We're proud to announce the release of DistribuStream 0.2.0, the peercasting system developed by ClickCaster, Inc. and the University of Colorado Computer Science Program. For more information, please see:

http://www.distribustream.org/

DistribuStream provides peer-to-peer file transfer similar to BitTorrent, but supports streaming media which can be watched as it downloads. No more waiting for torrents to complete before watching the videos they contain: now you can do both at the same time.

This release represents the first beta quality version of the system. Previous performance and usability problems have been resolved, and the system can now be used to stream videos directly from the client to the media player.

As always, DistribuStream is available as a RubyGem. Simply:

gem install distribustream

and you're ready to go.

To launch the server, grab the example configuration file and tweak it to your needs:

http://distribustream.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/conf/example.yml

Then run the following command:

dstream --conf example.yml

This will start the DistribuStream server. If you're familiar with BitTorrent the server is something like a tracker, coordinating the activities of peers on the network, but not actually hosting any content. The server will begin listening for clients on the port you've chosen, or port 6086 by default.

The DistribuStream server provides a web interface so you can monitor its status and see what transfers are presently active. The web interface runs on one port above the port the server is listening on, so by default you can reach it at:

http://your.ip:6087/

In order to populate the server with content, you need to start the DistribuStream seed application. This uses the same config file as the server:

dsseed --conf example.yml

If you have the server's web interface up and have successfully attached the seed, you should be able to refresh and see all the content that's now available through the server.

dsclient now supports streaming directly to standard output. This means you can watch a video as it streams from a DistribuStream server using:

dsclient -o - pdtp://host.name/file.ext | mediaplayer -

You can see the URL begins with "pdtp" rather than http. PDTP stands for the Peer Distributed Transfer Protocol, which underlies DistribuStream. You can read more about it at pdtp.org.

If everything is set up correctly you should now be able to look on the server's web interface and see the seed transferring data to the client. If you attach additional clients you will see them transfer data to each other.

If you're a developer who's interested in helping with DistribuStream, consider signing up for the mailing list. We're looking to get the codebase up to true beta quality as quickly as possible, and need your help!