p2p in OS X?
Mac OS Rumors: BitTorrent in 10.5.
Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” will include a system-level “BitTorrent” filesharing client that can be user-customized to ‘donate’ upstream Internet bandwidth for things like pushing Software Update packages to Leopard users, delivering iTunes Store content, and just about any purpose to which Apple puts its bandwidth.
A somewhat similar p2p-based banwidth-sharing option was brought up during the 10.4 Tiger development cycle and dismissed out-of-hand because there were no good incentives for users to enter the shadowy world of peer-to-peer networking just to save Apple a few dollars. Now a group of developers at Apple think they have solved the most fundamental issues and want to bring the rest of the company on board.
I really want to know if this is true, and if so, what technologies are involved. Actually BitTorrent, or some other p2p system (unstructured or structured)? NAT hole-punching (presumably the iChat AV guys have some experience with this very thorny problem)? Possible impact on overall system performance (and ISP traffic-shaping effects)? [Friends at Apple: I will keep your whispers in closest confidence.]