Transparent web to p2p downloads

[antb]

basically this is a collection of recommendations for improving downloads based on other Internet standards.

the gist is that you get mirrors, p2p info including torrents, hashes, & signatures in HTTP headers. the type of stuff download managers/p2p clients would transparently use...multi-source downloads, error repair, etc.

for instance, a user could start downloading an ISO using an HTTP URI, then the download client could switch over to BitTorrent to finish the download, while also getting a chunk from an FTP server too.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-bryan-metalinkhttp

here's what the headers look like:

   Etag: "thvDyvhfIqlvFe+A9MYgxAfm1q5="
   Link: <http://www2.example.com/example.ext>; rel="duplicate"
   Link: <ftp://ftp.example.com/example.ext>; rel="duplicate"
   Link: <http://example.com/example.ext.torrent>; rel="describedby";
   type="application/x-bittorrent"
   Link: <http://example.com/example.ext.metalink>; rel="describedby";
   type="application/metalink4+xml"
   Link: <http://example.com/example.ext.asc>; rel="describedby";
   type="application/pgp-signature"
   Digest: SHA-256=MWVkMWQxYTRiMzk5MDQ0MzI3NGU5NDEyZTk5OWY1ZGFmNzgyZTJlO
   DYzYjRjYzFhOTlmNTQwYzI2M2QwM2U2MQ==

any comments?

[antb]

this is now RFC 6249.

[WilliamErickson1]

Thanks for the providing such a good information