**There Goes the Neighborhood: Microsoft to Create Competing BitTorrent Technology**](http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1450)
Nice code name: **avalanche**. Says it all don’t you think?
“Researchers at Microsoft’s Cambridge, England, labs are developing a file-sharing technology that they say could make it easier to distribute big files such as films, television programs and software applications to end-users over the Internet.
**Code-named Avalanche**, the technology is similar to existing peer-to-peer (P-to-P) file swapping systems such as BitTorrent’s, in the sense that large files can be divided into many smaller pieces to ease their distribution. End users request the file parts from other users’ hard drives and reassemble them to create the original file. Such systems can scale well to serve millions of users, and reduce the bandwidth and computing costs of sending content directly to users from central servers. Some have also irritated publishers who complain the services are used to share copyright works illegally.
The problem with existing systems, according to Microsoft, is that people sometimes have wait a long time to receive the last, “rare” pieces of a file. This is made worse when clients drop off line unexpectedly and creates bottlenecks when only a few clients have files that are in high demand. Avalanche goes a long way to solving these problems, according to Peter Key, joint head of the systems and networking group at Microsoft’s research labs in Cambridge, during an open day on Wednesday. ” Source: Infoworld
