Distributed Download Update Service


Dimtar

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*If this has been suggested before please let me know and I will ask to have the thread closed*

 

I am wondering if there is a great deal of demand or interest in a service that uses community members machines/servers to serve updates for programs etc.

 

The idea being that it would be for legal/open source/free content and would be a way for community members like myself to aid open source projects etc. in distributing updates.

 

As an example. A user or group decides they want to use the BtSync network to distribute updates to a game (lets use the example of FlightGear) they make a folder with the installer in it and share the read only key of that folder.

This key is then shared to the group of people that have raised their hands to say they have interest in this, if they are interested they add the key to their VPS or home machine to help seed the downloads.

 

One of the advantages of this over torrents is updates could be pushed out to the users that elect to receive them.

 

 

 

 

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Let me explain it again sorry as I obviously didn't do a very good job the first time. I am trying to find out if anyone would be interested if a public area was setup where users could post the keys to an open source/ free download. The idea of the system is users like myself who have spare machines could add the key to our system to effectively help the project share its self.

As an example an open source project has some large files, lets take the example of the Flight Gear scenery which I think is around 20GB. Someone posts the key and users such as myself offer our bandwidth to assist the project sharing the files, in theory reducing the cost of getting files out there for the open source project.

Similar to the way universities etc. offer mirrors for Linux distros, it would be a way for normal users to support an open source project in a way that is available to them. The idea of the service is to bring these projects and their downloads together for the users and the people that want to offer bandwidth.

Hopefully that makes a little more sense.

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