Assassinator Wrote:And there's no such thing as what HTTP is meant for. HTTP was there way before torrent or anything ewlse. Once upon a time, there was no torrent or any other P2P sharing system. HTTP is meant for everything.

"Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a communications protocol used to transfer or convey information on the World Wide Web. Its original purpose was to provide a way to publish and retrieve HTML hypertext pages." «- HTML pages??? arent those usually under 1mb???

once upon a time, there werent even images on web pages. and once upon a time much later, web pages were still under 1MB including images. once upon a time, the time when they were developing HTTP, having to transfer more than 5MB was unimaginable! whoever, would download an entire book over HTTP, they thought! now, ppl download entire MOVIES over http. sheesh, don't tell me they actually kept that in mind when they were developing it...

Assassinator Wrote:but torrents never fail as far as I know, they just stop downloading because there are no sources. and that doenst happen often.

nah, ive never had anything fake on torrents... i used to get a lot of fake stuff on kazaa etc though but not on torrents :/ also, to prevent this, almost all torrent sites allow people to post comments so you can immediately see if something is not working or not what it says.

Assassinator Wrote:Like with most of ur argument, that's assuming that ur torrent is popular. If ur torrent is not, more likely it'll go really slow. Unfortunately, most of the stuff i download go really slow. Fortunately, my internet is not fast, so the slowness is not too bad.

so then ur line is maxed :P lol. also, well, the odds of your torrent being popular enough are big because otherwise you wouldnt download it yourself either. if u really like strange things then theres nothing i can do about it :P

Assassinator Wrote:yesterday, i was getting 10kb/s, right now, I'm getting 500b/s.  Fate-stay Night Character Image Songs = like 3kb/s average. random manga = slow or dead. a game = Fast, Office 2007 = very fast. Romsets = often dead.

Which program are you using?if torrents don't go higher than 20-30kB/s then you havent configured your router properly. direct does have the advantage here because it is already properly configured/requires no configuring... but if you can't configure your network.. well... you don't get to enjoy torrents :P

Assassinator Wrote:Do remember that one of the advantages of direct download is that it downloads the data in nice sequential order. thus u don't have to wait for something to be completely downloaded to start using it. So if u were to download a large archived file or something, u can check on it after u downloaded a little, to see if it's right. While with torrent, u have to wait until pretty much the whole thing is downloaded before u can get any information form it at all.

meh, sometimes archives won't open if theyre incomplete because they are corrupted. but you do have a point though..
however...
with torrents, in the case that the torrent is not archived and the direct download is, you can chose certain files to have higher priority than others (or omit certain files), but with direct downloads you have to download the whole thing first.

Assassinator Wrote:This is also relevant to ur 200 episodes of sailor moon, because direct download will get u the eps in order. U may argue that for torrent, u can always make torrent download the eps in sequential order as well, but that involves even more clickes than with http, which counters ur 1st argument on how torrent is simpler and requires less clicks.

if you're downloading the 200 files at the same time, theres no telling which ones will finish first... which is the same case as with torrents (if you don't set up the priorities hey will all download randomly). so sure you can chose to download certain files first with direct download, but that defeats the purpose of the mass-download function zinga mentioned cause you still have to set up the order manually, as with torrents. and with torrents, its all in one window which is much more organised.

Assassinator Wrote:And c'mon. direct downloads don'ty fail like even close to as often as u say it does. I rarely ever occurs to me. Unless if ur internet is that dodgey.

my internet tends to d/c sometimes due to a crappy modem (wee just got  anew one though) or my brother d/c'ing the network switch. or just because my pc crashes, or freezes for a moment... all these and even just randomly cause my direct downloads to fail. with torrents, all these are not a problem because they download in pieces instead of in one file.

even if it doesn't happen often to you, which is great, these things do cause direct downloads to fail but the do not cause torrents to fail, so torrents still have the advantage. as far as I know, torrents can't really 'fail' to the extent that you have to start over from scratch with downloading (like direct downloads, even with some resume capable managers in my experience), they just fail to complete if there are no seeds. but that is a completely different story, i don't consider it 'failing'.

Assassinator Wrote:u can on;y make sure to get the 1st 50 eps 1st, and then the last 50 that way. I can't get the 1st then 2nd then 3rd ...in sequential order, unless u keep setting priorities each time an ep completes, and that's more annoying than direct download.

yeah, true, but i won't start watching until a number of eps has finished so it doesn't matter at all. if you really want direct downloads to finish in the order 1-200, then you'll have to keep starting the next download every so often as well.

Assassinator Wrote:Also, one big disadvantage of torrent is also the fact that u need to run a program in the background, which eats memory.

huh what? 1. if you're using your browser to download, then torrents definately have a bigger advantage because browser's download managers lack many functions torrent software has. or, 2. if you're using a download manager, you're running a program in the background as well so it doesn't really make sense....

also, because the bittorrent system was especially programmed to download large files, it uses less memory than HTTP, which was not.

Assassinator Wrote:And also to get torrent to run at maximum efficiency, u need to configure the client and stuff. If ur ISP provider is gay, they may also block certain commonly used ports and stuff, so u have to also screw with that. People who are new to torrent is not likely to get max efficiency out of torrent.

true, however you do exaggerate the configuring of the software itself imo. good torrent programs install themselves and associate with .torrent files, and work out of the box and are easy to set up. there is no need for them to integrate into the browser at all (unlike download managers), because the browser opens .torrent files automatically after downloading them (at least after you tell it to once it will), and the torrent program will open up.

about the network/router part, yeah it needs some configuring but its worth it, and if you don't know how... well... sorry... theres entire sites dedicated to providing step by step instructions for doing that, if you still can't do it then well, no torrents for you.

Assassinator Wrote:That time it takes to unarchive is nowhere close to the time u save on downloading a smaller file. Especially if the compression is high.

k but just for the record that's not really an advantage for direct downloads cause where appropriate, torrents are also archived.

Assassinator Wrote:Go and try to download the N64 romset NOT ARCHIVED. If u cana ever find someone stupid enough not to archive it, it'll be over 100GB in size. The archived size is 4.8gb. Massive size difference cause there are multiple dumps of the same rom and that kind of stuff in there that compresses very well. So like 10 similar copies of the same 32mb rom will only compress to lets say, 20mb. compared to the 320mb raw, that's very good. Don't tell me u want to download 320mb just to save the time of extracting it.

don't forget winrar has a function to archive every file into a seperate archive (and also to unpack a selection of archives in one click to different folders (or the same folder)), so with torrents, you can have the best of both (smaller files, but still being able to select which particular roms you want).

Assassinator Wrote:that's why u leave most of ur stuff archived. That way it saves space in ur HDD. If all the stuff i have are all unarchived, i would need a HDD like 3x the size. Stuff ur not going to use for a while may as well be archived.

i do the opposite, before i copy stuff to my storage partition i unpack it. because when i use something, i don't want to go unpacking it (or finding out i can't because i don't have the disk space at that moment). it may take up space, but id rather throw out stuff i really don't use now and then than have to unpack everything when i need something.

Assassinator Wrote:Happens way too often. And if something is that unpopular, there would not be multiple torrents of it. Happens like 1/4 of the time for me.

again, either you don't know where to search for certain stuff or you like really strange stuff. but even for really strange stuff, theres lots of private trackers. not everything is listed on the large sites, you know...

Assassinator Wrote:I guess wee must download very different stuff. ^.^

judging by the above examples
mmmyeah
but i doubt theres no trackers for ur kind of stuff.

Assassinator Wrote:Private tracker = u may have to pay/ get invited or something.

forget about paying, ive never seen a tracker that requires payment except for scams. also, if you like a certain thing, then you have some contacts who also like it and they may be able to get an invite to that tracker. its never really that hard to get into a private tracker...

Assassinator Wrote:And also u have to seed to a certian requirement. Seeding that rato for everything u download is VERY annoying. Way more trouble than direct downloads ever give u. Especially if ur download speed is that much faster that ur upload speed.

true, but i havent really found it a problem at all because, if your download speed is 8 times as much as your upload speed, well i guess you use private trackers for 1/8th (in GB) of the total of what you download, so in the end, if you keep seeding those torrents that require seeding, even when ur not downloading, it should break even pretty quickly. i don't have any problems with this at all somehow. when i don't need anything from a private tracker, i upload anyway so that i have some reserve for when i need something again. ive got a ratio of more than 2 on every private tracker that has ratio restrictions, so imho its not really much of an issue.

also, just be nice and contribute :P if you don't want to upload, torrent is not for u.

Assassinator Wrote:Provate tracker also = way less people get to download = slower speed than normal server.

not only untrue, but ppl who take the time to get into a private tracker usually care to upload WAAAY more often than on anonymous public trackers where there are many leechers. also, people with 100mbps uploads are found on the private trackers because that's where they get credit for uploading.

Assassinator Wrote:+ the limit for megaupload of 45kb/s (360kbit/s) is fast enough for me anyways. my internet connection can never hit that speed anyways.

well, mine can, and just now ive been downloading an iso @ 80kB which is not really a lot but if it were 45kB that would mean i had to wait another day for it and i couldnt use it now...

Assassinator Wrote:With direct download, people who host the files pay. u don't. so whichever way for u, it's free.

sometimes, but i mean with torrents you can't be limited or restricted because many servers do require payment for optimal download speeds etc. and all because its not cooperative like torrent, where the upload bandwidth is free. servers do cost money, and sometimes ur lucky but sometimes you arent and you need to pay.

Assassinator Wrote:Direct download that doesn't get downloaded often = good. that's good for the server. less strain.

they do get pruned.... sometimes

Assassinator Wrote:Torrents also involve waste. like when 2 people send u the same stuff, or like when people send u bad stuff. The waste percentage is generally like around 2-5%, up to 20% if ur connected to like a LOT of people. So ur basically downloading 5% more on each download.

my client happens to give a lot of detailed info regarding that. of a 2690MB file i downloaded today, 28.4MB was wasted due to 9 pieces failing to download. not only is that just a bit more than 1% rather than 5%, it also indicated that torrents are really reliable because they hash check every piece before they write it to your file, which HTTP/FTP does not. at best, it checks the entire file after it finishes. also, when the torrent file is made you can specify the piece size (bigger is faster, but more wasted space when one fails, smaller is slower but less wasted space). there is also a function for selecting the optimal piece size for the files in your torrent. see how bittorrent is thought through for large files?

by the way, im not trying to argue with anyone or anything (as always), just trying to explain that in my view torrents are much better for most large file downloads.

(This post was last modified: 04/06/2007 05:41 AM by Ge64.)