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spacey
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Quote spacey Replybullet Topic: Conserving bandwidth for courses
    Posted: 24 October 2006 at 9:22am
Have proposals for an alternate methods of distributing the language courses been brought up here? I was looking at the recent issues with the web sites, and reasons for transitioning to the new web site (and back), and after thinking for a while, I had a few definite thoughts:

1) Bandwidth is expensive when its use is consolidated at one point.
2) This site has content that's geared towards repeated downloads if a user is learning a language. That's bandwidth-intensive, and therefore possibly $$$ intensive.
3) This means that the ability for someone to learn the languages relies on the server, their internet bandwidth, and the conditions of the internet at the time
4) These are fragile components and expensive for an individual to maintain.

I'd like to propose an alternate method of distribution:

1) Master the site using relative links,
2) Archive each course as a .zip file complete with audio and text, and with an index to the audio files included, as the web pages here. Ensure that those links are relative links - i.e. just say "sndfile" instead of "http://fsi-language-courses.com/language/sndfile".
3) Set up a low-bandwidth bittorrent tracker, and publish the language courses via some of the more popular bittorrent sites.

The gains in doing this are the following:

1) you can aggregate the bandwidth of other users of the course, for free, to take load off of the web site.
2) By removing the dependancy on the web site from the included links, once a person has downloaded a course, they won't repeatedly hit the fsi-language-courses.com web site to download pdfs and audio
3) The failure of a server doesn't have to permanantly interrupt the availability of the language courses.

The difference in bandwidth required for bittorrent downloads vs. normal web bandwidth is *tremendous*. Bitttorrent can save the server increadible amounts of bandwidth, and can also be a mechanism for publicizing the site further by putting the URL into the zip file, and placing the torrent seed file on some of the larger bittorrent sites.

I didn't see a thread on this so far, so hopefully I'm not re-hashing something outdated.

-Peter

Edited by spacey - 24 October 2006 at 9:26am
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Chung
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Quote Chung Replybullet Posted: 24 October 2006 at 10:38am

This was discussed earlier, albeit it was a very short exchange.

 
 
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spacey
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Quote spacey Replybullet Posted: 24 October 2006 at 11:50am
Indeed, that did not seem to be a constructive exchange. Would the site owner be open to discussing this again in light of the issues with the new site?

-Peter
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Chung
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Quote Chung Replybullet Posted: 24 October 2006 at 12:13pm
I take it from gdfellows' terse response that he had given at least some thought to P2P and given everything, isn't convinced of a switch to a P2P method.
 
You could always send a PM to gdfellows and see what happens.
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Exocrist
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Quote Exocrist Replybullet Posted: 24 October 2006 at 5:44pm
I think having the option of using bittorrent to download the courses is a pretty good one: it'd take lots of load off of the server, and it could potentially go faster (if it's a popular course).  I think the option to directly download should still be available for people who don't want to or can't install bittorrent, but the idea to use bittorrent as a method of distribution is definitely a good one.  If nothing else, it'd reduce bandwidth costs.
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spacey
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Quote spacey Replybullet Posted: 16 November 2006 at 11:45pm
I hope I am not stepping on any toes, however I have created and tested a dvd .iso file for the complete FSI Mandarin courses as made available here.

I'll be making this available as a .torrent file once I can figure out the .torrent creation and tracker setup. Once this is done, I'd encourage people here to download copies and keep them available, and I'll provide .iso's of other courses as well.

Thanks,

-Peter
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onebir
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Quote onebir Replybullet Posted: 17 November 2006 at 2:56am
Speaking for myself, i think putting the files on bittorrent in parallel with this site is a great idea. It might be easier for people in some locations to download material from bittorrent, and could help reduce the bandwidth load on this site.

But perhaps more importantly, it provides a backup source for the files.  In the event of this site having to close - which seems unlikely, given the owner's (laudable) caution - the  files should  be out there on the internet in significant volumes, spreading like a benevolent virus :)
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Karen
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Quote Karen Replybullet Posted: 04 July 2007 at 4:19am

RE:  Conserving bandwidth for courses

Great idea!  However, those of us that live in remote or semi-remote locations of the world.  Like Thailand for instance still rely on "old-fashioned" methods of downloading.

The computer community here is quite large for a Second-World country like Thailand, but the level of expertise I've seen so far is quite dismal.

The only people here that really know a lot about computers are the expats from America, Canada and Australia. and a lot of them are too busy carousing in the nightclubs or chasing women to help anyone.

I'm doing ok though....hanging in there! Thank God for the internet!

Karen
Phuket, Thailand
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