IPFS aims to be a distributed storage technology which will avoid storage on insecure centralized databases. XSL Labs introduces you to this revolutionary te...
I think the major difference is that IPFS uses a single DHT whereas torrents have a DHT (or tracker) per torrent. This mean that if there are shared chunks between media, then they will be deduplicated. The downside to this is that you have a single massive DHT, so lookups can be slower (and were very, very slow early on, but the situation is improving).
The other difference is that ipfs is built with a very modular stack. Networking, Self describing hash, ect, which should allow for reuse else where. IPFS is also very general, you can use different hash functions and chunking methods when importing data. This allows for existing hashed to be imported into ipfs (like a git repo, or a blockchain like bitcoin) and shared a crossed the network. But that modularity and generality can also come at a price of performance, so there are trade-offs.
Has anyone done a good breakdown of torrents vs IPFS?
I think the major difference is that IPFS uses a single DHT whereas torrents have a DHT (or tracker) per torrent. This mean that if there are shared chunks between media, then they will be deduplicated. The downside to this is that you have a single massive DHT, so lookups can be slower (and were very, very slow early on, but the situation is improving).
The other difference is that ipfs is built with a very modular stack. Networking, Self describing hash, ect, which should allow for reuse else where. IPFS is also very general, you can use different hash functions and chunking methods when importing data. This allows for existing hashed to be imported into ipfs (like a git repo, or a blockchain like bitcoin) and shared a crossed the network. But that modularity and generality can also come at a price of performance, so there are trade-offs.