The Insidious Sound of Swarming
December 13th, 2004 by Adam Cuothe
From Mr. Chapweske’s Blog
The technology improves swarming by ensuring that the bytes that the user wants next are scheduled to be received next… Under the covers it is almost unimaginably more complicated than this because it also provides Self-Healing Downloads, implements a full-blown, scalable, Web Proxy Cache… constantly monitoring and adapting to changing network conditions.
Interesting stuff, this swarming system. The primary thing I see it doing is taking down companies like Intraware that have built an entire business on delivering software without its box. See, Intraware prides itself on being able to accommodate the large software vendors’ needs in licensing entitlements, upgrade and patch services, and purchasing download accessibility. It doesn’t sound like much of a deal at first but then you realize that these big software vendors have a lot to trace when they need to get critical software to their customers in a reliable way.
Perhaps this notion sounded good to a venture capitalist or two back in the day, but the world has advanced and anyone with a little foresight ought to have been able to see that such a service could be built in-house without too much difficulty. Really Intraware is just a very specific sort of outsourcing host. With Bit Torrent technology and now swarming, all the nice features Intraware was focusing on, could be more efficiently replicated via Onion Network‘s technology.
August 9th, 2005 at 09:39
David, sounds like Intraware is providing a vertical enterprise solution to enable IT to slipstream software patches, elevating swarming technology from simply an active network to network platform with extensible APIs.
Mike Peteg
August 9th, 2005 at 09:40
I think you’re right on, Mike. Ever cut into your index finger while preparing dinner? You sometimes see that very visceral blend of blood with scattered water droplets on the countertop. Then you realize that you’re tearing up, not because of the cut itself but because of the onion scent quietly, invisibly, invading your nostrils. My recommendation? Intraware should buy Onion Networks.