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Communities & Forums Hacker News · 2025-04-14

Why is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?

为什么没有 BitTorrent 那样的 P2P 直播协议?

At a glance · 30-second read
  • WhoHacker News · 2025-04-14 · 236 upvotes · 223 replies
  • The askWhy is there no P2P streaming protocol like BitTorrent?
  • The openingP2P acceleration for small live platforms, priced as a share of bandwidth saved.

What was actually said

“Why there is no P2P protocol for mass live stream content in decent quality?… i cant find anything.”

— Hacker News · 2025-04-14 · news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43684286…

Background and pain

The pain

Live bandwidth is brutal — one event can burn a small platform's monthly budget.

A buildable angle

The opening

P2P acceleration for small live platforms, priced as a share of bandwidth saved.

How to validate it

  1. Read the whole thread and note the recurring scenarios — repetition is the density of the need.
  2. Search existing tools around "live streaming / P2P" and check which single step they actually cover.
  3. Put up a one-line landing page, share it back to Hacker News, and see whether anyone asks about pricing.

Existing options

WebTorrent, Peer5, Cloudflare Stream

From the thread · top comments

People have tried to build BitTorrent clients to do this. As far as I know they never took off. The primary problem is you oftentimes don't get people who want to share back or who have firewalls or other connections that don't allow them to share back. So you end up with a few people who end up seeding everything out. The second problem is in order to watch a streaming protocol things need to arrive in order. It is totally possible to do with BitTorrent and request the blocks in the order that you want but you may not always be able to get them in the order you want. In general people aren't

— elmerfud

what about having something reasonable for lag, like 30-60 seconds would that make a big difference or you think it would just eventually degrade too? Also do you think there's any way you can prioritize seeders in such a protocol? like some kind of algorithm that the more you share the more you're prioritized in getting the most up to date packets. The main reason I would think it would be useful is 1. since streaming sites seem to lose a lot of money and 2. sports streams are really bad, even paid ones. I have dazn and two other sports streaming services and they still lag and are only 720p

— memet_rush

With sports streams you specifically want low lag, don’t you? It’s no fun being spoilered by people cheering (or not) next door.

— dave4420
Open the source thread

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