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Comment by tithe | Hacker News Reader

Curious: was your distribution client-server or peer-to-peer?

Or both, similar to Skype's supernode model?

The overwhelming majority of "legitimate" video streaming sites operate on a client-server model, which allows videos to be watched in web browsers, and on mobile devices (which don't generally do well in P2P as they find uploading difficult).

And generally torrent-based streamers don't hire financial analysts :)

Thankfully the FCC definition of "broadband" is getting more symmetrical over time. And doesn't webrtc take care of connecting browsers pretty well?

The current definition requires 20Mbps of upload, and uploading a youtube-quality video to two other people would not take a big fraction of that. Though it would help if ISPs stop trying to set bandwidth caps at <5% utilization levels.

It's not only the amount of upload bandwidth and the usage caps (although those are both big issues).

It's that you're also probably going to get CGNAT - and maybe even a firewall blocking unusual ports.

And you're going to be running the power-hungry data connection at least twice as much, bad for battery life.

And mobile connections are less reliable - transitions between towers, going through tunnels, switching between 4G and WiFi.

And mobile OSes are eager to suspend things - especially things that are using a lot of data and battery.

That's a problem if all your users are mobile, yeah.

I'm thinking of the situation where most of the users are using home connections and have power cables always in or in reach.

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