From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Avalanche (P2P)
Avalanche (P2P)
Avalanche is the name of a proposed peer-to-peer (P2P) of-date version of the protocol which used an algorithm
network created by Pablo Rodriguez and Christos Gkant- that "sucks") and describes the paper as "garbage."
sidis at Microsoft, which claims to offer improved scala- In July 2007, Microsoft made the technology available
bility and bandwidth efficiency compared to existing P2P as a public customer technology preview (CTP) of the re-
systems. sulting system, called ’Microsoft Secure Content Down-
The proposed system works in a similar way to loader’ (MSCD).
BitTorrent, but aims to improve some of its shortfalls.
Like BitTorrent, Avalanche splits the file to be distributed
into small blocks. However, rather than peers simply
References
transmitting the blocks, they transmit random linear [1] Avalanche: Peer-Assisted Content Distribution.
combinations of the blocks along with the random coef- Pablo Rodriguez, Microsoft Research
ficients of this linear combination - a technique known [2] Cohen, Bram (20 June 2005). "bramcohen:
as ’network coding’. This technique removes the need for Avalanche". Bram Cohen’s Journal.
each peer to have complex knowledge of block distribu- http://bramcohen.livejournal.com/20140.html.
tion across the network (an aspect of BitTorrent-like pro- Retrieved 2009-06-06.
tocols which the paper[1] claims does not scale very well).
Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent, criticized the
proposed Avalanche system in a post to his blog.[2] He
External links
mentions inaccuracies in the paper’s analysis of the • Avalanche: File Swarming with Network Coding,
BitTorrent protocol (some of it being based on an out- Avalanche official home page
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Avalanche_(P2P)&oldid=430769128"
Categories:
• File sharing networks
• Microsoft Research
• Microsoft software stubs
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