off shoutcast it would be fine. That's a 128 bit stream, trying others do the same despite supposedly being broadcast at less bandwidth.
I assume the overhead of the p2p stuff is cutting into either the broadcasting or receiving ends. (Or my machine is messed... always a possibility) This is only Beta, though so I'm sure it'll improve quickly.
Good job guys at Peercast!
-Russ
Re:Ultra short review.... (Score:2)
The UI is a bit counter intuitive: from the list with channels you first have to 'get' one. It then appears in a second list called 'available channels' from which you can pick one to listen to. Apparently you can connect to (and thus share) more than one stream. Once you get it isn't hard.
It would be nice if this idea were extended to video. The show stopper for streamed video so-far was available bandwidth, that problem now appears to have been solved (until the freeloading clients appear of course).
Re:What this'll be used for (Score:3, Funny)
That's much better than the oh-so-inappropriate apple-to-orange sexual encounters...
Multicasting over the internet at large (Score:3, Informative)
The p2p protocols are very suitable for multicasting
Except of course, the internet at large doesn't support multicasting very well. Sure, you can multicast internally on a small network, assuming your switches support it, but once you start to involve routers, you find very quickly ISPs don't support it. Some DSL providers are starting to consider allowing multicast within their own blocks, so a streaming server sitting in their DSL space will use up less bandwidth, but what currently happens is they are all running Inktomi caches which cache streams within their own network. Of course, its only Windows Media or Real Media streams that are supported.
(Disclaimer : My employeer is a large provider of streaming services in Europe)
Puny 32K streams? (Score:1)
From their forum..slashdotted (Score:3, Informative)
Post subject: Slashdot
Our router decided to die a minute ago because of the
What's out there to share, all day long? (Score:1)
However, I would really like to know, what people are sharing all day long? Or is it just do put some stuff on their >100 GB discs and think they look real cool, while wasting bandwith?
(OT) Source (Score:4, Insightful)
Not wishing to get into the old GPL debate, as their page implies it was all written from scratch rather than borrowing GPL code, but...
I really don't understand why people plan to put things into CVS after the code is writen and changed, etc... It makes sense to start with CVS from the outset.
Re:(OT) Source (Score:2)
I generally like to have a working version of stuff before I put the code into CVS. Things change so quickly during prototyping, and though sometimes I wish I had that version from 2 hours ago, normally I'm moving crap around and renaming things so much that I don't want to mess with CVS, specifically because CVS is a pain when it comes to folder management. Create a folder and it's there for life (unless you go into the repository and rip it out by the root). I'd rather be free to do what I want, then when I've got a decent base, I check it into CVS and start working from there like a real project.
Maybe that's just me, but that's how I work.
-Russ
Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most cable/DSL companies are now putting caps on traffic, and are starting to charge by the byte when you go over those limits.
I don't know about you, but while I don't mind paying for bandwidth I use, I sure as hell am not going to pay for someone else to get music/videos/pictures/etc at my expense.
This also brings in an interesting dilemma - if both users are on the came cable company's backbone, are they double-dipping if they charge both users for that bandwidth?
Re:Bandwidth? (Score:2)
At any rate, you turn off the "radio" and go to bed - and all bandwidth consumption halts until such a time as you feel like turning it on again.
You shouldn't look at it as paying for someone else's music - that someone may very well be in the same boat as you, and must pay seperately to -recieve- the bandwidth you give them. Not to mention the poor soul who was kind enough to let you listen to THEIR stream, on THEIR dime, in the first place.
It is as fair a system as one can get (with the obvious exception of the aforementioned firewalled users, and an unavoidable portion of people like yourself who, as you say, "sure as hell [are] not going to pay for someone else to get music/videos/pictures/etc at my expense" and will simply refuse to cooperate with the network, both types of whom make things more difficult and expensive for the rest of us with proper connectivity and a fucking spine).
If the cost in your case of providing this service to listeners, and indeed, the originator of the stream, is too great for you to muster, you'll be better off sticking with FM radio and (if applicable) MTV, either of whom who will happily allow you to sit around and consume their material all day, free of charge.
Meanwhile, leave the rest of us alone, you blood-sucking, parasitic tick. You've got the wrong attitude to participate in anything requiring a cooperative effort between peers, where the only cost of admission is that you do what you can to share what you've got.
Re:Bandwidth? (Score:1)
Partial Packet Feature: Multiple hosts (Score:1)