Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Purdue University's Main Campus have developed a file-sharing technique that may thrill some scholars while dismaying entertainment-industry executives. Similarity-Enhanced Transfer, as the researchers call it, could make peer-to-peer downloading up to 70 percent faster.
Like BitTorrent and many other peer-to-peer systems, the new technique divides files being downloaded into tiny segments. But it then searches for similar files — like copies of a movie dubbed into different languages — and downloads pieces of those files that are identical to parts of the document being downloaded.
Researchers are unveiling the technology today at the 4th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design & Implementation, says Ars Technica. –Brock Read
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