Microsoft researchers have announced the development of a Bittorrent-like P2P application that is (obviously) better than anything before it. To be honest I thought Google would do it first but I'm glad to see that distributed file transfer is finally gathering corporate support. There is no reason why in 2-3 years 90% of all file downloads could be distributed freeing up valuable bandwidth and decreasing the cost of propagating media across the internet. One server does not have the bandwidth to deal with all that traffic, so you need to find another way of getting the file to everyone who needs it. -- If the file is broken up into smaller pieces, these can be distributed among a smaller number of people, who can then share the pieces to make sure they all eventually have the complete file. While mostly infamous for its shadier uses many legal sites currently offer Bittorrent downloads. It will be interesting to see what Microsoft decides to do with Avalanche to get the momentum it requires to become useful (you can't have distributed downloading without distribution). I think that some sort of integration within the MSN toolbar, Internet Explorer or even at the OS level could definetly help people "chose". (Kudos, Ant)