A few days ago I had written a post talking about two little projects I’d like to see Microsoft take on this year, one of which involved doing something about their inconsistent data transfer abilities. Yesterday the post received a comment from Nicholas Orr who said that he had “resorted to downloading the same files from Usenet at max speed”, and this got me thinking: what if Microsoft were to ask ordinary people to host files in a similar fashion to BitTorrent in exchange for some credits in the Windows Market Place?
Five years ago the company had released a case study looking at various ways to save money on bandwidth and networking costs. By the end of the study, they were reportedly saving hundreds of thousands of dollars every month with the network grooming and bandwidth avoidance methods that were implemented. Since then, both Microsoft and people’s use of the internet have grown exponentially, which would logically equate to a much higher cost for bandwidth.
So how can Microsoft and other larger companies who transfer relatively unchanged files hope to shave off a good percentage of their infrastructure costs? Why not farm out the data to consumers?
Putting Our Bandwidth to Use
The amount of data that people download every day is getting a little out of control, which is putting a strain on server farms all over the world. One massive file transfer system that doesn’t suffer from this type of strain, though, is the BitTorrent system.
With regular server farms like we’d see at Microsoft and C|Net, a person who asks for a file will get the entire thing from a single server, from start to finish. While this might make sense and seem incredibly simple, it creates a cost nightmare when a million people are all trying to download files simultaneously. BitTorrent, however, works by getting different pieces of a file from many other computers that already have some of the data we need. The files are then assembled on our computers when we have all the little bits and pieces required. So, rather than compete with a million other people to get a tiny sliver of bandwidth to download a file, we’re sharing our internet speed with many other people, allowing for much more reliable and faster data transfers.
I’ll admit that BitTorrent is usually seen as an “illegal” thing with all the negative press, but it can be used to share legitimate files as well. Heck, I’ve been sharing the various releases of Ubuntu via BitTorrent for the better part of three years, and that’s a completely legal use of the system.
So, if Microsoft were to “farm out” their static files to customers who can dedicate X amount of disk space and bandwidth, then the company could potentially save millions of dollars a year in bandwidth, hardware costs, and electricity. In addition to this, Steve Ballmer could then proclaim that Microsoft was being more pro-active about being the greenest technology giant in the world.
Not only could most of Microsoft’s KB downloads be offloaded this way, but the Windows Updates (which are consumed by hundreds of millions of computers) could also be shared amongst people.
Okay, But What’s In It For Me?
Naturally, a big company like Microsoft would likely need to offer some sort of compensation for these activities. While a number of geeks may wish for some sort of Utopian society like we see in Star Trek where everything is “free”, most people would not be willing to share their expensive (and potentially capped) internet connections out of the goodness of their hearts. So, one option would be for Microsoft to issue store credits for their various premium services and stores.
Imagine, if you will, sharing Microsoft files (legally) while being paid $0.05 USD for every gigabyte of data uploaded. Sure, it doesn’t sound like a lot but, after a year or so, many people would have enough accumulated to buy something like a version of Office 2007 or Windows 7 or a year’s worth of XBox Live service. Talk about lock-in!
If the credits are issued for the Microsoft Store, then people could even use it to buy hardware or other Microsoft-preferred items. While this wouldn’t make technology “free” by any stretch of the imagination, it would certainly make stingy people who want to (kind of) keep up with technology a lot more receptive to Microsoft products, while simultaneously solving the problem of failed downloads.
Stepping Off the Soap-box
Well … it’s just an idea. Someone much smarter than me has probably already thought of this before and had the idea shot down for any number of reasons. Still sounds reasonable, though.
What do you think? If a large company like Microsoft or C|Net were to offer some kind of payment to co-host some of their static files, would you share your internet connection? I’d love to know your thoughts on this.
I’d be in on that scheme, as uploads are not capped or count towards my data usage, that’d be acceptable.
Blizzard use BitTorrent with the WoW client. As long as the download client is open it is participating in the BT swarm.
Here is the bit that gets in the way though. Downloading Linux ISOs via BT is fine as the people that do it are usually tech savy. As such Microsoft would most likely do what Blizzard have done and create a special MS branded client that does what it does (so the masses don’t wig out, “what’s a torrent?” “what’s BitTorrent” “how come its not working” – not all technical people are created equal boggles my mind that an ‘internet apps developer’ doesn’t know what firefox is…
) and we wont have access to the torrent files. uTorrent is the only BT client that exists (I kid, it is the one I use) and as such I want it running 24/7 as I can set settings and keep tabs.
The other barrier I see to MS using BT is that of control. One thing about hosting files on a web server is the 1-to-1 aspect ensures authority over what MS chooses to share and with whom, instils a “perceived” concept of control… Also I’m guessing the MS file publishing systems they use work fantastic +90% of the time, the issue is when demand is greater than capacity.
The other thing is I don’t think using BT would save MS that much money… They’d still need to run a bunch of seed servers as the swarm only operates as fast as those contributing…
Well MS partner with Akami and I’m sure they are looking at ways to cut costs and maximise profits. It would be great if I could host MS files and get something in return for it
If Microsoft were to let people host files with some sort of P2P system, then the files would probably be encrypted and stored inside some kind of “big black box” on our hard drives. This would prevent some malicious script kiddies from trying to introduce exploits, and it would ensure that the average computer user doesn’t have any serious amount of control over what types of files they share.
While I haven’t seen how much bandwidth seed servers consume, I would think they’d require much less than the systems in place, now. Perhaps I’m wrong, though … I’ll add that to my “things to investigate” pile for next weekend.
You’re right that companies like Microsoft will likely never go this route, but it’s nice to dream. Heck, getting some “free stuff” from a big company every now and again is what us little guys are always looking for, right?
Remember BT has built in data verification/integrity features….
Also anything spread on MSDN / KB is accessible outside of those firewalls – so nothing new there would be introduced with an open system.