Lewies Blog

It looks like Blizzard entertainment is taking a big step. They actually went ahead and implemented P2P (Peer-2-Peer) technology to distribute updates to there new online game, Worlds of WarCraft.

P2P is a technology that lets many people share files over a network. You have a client that connects to these people so that you can download small parts of the file from many people at the same time. This lets you download faster then if you download the entire file from one person.

This is also an econimical solution for Blizard Entertainment. They do not have to deal with bandwidth constraints when a new patch is released. After one person downloads the file, Blizards servers are instantly reduced to only half the bandwidth that was required. As more people download the files, the less bandwidth is needed.

I love this technology. The only other place that I have seen it was with music and movie file sharing programs (such as Napster, bit torrent, lime wire). These file-sharing programs are still controversial today.

Tags: WarCraft, P2P, File Sharing, Peer-2-Peer, Game

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 19th, 2005 at 2:12 am and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.