Quite amusing that it's Tiscali, who coincidently offer there own Net TV product for a cost of course.
Is there any reason why the ISPs would prefer distribution of content via streaming media from a single server, as opposed to torrenting it from multiple sources? Or vice versa?
Probably because "torrenting" it requires upload as well as download in which streaming media does not require so much upload. I.e. torrenting requires more bandwidth in the ISP's share of the network.
I suppose, but who provides the bandwidth for servers? Is it not just the same companies that are consumer ISPs? (Virgin, Talktalk, BT etc). Surely the amount of traffic is the same, just the distribution is different?
Torrenting hurts the ISP more than streaming. For the ISP streaming of a TV program is a download transfer of say 350mb, and negligible upload. For the ISP torrenting of a TV program is a download transfer of 350mb, and an upload of potential many more mb Torrenting helps the distributor by reducing load and passing it onto the ISP's
I think its a mixture of this and what Tomm said. I don't claim to know anything about the networking but if some of the main back bones are run by ISPS, an ISP may transfer data that wasnt from a machine hosted on its network or to end up on its network? So uploading from a machine wont have as much as an impact as it may travel though their network anyway? Or am I being very short sighted.
