David McCreath

BitTorrent for Software Distribution

February 28, 2007

Not a new concept, and in fact one of the legitimate uses frequently touted for a protocol that is admittedly usually used for distributing content of questionable origin. But I bring it up today because Parallels Desktop for Mac is now out of beta, and after three attempts to download the ~58MB disk image from the Parallels web site that each timed out after fifteen or so minutes, I found a torrent for it. Using the torrent, the disk image downloaded in 11 minutes.

There are still some significant hurdles to getting BitTorrent into use by non-nerds: Configuring your router and your client to actually achieve that kind of speed requires some fiddling, the nomenclature is awkward (“torrent”, “seed”, “leach”, “peer”, and “tracker” all make some kind of sense, but don’t relate to anything in the Internet experience of most casual users), its reputation is that of a “pirate-ware”. But distributing something like Parallels, which so squarely aimed at nerds, should be a no-brainer.

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