BitTorrent/Distributed Download Protocol and Microsoft
A couple of weeks ago, I was discussing our awful download stats and trying to find a solution to the problem. I wondered in this blog whether the problem was that users started to download our SDK and failed, or if 71.87% of all our users were really having problems downloading the SDK. It is true that the ISO version of the SDK is around 1.2 GB in size, but 76% of you choose to download the ISO, so it must be useful.
That post brought a lot of comments (well, a lot for this blog), with most users suggesting we use a BitTorrent or distributed download sort of system for our downloads.
We can't use a system like that, for reasons I'll get to in a minute, but before I do, I'd like to ask if you have any other suggestions for good ways to get the SDK onto users' machines. We are absolutely going to point users at a good download manager for the next release, and that should help, but do you have any other ideas?
Not to go off on a tangent, but unfortunately, the Microsoft Download Manager that is part of the MSDN Subscriptions isn't quite compatible with content in the Download Center. The MDM seems to presuppose that content is on the MSDN Subscriptions site, and our content lives outside of there. So I need to investigate other possible tools that Microsoft offers. That's one of those things that are both a strong point and a weak point of working for such a large and public company: we can't really recommend users utilize non-Microsoft software, but if there's not another solution out there, we're kind of stuck.
Which is a nice segue (always something this former college radio DJ likes to do) into the hairy issue of using a distributed download protocol or Torrent type system for downloading the SDK. The short answer, again, is that we can't do it.
I did a lot of reserach on our Intranet site and was actually kind of shocked by the lack of information out there on this technology. There was a very interesting ThinkWeek paper from January 2005 on how Microsoft could benefit from introducing a component of such technology, but ThingWeek papers by definition are theoretical, and this one didn't seem to spawn a practical application from it.
I also found an external article from 2005 that referenced a torrent-like technology that Microsoft was reportedly working on called Avalanche. An industry analyst reacted to the concept and didn't like it. But I couldn't find a torrent-like technology with that code-name. There was an internal app called Avalanche: Avalanche is a command line tool that can be used to send the various kinds of alerts to an Alerts Notification Router. The Tablet PC team had a project called Avalanche that seemed to have something to do with handwriting analysis. We had a project Avalanche to spur sales of Small Business Server in India, and as a component of Office 95. But nothing on download technology.
It was basically the same story for any term I searched for, even on specific download-related sites. Nothing. A total shutout.
So, long story short (hey, I did kind of give an executive summary at the top of this post), there appears to be nothing on the horizon for a torrent of the SDK ISO. I wish there were. I wish I could send users to get a copy of the SDK in the same way that they can download Linux distros or Battlestar Galactica episodes. But I can't.
As always, I'm really interested in your feedback on this.
Comments
Anonymous
April 04, 2006
Avalanche is a code name for some technology that guys in MSR are cooking up. The URL is http://research.microsoft.com/~pablo/avalanche.aspxAnonymous
April 04, 2006
> The MDM seems to presuppose that content is on the MSDN Subscriptions site
This is also false. File Transfer Manager was possible to direct to any location that will return predefined set of responses.
I know this for sure - as it is how I've used FTM to decrypt files I've downloaded from Microsoft servers using plain Wget.
As well I've found that it was possible to force FTM upload (yes! same ActiveX is used for upload) any files from user PC to evil server ( http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-954590.html ).
Please seriously consider using some P2P for free Microsoft download.
There are a lot of large networks connected using traffic exchange points that offer almost unlimited bandwidth to their users for free.
MSK-IX, UA-IX, OD-IX, SPB-IX, SAMARA-IX, NSK-IX and a lot of others at http://www.ep.net/naps_eu.html
Downloading files from USA will cost you and those users real money.Anonymous
April 04, 2006
I have wondered why the the ISO images are not compressed on both the download center and MSDN subscriptions. A lot of the recent Microsoft products dont have compressed installers, they just copy the file off the CD/DVD onto the hard drive (SQL2005, VS2005). This makes for ISO images that compress fairly well. If it trimmed 100MB off a CD image then everybody wins.Anonymous
April 04, 2006
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April 04, 2006
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April 05, 2006
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April 05, 2006
The microsoft download manager does not presuppose that content is in the MS downloads center. I've also used it to download content from connect.microsoft.com for various MS beta programs. It is regularly used to distribute multi-gigabyte ISOs, successfully.Anonymous
April 05, 2006
Sorry, I was unclear above. The Microsoft Download Manager presupposes the existence of an ActiveX control that places downloads inside of the Download Manager control. We don't have access to that ActiveX control in the Download Center.Anonymous
April 11, 2006
TAG, you said:
This is also false. File Transfer Manager was possible to direct to any location that will return predefined set of responses.
I know this for sure - as it is how I've used FTM to decrypt files I've downloaded from Microsoft servers using plain Wget.
As well I've found that it was possible to force FTM upload (yes! same ActiveX is used for upload) any files from user PC to evil server ( http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-954590.html ).
Thanks! I will investigate further.Anonymous
April 26, 2006
Having downloaded Visual Studio (3 GB) with Avalanche, for a research project it worked rather well and according to MS sources is considered for use in future VS download.
For me personally, the Akamai mirrors give a decent 20 Mbit/s speed compared to the 1-6 Mbit with Avalanche.
For more information about how far are they with integrating Avalanche into the VS download, you could ask Keen Browne from Developer Division.
A much more elegant solution is to create a redirector that features reliability and compression and allows to add format layer handlers. Pretty trivial actually with WCF. It would allow to mount a remote .ISO directly from any HTTP/FTP server as a local drive using the UDF driver. Linux already has this.Anonymous
June 09, 2006
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October 20, 2006
Search about CoDeeN (written something like that) and PlaneLab network (it's a very fast network over the Internet and there are some nice proxies you can use over it for free see PlanetLab proxies at: http://www.samair.ru/proxy/Anonymous
January 19, 2008
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