Alan Cox wrote:
One of the problems with the torrent protocol is that its hard for a well meaning ISP to actually proxy it and become a local source for their clients.
Is it actually that hard, or is it that the ISPs don't really want to invest time/money into it? There are already BT clients out there which bias the up/down rates on various factors. So, theoretically, it could be done.
I tend to agree that the problem stems from trying to proxy everything (including "illegal" content). The only good way to work around this is to cache only specific releases (e.g. fedora iso) - but that would require some amount of human work to decide what goes and what stays. On the other hand, the same legal file might appear on several different trackers, and synchronizing between them all is an even bigger PITA.
The american ISPs take the cop-out way: they just declare a random limit for heavy users (because "unlimited" doesn't really mean "unlimited") and cut off the account if it downloads too much. It's easier than caching :(
