A Microsoft job listing suggests that the company is looking at using technology popularised by file-sharing networks in future Xbox Live Primetime releases like the recent 1 vs. 100.
The job listing, which looks like it was rather hurriedly copy-pasted from an email, includes the tantalising line "Also, I mentioned DHT as a really cool technology that came out of the p2p space that is now often used to scale distributed services (note, we don't use it in xlp... yet)" and a Wikipedia link.
"Yet", eh? We'll be honest and say we don't fully grasp the complexities of the technology, which goes by the snappy handle of Distributred Hash Table. But it's grown out of early P2P file-sharing services like Napster and Gnutella, and works to share information across a series of connected nodes (like individual Xboxes) rather than a single central server.
That means that instead of sharing dodgy bootlegs between PCs, it could be sharing game information across many Xbox 360s, reducing the load on Microsoft's massive server farms. Obvious why the company would be keen.
http://www.oxm.co.uk/article.php?id=12122
