Synchronization of clients on LAN for WAN downloads

[DenDen2006]

As a request i was thinking maybe creating synchronization between 2 clients. for example i have 2 computers and i want to use both of the computers to download a file twice as fast using 2 clients and one connection. Instead of having to seperate which section each client will download manually i am suggesting that the clients can figure out which sections they will both download, obviously from seperate people. this may not possible for smaller connections but if you have 9Mbps/1Mbps connection this is defenately doable..

[00]

Using two computers on one connection can double the speed?

[DenDen2006]

think about it, you have 2 computers using one line. Now your line is never used to capacity. if you have 2 computers downloading the same file and each computer works together to to download the seperate pieces from different people, doesnt it at least theoretically mean you can double your download speed? this is especially true if you have a big pipe both up and down like i do then you have that extra capacity to seed twice as fast and to download twice as fast.

[splintax]

Using two computers on one connection will only help if the downloads are so fast that the limiting factor is the CPU (hash checking) or the hard disk (writing).

:/

[Lexxington]

I can't really see how this is workable.

A lot of BT clients limit uploading to 1 IP at a time for a start, so you'd probably need a proxy to get around that problem.

Also, how do you synchronise the pieces on the 2 computers such that each computer gets different pieces of the torrent? If you don't do this (and I don't know of any torrent clients that could be synchronised that way anyway) you will most likely end up with duplicate pieces which defeats the object!

If you can, then how do you 'merge' the separately downloaded pieces? You need some sort of file assembler to join the separate pieces together.

As a feature reuest, I think it'd be great but I bet hardly anyone would use it let alone understand the principle! LOL

Having said this, I used to use a similar trick when files I was downloading were not utilising the full download bandwidth of the connection.

I made a connection using edonkey 2000 and started to downloaded a file. I then started the same file using eMule. On eMule, I added 'myself' i.e. the edonkey 2000 'user' in the eMule d/load queue as a friend slot, such that when a 9.3 MB piece was complete in eMule it would feed that data back to me via the edonkey servers to the edonkey 2000 client. It worked the other way too, but no friend slots are permissible with edonkey 2000.

This worked pretty well due to the different sources available in the Overnet/ed2k networks not available separately to each, but combined...

All this was necessary because AFAIK there isn't an app which can 'merge' disparate pieces (parts) other than maybe Shareaza's re-Hash function, or MorphXT's 'import download' function.

These apps only verify complete 9.3Mb parts though, not edonkey 2000 450kb 'crumbs'.

Again, all this is only viable if your connection is not fully utilised. You can't expect 2x your bandwidth by using 2 separate computers sharing the same connection, but you no doubt realised that anyway?