Multicasting proxies

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FawrIze

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I've been thinking about this 24 Mb/s limit on the iBurst towers and it makes me worry. In a densely populated area with a lot of people downloading a lot of multimedia and large files, things are going to get slow soon - and the impact is felt on the international line as well. We're not even past trials yet and people are already saying they're "feeling" the degredation from December.

Seeing that iBurst is a broadcast medium, why not consider the following:
- Set up a proxy at each tower (co-op with WBS)
- All users around the tower points to the proxy, or use transparent proxy
- Proxies communicate with each other over the fixed infrastructure (tower to tower)
- When you download something via the proxy, it prompts you "do you want to be a magnificent individual and share this download with your fellow tower squatters?"
- If you say yes, a database is updated and the file stored on the proxy
- If someone else downloads the exact same thing, it comes from cache
- If they download something very similar, the proxy tells them there's a possible alternative (porn is porn, XPSP2 is XPSP2 - who cares where it comes from)
- Now, allow users to record their preferences on downloads. When something passes through the proxy, and matches the preference, it is multicasted to all interested parties - no harm done - it must travel over the air anyway.
- Have a "next feature starting 12:00" where you can select any items in the library and it is multicasted to interested parties at a specific time. Seeing that the connection is alway on, who cares when it arrives?

If WBS would agree to supply this kind of data "cap free", we all can benefit, not so? They score because they can have more users on one tower and they save megabucks on international bandwidth. We score because we get a wider selection of goodies, and don't burn our cap. The content providers score because they don't have to serve the same thing over and over again and ultimately the latency-sensitive traffic (voIP, gaming) works better because you can predict your traffic flows a little better.

Has this been done before?
 
that sounds like a mad-interesting plan.

I just dont think WBS got software in place for such a job, and paying more money to design such a program or "tutoring" current techies to use available programs would be to much for them?

Heh. Dunno, most companies take the easy ride even if it will not work on the long run.
 
That sounds like a good plan FawrIze. Wonder what WBS's opinion would be...?
 
No such thing as a new idea

I seems to have been done (to an extent):
http://www.isi.edu/div7/publication_files/lsam_proxy.pdf

I wonder how progressive a company like WBS would be able to think and allow a 3rd party to operate the proxies on their backbone. It really woudn't take much hardware and software to achieve this - and with 27 IT specialists as clients per tower (at least!), it should really not be a problem to get support! Even if it starts as a community project around each tower - why not? I'd even be willing to throw in one of the old PCs laying around here!
 
WickedWeasel said:
Remember that proxies are getting less effecient all the time due to dynamic content.
Click to expand...

I agree, but we're not talking about visiting webpages here, we're talking about large file downloads.

So if Bob (thats not you, he's more intelligent) downloads debian's new ISO, Frank (still more intelligent) has the option to download it straight off the cache off the tower instead of going the international or local bandwidth root.

Cool idea, but you'd need a server capable of terrabytes of data, and I doubt WBS is willing to fork out cash for each of their towers being fitted with one.
 
Terrabytes of data - at less that R1000/100Gb it's getting pretty easy to do. Thing with these massive downloads is that there's certain things that will be more popular than others - and pretty much at the same time - so you'll get a pretty good cache hit rate - especially with Windows updates and Linux distributions.

By community project I mean sponsored and operated by the users - for the good of the users. Costs WBS nothing more than a spot on the floor for the server and an ethernet connection. No harm in even making it break-even by charging a fraction of the "over-cap" cost - just enough to keep things running.
 
FawrIze, I like the idea, but what I've learnt in the corporate world is that they're more frigid than the coldest women on earth. I don't think they'll budge.

However, if JaWug ever gets its ass off the floor and actually post cool tutorials about how-to do your own thing, you could probably hook up all WBS clients, and form a server of your own. Maybe "host" everyones modem @ your place and have a 20meg connection with the server caching downloads etc :D
 
JaWug

Funny you should mention JaWug - I was thinking the exact same thing last night. Here's the twist:

- Everybody hooked up to iBurst (jealous of bandwidth)
- Everybody hooked up to JaWug (freedom)
- Proxy at one (or more) of the backbone nodes
- When you download something through the proxy, you can elect to "sacrifice" a portion of your bandwidth/cap - depending on the benfit to you
- The proxy then uses a kind of P2P protocol to do a segmented download via the participant's link (you become the proxy)
- The proxy stores a local copy and multicasts out at the same time

The trick is to get a couple of people interested in the same download and then each "donates" bandwidth - so for a nice 6Gb distro, get 6 guys each giving 1 Gb - and at 200 kb/s * 6 things will come down swiftly. Instant gratification is not going to be catered for - you need to list your interest, wait for takers and schedule the download, but worth it.

Afterwards other leeches can pick up the download for free.

What might work is a credit system where you get preference on future downloads off other people's bandwidth if you donated yours in the past. Favour for a Favour.
 
Hehe, sounds like a new era of P2P? :P I had that same exact idea a couple of months ago when I was seriously interested in putting up an AP and doing the whole thing (think my nodes are still up on that one site)

There is just a major lack of coorporation from people who have experience in this. Their idea of a tutorial is "buy an AP, setup the AP, enjoy the fun"

Which any idiot can do, I need tutorials on proxy server how-to's for linux etc etc... things and knowledge they already poses, yet, for some reason, protect.

Anyhew... can work.
 
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