[mythtv-users] possible p2p approach for mythtv information?

[Aaron Harwood]

On 06/07/2006, at 6:14 AM, Brad Templeton wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 12:40:55PM +0100, Simon Kenyon wrote:
>> Aaron Harwood wrote:
>>> Dear MythTV users,
>>> Would it be worthwhile developing a p2p approach for tv guide
>>> information and other kinds
>>> of information? Maybe information like cutlists, that in many cases
>>> requires manual intervention
>>> and reasonable time to get it right. E.g., a 'tv_grab_au_peer' might
>>> be able to both try grabbing information
>>> from the ex-officio site and otherwise try grabbing information from
>>> some other tv_grab_au_peer.
>>> It might also snowball to an integrated bittorrent module for  
>>> sharing
>>> video files and the like. Any comments?
>>> -a
>>>
>> anyone know of a (stable/supported/functional) c++ toolkit for  
>> building
>> p2p apps that could be used as the basis for this?
>
> I don't see this as a P2P app.  First of all, I suspect the vast  
> majority
> of Myth boxes are behind NAT and would not readily participate in a
> P2P app.

It takes only a small fraction of peers to be operating with public  
IP addresses
for the system to boot strap. In most cases there are some users who are
willing to run a "24/7".

The utility of the system may encourage people to open up a port on
their mythbox.

>     Nor would you necessarily want to gather info by allowing
> many thousands of machines to connect to you.

The degree of connectivity is determined by the particular p2p  
protocol. People
seem to have accepted large numbers of connections in other p2p systems,
like file sharing, given that the utility of the system is great enough.

> This really sounds like a central database app to me.   Machines  
> report
> data to a central database (or databases) and suck it back down from
> the same database.

This can depend on the bandwidth requirements. P2P works well when the
amount of information that is being communicated is too much for a  
central server.

Owners of the central server would often resort to advertisements or  
charging
for access in order to maintain the system. While this is a widely  
accepted business
model, it can be undesirable from the users' point of view. This  
particular point has
much more to debate though.

-a