[Xastir] torrents and xastir

[Jason KG4WSV]

On Fri, Aug 1, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Curt, WE7U <archer at eskimo.com> wrote:

>> You'd have the option of getting the data via download or Torrent at that
>> point.  Simplified data delivery.
>
> In this case you don't gain any advantages of the peer-to-peer
> distributed transfer.

Not exactly - Gerry's selection tool and the download choices are
orthogonal issues. The real question is are there enough users
(specifically enough users seeding) to make torrents worth the
trouble?  I'm not enough of a torrent user to guess, but I do know
that my client defaulted to leech mode, and I ran that way for a long
time not knowing any better.  Now I tend to download what I need, seed
for a few days or weeks to "give back to the community", then turn it
off.

As far as the disk space goes, 200 DVDs at 5Gb each are ~= 1Tb, which
you can get in a single disk for less than $300.  Use a second 1Tb
disk as the "backup" mirror, throw in a couple of external disk boxes,
and you've got the storage on the cheap for a few hundred dollars.  As
we don't get a lot of money around here, I use such storage/backup
systems for the low intensity and/or low budget projects.  There are
more failure points than with a proper storage array, but there's an
order of magnitude or two less cost getting in the door.  Of course,
if someone has the budget for doing it right and the will to loan it,
we should by all means take them up on it. (:

-Jason
kg4wsv