Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  In praise of P2P (02 Dec 2004) Part of BitTorrent's success stems from the way it creates incentives for users to give as well as to take. A study in 2000 on one P2P network showed that almost 70% of users never shared files, and around half of the files available were offered by just 1% of users. BitTorrent is designed to remedy this. It rewards those who share files with others by increasing the download rate at which generous users can receive content, explains Bram Cohen, the system's creator. More sharing means there are more potential locations where copies of a given file are located, which in turn increases access speed. BitTorrent uses a technique called swarming, in which files are broken into small chunks that are then passed between peers. Two peers downloading the same file at the same time can also swap chunks they have already received from other peers, increasing the efficiency of the transfer. Article URL: http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3422905 Read 58 more articles from Economist sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Move over, Big Brother     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy