What's DeviantArt Up To?

[Bop]

from the folks at deviantart

After a couple months of an extremely degraded browsing situation here we have worked out a deal that will speed the site up considerably: the deviantART Distributed Imaging Network! Updated: Added some amplyfing information regarding image and file download speed.

deviantART has teamed up with a company called Red Swoosh, which was formed by the great folks that brought the world the most popular file sharing community in it’s time, before it was terrorized by the Motion Picture Association of America, with Scour Exchange. They have created a wicked new technology that is a paradigm shift of the Akamai concept combined with a peer to peer technology.

By joining the deviantART Distributed Imaging Network you help supercharge downloading of images on the site by, essentially, caching those images and “sharing” them on the network. The more people that join the network and browse deviantART, the faster that image and file downloads will become. Let me give a basic rundown of how this all works:

1. Allow the Active-X applet to run, that is made available in the popup window that you either see, or already saw and closed, which will install the necessary client software. Alternatively one can click here to force the installation window to appear.

2. If you choose to install the client, then that is all that you have to do. It will run in the background, consuming an extremely small amount of RAM, and do what it needs to do in order to “share” the images and files on the network.

3. If you choose not to install the client then you will never be automatically prompted to install it again. You can either manually click a link to install the client or choose not to join the network, thus only downloading images from the deviantART server.

4. The client will take available bandwidth into account when sharing the files. If it needs to download a file, then as Internet Explorer does, it will use as much available bandwidth as necessary in order to receive that file. If it needs to upload a file, then it will use only a small portion of your bandwidth, thus not degrading your Internet connectivity. One thing to note regarding the downloading of files is that the client will attempt to download chunks of the same file from multiple people on the network. This is how it will end up saving bandwidth usage on those sharing as well as speeding up that download. It works similar to how MusicCity Morpheus works in this respect.

Joining the deviantART Distributed Imaging Network is entirely optional and not required in order to browse deviations or surf the site. It is a feature that was designed to enhance your experience here, should you decide to join. One thing to note, though, is that if you do not decide to join the network then your image and file downloads will remain slow until the issue with the RAM for the servers on our new bandwidth pipe gets resolved. Joining is optional but highly encouraged because it involves nothing other than installing a small application that you never have to worry about again!

Right now the client is only available on Win98/ME/NT/2K/XP, IE 4.0+. Fear not, because the great folks at Red Swoosh are working on adding more Operating Systems and more browsers! This is currently beta software therefore there is the possibility that problems will exist. If you do have issues with the software then please send an email to swoosh@deviantart.com. That will reach both deviantART as well as the good folks responsible for this wicked software.

So, what are you waiting for? Either start browsing the deviations and get prompted to install this baby or install it now!

Update: The mere fact of joining the network will not speed up your experience immediately. It is going to take some time for people to join the network and browse deviantART in order to get the images and files cached on their connections. Do not expect immediate results. We need deviants to join the network and then start browsing deviantART, downloading images and downloading files. Once this takes place, the more images and files available on the network. The more images and files on the network, the faster downloads of those images and files will be for everyone. So what it boils down to is this: install the applet to join the network and then go about business as usual on deviantART. After a period of a few days, you will start to see noticeable improvement of download speeds on images and files as more and more people are caching and sharing. I certainly hope that makes sense!

so does this really work? despite what they say i get the feeling they'll hog up my ram . . . can i get a more expert opinion please

[Mr. Bojanglez]

sounds neat, i hope it does worko

[ampburner]

sounds bad. Real bad...just what we need...another icon in the systray ...thank god for Giotto's timing

[Mr. Bojanglez]

hopefully 1001 doesn't get hit by the invasion of skinner.exe and ends up in the tubes

[Mr Jones]

Originally posted by ampburner
sounds bad. Real bad...just what we need...another icon in the systray ...thank god for Giotto's timing

Yup, another systray icon, another net app pulling bandwidth, another opportunity to add a spy ware app , fantastic.

Smacks of desperation on the part of dev art if you ask me.

[Riksruin]

well we have 1001 back, and we've also got customize.org backup and running for people who want stuff other than winamp 2.x