More Bandwidth and Revenue Needed

xort · Post by **xort** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 2:43 am

After reading the first 10 pages, I'v skipped to the end. (sorry if someone else has already posted something to this effect)

If you have bandwidth issues and don't use bittorrents to offer content then you are just being silly.

I am very wary of putting up bittorrent for several reasons. Personally, every time I have tried to use BT, I always get suck download speed, always. Of the 38074 local videos, 36538 were downloaded at least once last month. This is 95.97% of all local videos getting downloaded last month. From what I know of BT, it doesn't work very well for lots of files getting few downloads. Also, in the industry matrix of "who should we go after and sue next", the checkbox of "uses file sharing networks" seems to push people way up to the top of the list. I don’t want BT to be the straw that breaks that camel’s back

Or maybe a technophobe.

The legal issues at hand are not changed by the use of torrents. Either an AMV is legal or it's not. The distro method isn't going to change that. However taking money for profit (even if just to fund the site) might ruffle the feathers of some media groups. (either music companies or the anime copywrite holders).

As for the idea that BT doesn't work for many files... well maybe that was true at some point very early on. However, currently their are trackers and clients that will let hosts seed multiple files that are open for individual downloads. So those few of us out here with unlimited bandwidth connections might be willing to host a gig or two of the more popular AMVs with our spare bandwidth more or less unlimitedly.

I don't know how the bytes fall but I'm going to guess that the most popular files are a small fraction of the total and take up the most bandwidth.

And as for the suck download aways... that's your problem caused by a range of issues; millions of people are moving TB of data a every day. I normaly max out my connection almost 24/7. So very clearly the technology works for those willing to make the effort to make it work.

I'm never going to offer up a single cent for something that can be free. But I'l freely offer up 10k of my upstream to host files.

Frankly I'v always been stunned that this site hasn't been using BT for years now. Your .com twin IS a BT site, although it is bad repair due to very very low useage. I did seed most of the torrents at one point however the death of one of my HDs with all my AMVs on it has limited what I can seed to a select few.

badmartialarts · Post by **badmartialarts** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 3:22 am

Unfortuneately, this HAS been addressed. There are almost 2 TB of videos on this site, and they are downloaded almost at random by the users of this site. If it was a few videos that generate all the bandwidth issues, yes, a torrent would be ideal. But from the usage statistics (which have been posted before, if not in this thread then in the previous 2000 threads begging for torrents), that is actually not the case. Almost every file on this site gets hits, maybe not every day but once in a while. Even the 'bad' ones (which is very subjective).

celibi87 · Post by **celibi87** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 12:30 pm

badmartialarts wrote:Unfortuneately, this HAS been addressed. There are almost 2 TB of videos on this site, and they are downloaded almost at random by the users of this site. If it was a few videos that generate all the bandwidth issues, yes, a torrent would be ideal. But from the usage statistics (which have been posted before, if not in this thread then in the previous 2000 threads begging for torrents), that is actually not the case. Almost every file on this site gets hits, maybe not every day but once in a while. Even the 'bad' ones (which is very subjective).

even my worst vids gets hits and having found good and bad amvs i decided to donate so i can have the good ones first and the bad ones....well last.

BasharOfTheAges · Post by **BasharOfTheAges** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 1:41 pm

For BT to work, many users would need to be seeding many videos. Bandwidth issues asside, do you have any idea the system resources that would be required to keep up with tracking 70,000 + videos?

When you work with small filesize / large numbers of downloads, a BT system simply does not work because the memory requirements needed to simply keep track of seeding information for that many files is enourmous. Now take into account the average ratio of someone that gains nothing by closing the BT window after his/her download is done and you have far less than 1% of the videos being seeded at any one time.

Setting up and properly maintaining such a tracking system would cost more (in terms of man-hours and hardware upgrades) than it would ever save.

Coderjo · Post by **Coderjo** » Fri Sep 30, 2005 3:14 pm

Granted, I haven't seen the usage statistics, but I would think a large amount of the bandwidth winds up being spent on downloads of newly posted videos.

There is also the idea that you could put new vids on bittorrent, and then once the downloads get below a certain point, drop the torrent and only offer the normal local download.

Of course, the feasability of bittorrent at all depends on those usage statistics that I have not seen.

Org Profile · Post by **Phade** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 12:17 am

Hey,

Here is a chart of the download usage statistics for the month of Aug:

The X-axis is the number of times an individual video has been downloaded. The pink (barely visible) line is the number of videos that have had that number of downloads. The dark blue line is the sum of downloads at that level. The area under the blue line represents the amount of bandwidth used.

The graph shows that there are a large number of videos getting a few downloads and a few videos getting lots of downloads. The amount of bandwidth used by videos that get less than around 200 downloads per month are (by me eyeballing it) causing two-thirds of the bandwidth usage.

To me, this means that bittorrent is not a good candidate for video distribution in our case since there are lots of files getting few downloads causing the bulk of the bandwidth usage.

I hope this helps.

Phade.

loganwolvy · Post by **loganwolvy** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 11:15 am

I see that the ads are in place on the download pages.

How are they working thus far? Any help?

~Q

celibi87 · Post by **celibi87** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 1:07 pm

could there be a way that after two years a vid can get deleted. give a warning first of course but that could save on bandwith.

trythil · Post by **trythil** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 1:11 pm

celibi87 wrote:could there be a way that after two years a vid can get deleted. give a warning first of course but that could save on bandwith.

Two things:

(1) This would only help save bandwidth if deletion was carried out only on the most popular videos.

(2) You'd have to be dense to do that.

Rurounikeitaro · Post by **Rurounikeitaro** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 2:21 pm

celibi87 wrote:could there be a way that after two years a vid can get deleted. give a warning first of course but that could save on bandwith.

Would you really want your old precious first AMV to be taken off the site?