A different proposal for XO upgrade.

[Mike C. Fletcher]

Christopher Blizzard wrote:
...
> I like the system that scott proposed for how often we should look at
> updates and the idea of a "lead" to say "hey, I'm getting this update so
> don't look."  (It sounds strangely familiar to an idea that I shared
> with scott over lunch a month or so ago so of course I like it!) We also
> might consider setting up other clients to start collecting the update
> before it's completely finished downloading to start spreading around
> the bandwidth over a longer period of time and making the entire process
> more fault tolerant and bandwidth efficient on the local lan.  i.e.
> someone else could pick up the rest of the update if the lead machine
> vanishes.  Also, two machines might be able to get the update faster
> than one, just due to latency over a lot of the links we're talking
> about using.
>   
You've just described BitTorrent, if I'm not missing something.  It's 
already designed to optimise the bandwidth used by talking to the people 
who have the fastest connection to you, it automatically allows each 
person who pulls down a unit to share it, it's fault tolerant, allows 
the "lead" to drop out (doesn't actually have one), and generally is 
robust as all get out.  It also has a file-format that allows for a 
downloading just that fragment you need (i.e. just one file, or just one 
block, or whatever).

Just a thought,
Mike

-- 
________________________________________________
  Mike C. Fletcher
  Designer, VR Plumber, Coder
  http://www.vrplumber.com
  http://blog.vrplumber.com