Downloading music, games and movies to personal computers would never have become
massively popular without efficient peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols like BitTorrent. Now BitTorrent, Inc., whose
P2P platform already accounts for a hefty proportion of Internet traffic, has released
a toolkit for consumer electronics manufacturers that will let them build the
platform into their devices. Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices, set-top
boxes, digital media adapters and routers will soon be capable of downloading
files directly.
As an example of how these might be used, consider NAS devices, which are stand-alone storage devices – some with
as much as a terabyte of storage – that are available to any computer
on a home network. A NAS device that is integrated with BitTorrent could be set
up with an always-on BitTorrent client to download files in the background,
leaving the user’s computer free for other tasks and making it easier to access
entertainment over the Internet. And the more devices there are on the Internet running BitTorrent in
an always-on fashion, the more BitTorrent seeds will be available, and the faster
download speeds will be for everyone – and the more demand there will be for
downloads.
Japanese manufacturer Buffalo has said it will integrate BitTorrent into
its next generation of NAS devices, joining chipmakers Marvell Semiconductors
and iAdea/Star Semiconductor and hardware manufacturers ASUSTeK, Netgear,
Planex Communications and QNAP Systems.
“We see BitTorrent as broadband’s next killer app,” Buffalo’s
Morikazu Sano says.
