I *think* Ted Leung is taking issue with my recent posting regarding RSS bandwidth. I got linked, but "Quite a few people have posted" on the issue.
We agree on one thing, RSS bandwidth could be a major issue if aggregator usage explodes. And I also agree that's definitely going to happen, not even a probable.
However, it should be clear that part of the success of RSS is that by using HTTP, publishing RSS is damn easy for authors. Combined with loose formats that means transforming plain old HTML into a feed is trivial. Ergo, lots of content for all those aggregators. It's something of a virtuous cycle.
Why is this an issue for solving the bandwidth problem? Any solution will need content providers to buy in. If you're going to try and pry them off of HTTP, well good luck.
Lastly, my comment about RSS being a small part of HTTP traffic, is targeted towards my own "fancy P2P schemes" thinking. Knuth's commentary about "premature optimization" was chiming in the back of my head.
In summary, I'm not saying RSS bandwidth isn't or won't be a problem, just that whizzy non-HTTP solutions have a low chance of success. IMHO.
Memo to self: someone needs to do a traffic characterization study across a wide range of HTTP/RSS feeds.