Avalanche to beat BitTorrent

Microsoft's researchers are developing a P2P protocol that promises performance gains of 20-30% over BitTorrent. The protocol, known as Avalanche, solves a problem with the current version of BitTorrent -- the problem of getting the final missing pieces of a file. Downloaders sometimes have to wait quite some time for those elusive last pieces to arrive. Avalanche solves this problem by leveraging on the concept of parity checking -- which adds information on the linear distribution of pieces to each torrent chunk. As you near completion of a download, the missing pieces you're waiting for can actually be reconstructed from the pieces you already have.

Microsoft stresses that Avalanche is for legal file distributions only, and wasn't make to pirate copies of Windows and Office faster.