Bit torrent live was released this week. If you are one of those torrent download freaks then you might have guessed how it works. For others let me put it in simple terms. In typical video streaming, there is a media server and hundreds of clients (read browsers/phones /tablets) connected to it, fetching and showing you the video.

The load on the server and output bandwidth of the server is directly proportionate to the no. of clients. This is the reason why live video snaps or buffers when a hugely popular event is watched like super bowl.

Now what bit torrent does is, it decentralizes this architecture. Only a few clients will connect to the server. The rest will connect to other clients who are connected to the server (also called as peers) and fetch the video stream from there. Analogous to you borrowing a book from the library and lending it to your friend. So the more an event is popular, better will be the video stream since more people will watch and share using bit torrent.

Bit torrent live streaming might not make huge sense for a small scale live streaming. But a huge step forward, if it delivers what it claims, for large scale live streaming events. The viewer gets better quality video while enterprise saves not only costs but themselves from potential embarrassment if the media servers or cdn gets overloaded.

ZifiLink will look in to how this new technology matures and will bring it to our customers, in future.