Faster Feeds Using FeedTree Peer-To-Peer 109
dsandler writes "Researchers at Rice University have just released version
0.7 of FeedTree, a peer-to-peer
system for distributing Web feeds faster. Instead of polling feeds
independently, FeedTree users cooperate to share news updates
using multicast in Pastry, a scalable p2p
overlay network. FeedTree reduces the update delay for existing RSS and Atom
feeds to a few minutes without putting extra stress on the webserver (anyone
who's ever been temporarily banned by Slashdot's RSS feed knows this is a real
concern). Feed publishers can also choose to push digitally signed updates
for immediate, tamper-proof delivery to subscribers. The client software (download) runs on Linux, OS
X, and Windows, and works with any desktop feed reader."
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
That would make for a real nice way of creating awesome web based feed aggregation tools...
Re:Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
They just reinvented netnews (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is room for coordination with bittorrent, though; imagine a Pastry-based P2P feed that then used RSS enclosures to tie into a (trackerless?) BitTorrent feed for a fully distributed pod-/vid-/file-casting solution that anybody could run with no fear of the bandwidth involved.
Tack in some sort of P2P web system, and in theory, you could run a massively popular podcast/blog with millions of hits a day off of your cable modem. (Although something with a bit more upstreaming oomph would be good for the rarely-requested content that falls out of the P2P; anyhow, any ol' webhost could handle this kind of bandwidth.)
I think this is a worthy goal, as if nothing else, popular websites run for fun would no longer be faced with the dilemma of advertising to cover bandwidth costs or going offline.
GMail RSS (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm leaning towards using RSS as a way to do announcements rather than maintain a mailing list. Rather than tell me you want me to send you updates (and deal with being potentially a spammer, deal with your unsubscribe, your email address change, etc.), just poll my site every so often (days, for the lists I'm talking about; hours, for Slashdot) and let it show up in your mail queue.
The idea isn't quite ready for prime time; too few people use RSS. But GMail could make that happen in one fell swoop. Well, two fell swoops: you'd need some sort of browser extension to make the little orange "RSS feed" button notify GMail.
I wonder if just having GMail (and hotmail, aol, and yahoo) handle that would solve the problem to the point where we no longer needed a P2P RSS distribution system.
Alternatively, if ISPs were to cache the RSS feeds the way some do with certain web pages, that might also take a lot of the load off. People will still impolitely set their RSS readers to check the feed every 10 seconds, but at least it never gets out onto the backbone if it's cached at the ISP.
Re:They just reinvented netnews (Score:5, Insightful)
This is designed for USERS to help each other get the very latest RSS feeds using p2p tech.
netnews is designed to let SERVERS help each other distribute messages posted by users.
I don't really see how it is a re-invention at all.
Re:They just reinvented netnews (Score:3, Insightful)
> RSS feeds using p2p tech.
> netnews is designed to let SERVERS help each other distribute
> messages posted by users.
> I don't really see how it is a re-invention at all.
Usenet is a peer to peer network of "servers". This is a re-invention of the way articles propagate in Usenet.
Re:Rice made Pastry, too. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't even know Dan personally, though I have researched under Drs. Wong and Wallach before. I'm just trying to point out where credit is due.
Is it wrong to want your fellow students to be praised for their hard work?
A solution without a problem (Score:3, Insightful)