Mozilla and BitTorrent?

mcrbids asks: "Recently, I submitted this bug report to Mozilla's bugzilla requesting the additional feature that Mozilla should support BitTorrent files natively, so that Moz could support inline image tags with BitTorrent, among other things, so that high-bandwidth sites can survive the dreaded 'Slashdot effect'. However, Torrents (and many other P2P suites) have been used largely for warez and porn. Do you think the potential politics behind this outweigh the benefits of BitTorrent, such as getting a full Linux distro with record download speeds?" Update: 04/29 16:16 GMT by C :One of the links in this article was removed at the request of a site administrator.

Comments

No.

[Anonymous Coward]

Providing inline support of a protocol does not a political issue make. That's like saying "FTP is mostly used for warez but also an excellent place to get distros."

First.

Torrents

[Aurelius42]

I think that there is the potential for much more with torrents, even though the main market for it at the moment is warez/porn. I think perhaps tv studios should take note of it as a potential distribution method for a "new market".

Aurelius (fp?)

Problems, Early Adopters

[Jamuraa]

BitTorrent generally doesn't work very well on small files. This is because clients tend to drop off too fast. In fact, you can calculate the "optimal filesize", that is, the length when even if the client exits right after finishing the file, the torrent will survive and sustain itself. I believe it is at around 1GB, but I don't have the figures handy. Mabye the guy who did the calculations will chime in sometime.

This brings another problem with BitTorrent - it doesn't work well unless clients are connected for a while after they finish the file. This could be "quick-fixed" by leaving the client open until it has sent at least one copy of the file out (or that many bits, your choice).

The third problem that it would have is that BitTorrent generally opens a whole bunch of network connections. Many of those are incoming (NAT people won't work as well), and many are outgoing. This large amount of sockets tends to make some of the cheaper commodity cards break. You see alot of these problems on the BitTorrent mailing lists.

Also, Porn has always been an early adopter of new technology. VCR tapes, DVDs and the internet are excellent examples. Because porn uses it isn't a reason to count the technology out.

Re: Problems, Early Adopters

[Anonymous Coward]

The "minimum working file size" is about 50 MB, according to Bram (the author).

Re:Problems, Early Adopters

[duggy_92127]

This brings another problem with BitTorrent - it doesn't work well unless clients are connected for a while after they finish the file. This could be "quick-fixed" by leaving the client open until it has sent at least one copy of the file out (or that many bits, your choice).

Seems to me that running Bittorrent inside the browser would be ideal for this. After the browser donwnloaded the inline image, it could keep the 'client window' open in the background and act as a source for a while. How long it does this could be set in the preferences, either a fixed time or a fixed amount of data served or some percentage or multiple of the original file size.

Many of those are incoming (NAT people won't work as well)...

I run the various Bittorrent clients (btdownloadgui.py, btdownloadcurses.py) from a Linux box behind a NAT, with no special ports open or forwarded, and I act as a server just fine. I regularly have the outgoing pipe of my cable modem completely saturated with Bittorrent traffic.

This large amount of sockets tends to make some of the cheaper commodity cards break.

As at least one other comment points out, that doesn't even make sense. It's possible that some OS's TCP/IP stacks can't handle an extreme number of connections, but that has nothing to do with the NIC.

And, of course, the client written into Mozilla could easily regulate the total number of connections to something reasonable. It already does exactly that for open HTTP connections.

Doug

Slashdot linking to warez sites?!

[mTor]

Heh, this is the first time I've seen /. link to a warez site. This is just wrong guys.

Re:Slashdot linking to warez sites?!

[elmegil]

If you actually went there you'd realize it wasn't just a warez site.

Re:Slashdot linking to warez sites?!

[Anonymous Coward]

He's actually right. The site was originally pointing to a porn and warez site and now it redirects to tubgirl.

Re:Slashdot linking to warez sites?!

[Tabercil]

And I don't even think there's a site there anymore...

Re:Slashdot linking to warez sites?!

[joFFeman]

see if you can find the megal33t secret warez portal by clicking different regions of the picture.

Re:Slashdot linking to warez sites?!

[elmegil]

No, he's actually wrong, because I've been going there repeatedly over the last month. Are there warez there? Yes. Are there other things there besides porn? Yes.

Whiny little..

[iamsure]

The discussion hasnt even teterred out, and its far from a clear thing. At best, its a misunderstanding/disagreement over how best to handle a new file format.

At worst, its the Mozilla team saying (rightly) that the best way to handle .torrent files is the same as any other media app - via a plugin.

From the discussion on the bug report, it sounds like the torrent dev's havent made a plugin, dont realize the power of plugins, or dont want to make a plugin.

If there was a fully functional plugin that couldnt do some particular thing, that would be different. Instead, its just a standalone app, asking for the Moz team to 'link it up'.

Again, just my take on it.

Re:Whiny little..

[Webmonger]

That's the wrong level. BitTorrent is not a media type, it's a protocol. The media type can be anything: text/plain, audio/mpeg, application/pdf, whatever. Don't let the torrent files fool you. Ideally, they'd be linked with torrent://.

I don't know if protocols are pluggable in Mozilla, but I doubt it. And torrent would have to be a 'protocol plugin' if it was any kind of plugin. Otherwise, torrent would have to be built into Mozilla to be used everywhere that http is.

Re:Whiny little..

[42forty-two42]

Ideally, they'd be linked with torrent://.

Wrong. The torrent:// URL would have to include the *data* of the torrent. Would you want URLs a few kb long?

Re:Whiny little..

[Webmonger]

What comes after the torrent: is completely protocol-defined, so neither you nor I can dictate what it "has to" be. It could be something like torrent://f.scarywater.net/aldenata.iso.torrent.

Re:Whiny little..

[sohp]

Protocols are pluggable. It's easy to write a component that implements nsIProtocolHandler and define any URL format you want. So yeh, torrent://hostname/filename would work fine, and the torrent protocol handler would be written to do the magic right thing with hostname and filename. Isn't Mozilla c00l?

Re:Whiny little..

[Webmonger]

Yes, that's very c00l.

Re:Whiny little..

[42forty-two42]

Good point, but (AFAIK) the protocol dosen't specify how to get .torrents from the trackers.

Re:Whiny little..

[Istealmymusic]

I don't see how torrent:// is the least bit of ideal. The tracker works over HTTP, not its own protocol. You access the tracker via HTTP, which runs the btdownload program and communicates using its own protocol.

BitTorrent's official plugin associates with application/x-bittorrent for good reason.

Re:Whiny little..

[Webmonger]

Here's what makes it ideal: BitTorrent is a protocol. It's not a file format. There are files associated with the protocol, but fundamentally, BitTorrent is a way of delivering files, not a type of file.

Treating BitTorrent as a media type reduces the number of things you can do with it. For example, you can't use it for displaying streaming video, since application/x-bittorrent isn't a video format.

But when you treat BitTorrent as a protocol, you can use it for inline video, or images, or (shudder) Flash.

You could even use it to browse mirrors of slashdotted sites.

I suspect you're actually wrong when you say "you access the tracker via HTTP"-- I don't see why you couldn't download the .torrent via FTP or gopher or kazaa. But however the protocol is implemented, treating it as a protocol means more possibilities and fewer problems.

Re:Whiny little..

[Anonymous Coward]

The torrent:// URL would have to include the *data* of the torrent.

URLs that start with "http://" don't have the referenced page's contents embedded in them. Why would you claim that for "torrent://"?

No

[0x0d0a]

the length when even if the client exits right after finishing the file, the torrent will survive and sustain itself. I believe it is at around 1GB, but I don't have the figures handy. Mabye the guy who did the calculations will chime in sometime

There is no such length. Length, usage patterns, and network connection speed are all fundamental factors.

This brings another problem with BitTorrent - it doesn't work well unless clients are connected for a while after they finish the file.

It works *better* if this is the case, but it's not really a problem.

If someone is downloading from the original source, and another person begins, then the first immediately becomes another source.

BitTorrent isn't designed to make the original source unnecessary...it's designed to simply reduce load on the original source. Which it does quite well. The original source tends to send out around the bandwidth of a single upload at any one time.

Many of those are incoming (NAT people won't work as well), and many are outgoing.

As a result, they'll get slower transfers. This is simply a problem with NAT -- NATted users are using a broken network, and have problems with many, many protocols. FTP is included in mozilla, and NAT is even worse with FTP.

This large amount of sockets tends to make some of the cheaper commodity cards break.

Sockets have nothing whatsoever to do with the NIC. They exist at a higher level, and will not cause the card to break.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I use NAT and the only protocols I have problems with are those whose creators say NAT is "broken". Hmm.

Re:No

[phug]

BitTorrent isn't designed to make the original source unnecessary...it's designed to simply reduce load on the original source. Which it does quite well. The original source tends to send out around the bandwidth of a single upload at any one time.

This is not true, or at least is potentially misleading. BitTorrent's 'original source' is actually a peer setup by the .torrent's tracker operator (therefore seeding the BT network with the .torrent operator's bandwidth). That could possibly be the original source, but it's likely that its not. Such would not be the case (until movie studios setup .torrents themselves) in the case of movie trailer .torrents.

See this thread on the BitTorrent development mailing list for more information on the possibility of extending BitTorrent to fall back on a true original source if the number of peers is insufficient.

Re:No

[markov_chain]

NAT breaks the Internet's noble property of openness, whereby any node can accept and send IP datagrams to any other node. It is unfortunate that NAT took root as it did, but fortunately it is becoming an increasing nuisance as more services spring up which require ability to accept incoming connections. Hopefully IPv6 will some day let us get rid of NAT's festering carcass.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

I nearly blew Coke through my nose, when I read this post. It is exactly what I was thinking.

For the record, NAT is NOT broken. But elitest high-and-mighty schmucks whose software sucks always say that the problem is elsewhere. I hear it all the time; "NAT is broken", "their TCP stack is broken", "that app is broken", etc... In reality, the only thing that is broken is the programmers over inflated ego as he cannot stand to admit that there is a problem with HIS software and HE doesn't know how to fix it.

If you use the term "x is broken" then you have just labeled yourself a LOSER!

Why BitTorrent?

[bwt]

Can somebody explain what makes BitTorrent unique from other P2P systems? I'm not familiar with it. I don't quite understand why this request would be any different than asking Mozilla to include gnutella.

What seems rather important here is that P2P appears to be the only solution to at least one other problem besides the "How do we get free music". If So, building a solution to the browser problem into Mozilla seems like a good thing, although I'd prefer SVG support first. On the flipside, what exactly prevents Joe Anybody from creating BitTorrent as a browser plugin?

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[TheSHAD0W]

Well, first off, BitTorrent isn't a P2P system. It is a P2P protocol. It doesn't search for your favorite MP3s. You can't even "surf" through it. You give it a .torrent file (analogous to a URL, though with some interesting features), and it gives you the file(s) that "URL" points at.

It's unique in that it is a highly efficient and secure cooperative system -- and is very low-profile, as well. It is capable of delivering large amounts of data that is originating from a source which cannot normally afford that sort of bandwidth. It can move more bandwidth than even large companies can afford; when Red Hat 9 was released through BT, traffic peaked at nearly 1.5 gigabits per second, or the full bandwidth of ten OC3 connections.

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[bwt]

OK, so it's a protocol, like say ftp or http, but different. So it seems, as per the bugzilla discussion, that the problem should be solved by creating a mozilla plugin to handle URL's written torrent://domain.name/localpath/file.torrent .

I would expect that mozilla can have a plugin that asks to handle a given protocol when it is encountered. Anybody know if my expecation is reality?

Finally, how exactly do they know what the total bandwidth of distributing RH9 via BitTorrent was?

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[TheSHAD0W]

I don't know about Mozilla plug-ins, but if that'd work, then fine.

As for how they knew what the bandwidh was, BT is based around a central server called a "tracker"; which helps nodes find each other, and also collects statistics.

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://f.scarywater.net/

Right now, the torrent (a few weeks old) is -still- pumping 2MB/s, and has transfered 33.5TB of data.

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[funky womble]

It's more like the files used in most streaming media players (e.g. RealPlayer) which are delivered by http and point to the 'real' file. A plugin (or helper app) would handle this fine (plugin being preferable, since it can auto-install).

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[42forty-two42]

Finally, how exactly do they know what the total bandwidth of distributing RH9 via BitTorrent was?

A central server keeps track of who's uploading/downloading what - it can easily count the amount of data transmitted.

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[4of12]

Quoting from the bit torrent faq:

I'm behind a firewall/NAT, can I use BitTorrent?

Yes, but you will get better performance if other peers can connect to you. By default, BitTorrent listens on port 6881, trying incrementially higher ports if it's unable to bind. It gives up after 6889 (the port range is configurable.) It's up to you to figure out how to poke a hole in your firewall/NAT.

It seems like introducing a new service with new ports is kind of a big step to take for Mozilla from that standpoint that users behind NAT and proxies will have difficulty using it; the use of variable high number ports for service sounds a lot like what the X windowing system does - dunno if anyone has tried to push "x://" URLs:)

OTOH, if someone does integrate BitTorrent into Mozilla and the service starts taking off in popularity (could see this happening), then the NAT proxy tools will be flexed accordingly so users demanding the service can be satisfied. If BT's there and unused, then it's no skin off any user's nose; if the Moz networking code jungles become impenetrable because of the addition of this P2P protocol, then maybe that suggests some overall redesign may be in order.

Re:Why BitTorrent?

[Caktus]

OK, so it's a protocol, like say ftp or http, but different. So it seems, as per the bugzilla discussion, that the problem should be solved by creating a mozilla plugin to handle URL's written torrent://domain.name/localpath/file.torrent .

The real problem is that it doesn't use just one protocol, it uses two protocols. The first protocol is the traditional protocol (http, ftp, email, whatever) you use to download the dot torrent file that contains the description of where to get the proper file. The second protocol is the real torrent protocol by itself. Using a single URL for two different protocols is not very clean IMHO.

I can think of three solutions: a) eliminating the first protocol by putting the necessary data in the URL, e.x. torrent://server/enough_data_to_begin_the_transfer , b) always assuming that a torrent://server/path/file.torrent URL will allways be downloaded using http or whatever fixed protocol, and c) letting a plugin or other application handle the dot torrent file.

Move it to the proxy...

[Polo]

Maybe it should be supported in squid.

Squid normally runs on a gateway machine and usually has better connectivity internally and externally.

It could connect better and provide the cache benefit both internally and externally. There would be no need to configure your browser to share files, while it might be possible on your proxy. Actually, squid almost does this with it's proxy-to-proxy protocols, which is almost like what adding BitTorrent would do.

OffTopic?

[shadowbearer]

Really? We're talking about hooking P2P to a free web browser? A P2P client which BTW has the capacity of being the next Napster ( Oh, except it's going to be harder to the RIAA/whomever to deal with).

"Do you think the potential politics behind this outweigh the benefits of BitTorrent, such as getting a full Linux distro with record download speeds?" "

Politics?

Um...lawyers?

Sheese.....we all know where it will end up.

I think it'd be a great feature....but it would also suck Mozilla into the P2P world of legal BS. Do we want it there?

Argh....

SB

Re:OffTopic?

[42forty-two42]

A P2P client which BTW has the capacity of being the next Napster

...only it can't be searched, and each torrent has a centralized point of failure. I don't think so.

What BitTorrent really needs...

[GeorgeH]

... is a way to distribute web page archives. A single tarball that contains HTML files with relative links and images, and a flag in BitTorrent to let the clients know that it is a web page archive. Then slashdoted sites could be put into a torrent and displayed in the browser with a single clickthrough, instead of "Open Torrent File," "Save Tarball," "Decompress," and "Open." Freenet is awesome in this respect, because you can link to Freesites from the public web, but BitTorrent's lack of anonymity makes it a lot faster and more useful.

Yes, but...

[Jamuraa]

There is no such length. Length, usage patterns, and network connection speed are all fundamental factors.

The calculations are not exact -- they assume a perfect network, generally. This will be perturbed by the real-world data, but they generally aren't more than an order of magnitude off. The reason is because connection speed doesn't matter unless you have highly asynchronous connections. The client will stay on the swarm as long as it needs to in order to receive the entire file, and subsequently will send out data during that time.

BitTorrent isn't designed to make the original source unnecessary...it's designed to simply reduce load on the original source. Which it does quite well.

I am not arguing this - I am simply saying that it doesn't work *well* for small files. There are situations in which it will still improve the load on the source server, but these situations only occur when there are more than one person downloading the file at the same time (only for high-traffic sites). That being said, most of the web isn't comprised of high-traffic sites, and they will be just as slow if not slower if they were BitTorrent-enabled.

The original source tends to send out around the bandwidth of a single upload at any one time.

Unless there are multiple clients which are just starting. In this case it will send out twice the normal bandwidth.

Sockets have nothing whatsoever to do with the NIC. They exist at a higher level, and will not cause the card to break.

My wording was off. The large amount of sockets and specific network pattern of BitTorrent tends to cause bugs to appear in network card drivers (or firmware). There are numerous problems on the BitTorrent-help list which have been solved by upgrading or downgrading the driver (or firmware). So they don't cause the card to break, rather they cause the drivers to not work.

Bit Torrent is great

[Apreche]

p2p file sharing is great, and we all know why. But it has one serious flaw. Searching a p2p network is complete ass compared to searching google. But a web server doesn't do well at serving very large files. So if someone wants to have say, a video blog, they shouldn't have to pay for the zillions of megabytes in bandwith, nor is it a fast/reasonable way to simply link to the file and use http/ftp. And pointing all your visitors towards a p2p program like WinMX or Kazaa is ok, but it has problems. You can't guarantee visitors will get the file. Many will not care enough to go through the effort. The file could be renamed, or altered or otherwise false.

Bit Torrent allows webmasters to overcome these problems. Because of BitTorrent you can put a link to a video on your web site, without paying out the ass or crashing and burning from the load. Your visitors have to go through very little effort to get the file. Even if nobody else is sharing, you have to be, so at least they are guaranteed to get the goods. And they are guaranteed to get the correct goods. And they don't have to search relentlessly for it.

One thing that pisses me off, however, is that every time I want to download something with bit torrent I have to open up Internet Explorer. I used to use IE until I discovered Phoenix(Firebird) months ago. I don't want to have to keep opening IE every other day to download a single file. If BitTorrent doesn't work with Moz it's either a fault in Moz or a fault in BitTorrent. And it should be fixed either way.

Re:Bit Torrent is great

[elmegil]

Go back and read the previous slashdot article about BitTorrent. I'm using phoenix 0.5 for windows right this minute, and torrents work just great for me without using IE. I bitched about the same issue in the previous article and was bitchslapped back into place.

Re:Bit Torrent is great

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing that pisses me off, however, is that every time I want to download something with bit torrent I have to open up Internet Explorer. I used to use IE until I discovered Phoenix(Firebird) months ago. I don't want to have to keep opening IE every other day to download a single file. If BitTorrent doesn't work with Moz it's either a fault in Moz or a fault in BitTorrent. And it should be fixed either way.


BitTorrent is a simple mime type association for application/x-torrent .torrent files. it works with *ALL* browsers. it was developed on linux with mozilla. works just fine with mozilla on others, etc. get a clue idiot.

Re:Bit Torrent is great

[kidface]

Perhaps you never tried right-clicking and using save as? Sure, if you left-clicked on the torrent link and you didn't have the proper MIME association, then sure, ir wouldn't work with Mozilla - but it holds the same for IE.

Next time, try to use right-click instead of just assuming it's the browsers fault.

Re:Bit Torrent is great

[S. Traaken]

> Searching a p2p network is complete ass compared to searching google

I propose torrent.google.com

Re:Bit Torrent is great

[Anonymous Coward]

Phoenix(Firebird)(Mozilla)

Re:Bit Torrent is great

[42forty-two42]

One thing that pisses me off, however, is that every time I want to download something with bit torrent I have to open up Internet Explorer.

Save the .torrent to disk, open your bittorrent client.

Re:Bit Torrent is great

[JediTrainer]

One thing that pisses me off, however, is that every time I want to download something with bit torrent I have to open up Internet Explorer.

Why is that? I've been using BitTorrent with Mozilla for several weeks now, and it works great! Just set up the MIME-type (and file extension) correctly and it should work fine!

Wow, this is a new and exciting problem

[Anonymous Coward]

'Cause you know noone has ever used Netscape for porn and warez before!

sheesh

Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and porn)

[Lazyhound]

It redirects to Tubgirl now.

oh dear god

[Anonymous Coward]

is thaat girl eating her own feces?????????

Re:oh dear god

[Anonymous Coward]

Enema fluid.

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

GAH! MOD PARENT UP!

Some problems

[drdink]

While I think Bit Torrent is a great idea, I don't think it will have a veryh good adoption cycle. As the article says, it is used for warez and such things, and has thusly been grouped in with the other 'P2P' clients. Many packet shapers, Universities, and so forth already filter Bit Torrent along with other P2P protocols like Kazaa, Gnutella, etc.

Re:Some problems

[Anonymous Coward]

us creighton kids need our warez too :(

Re:Some problems

[drdink]

Actually I've never used BitTorrent for warez or MP3s. I tried it once ages ago with some test file they had up back when it was first announced on Slashdot. It is a good idea, but I don't really see how it fits in with what I use the Internet for.

BitTorrent support not what you're looking for

[0x0d0a]

BitTorrent support isn't really what you're looking for -- the bug is talking about IMG targets.

I agree that generic BitTorrent support in Mozilla would be great. The problem is that it's really not all that useful for most *images*, which are perhaps up to 100KB. BitTorrent needs larger files to chew on to help much.

BitTorrent would be great for downloading game demos, isos, etc.

Re:BitTorrent support not what you're looking for

[bwt]

Why wouldn't BitTorrent be useful for 100KB images on a slashdotted website?

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

How can they allow this!!!

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

shut the fuck up fags, dont fuck with torrentse

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... So you take offense to people linking to you? The hell?

PRANKD

[Anonymous Coward]

dont link to "warez and porn" next time geniuses; the editors of this site have the combined IQ of a pineapple.

Oh my!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a disgusting picture! Damn you Slashdot!

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Kenspy]

I think its because the idiotic editor labeled it specifically as "warez and porn." GB2Linux Captain retardo.

Wow, does torrentse.cx love you guys

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, when someone on slashdot links to bugilla, you just a message saying they don't like that. When you link to torrentse.cx, you get a whole different answer...

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

you gaywads killed my porn download :[]

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

"shut the fuck up fags, dont fuck with torrentse"

Who the hell posted that?

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the editors didn't give a warning. Usually they give a slashdot effect.

The admin of the site found out when he read that /. linked to his site on a message board.

WhAT iS that MAN DOING to his ANUS?!

[Anonymous Coward]

OH MY!!! I Am going to sue clIFF!!!

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, way to strike back, guys. I know the editors are sure feeling the pain right now.

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah, we're really trying to wreak havoc on the Internet by replacing it with a picture. You're a tool and an idiot, we just don't want our bandwidth used up because some half-brained editor decided to label a site as warez and porn and link to it without warning. I know the editors are sure feeling your tongue rubbing up against their asshole.

what's so great about bittorrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

People talk about BT like it's the greatest thing in the world. As far as I can see, it's moderately clever but new and untested.

I only see one half-baked Python implementation, and I don't see much content using this at all. I got my Red Hat ISOs from Red Hat with no problem.

I don't know much about the protocol or why it uses an out-of-band .torrent file instead of some other communications protocol that replaces http. I don't see much analysis of how it performs or what size files it works best or even what thought went into its design.

I don't see any analysis of why I might want to "donate" my bandwidth to some person I don't know, or why I should expect bandwidth from anyone except the person I'm downloading from.

Maybe bittorrent is not the best solution. Maybe simply directing downloaders to different cache machines (like Akamai) offers better complexity/throughput performance. Who knows?

It doesn't work well with NAT, as mentioned above, and the solution is not to proclaim NAT "broken". I keep all my ports closed anyway, I'm not going to open them for someone else.

Maybe Bittorrent is greater than sex, but right now it seems very "faddish" and half-baked.

Plus the name is extremely.. awkward.. "bi-torrent?" "bittttorent?" "bit-horent?"

My point is of course that Bittorrent is good to play around but mozilla should probably be one of the LAST programs to bake it in directly.

Why not put in rsync:// support first?

Re:what's so great about bittorrent?

[markov_chain]

I got my Red Hat ISOs from Red Hat with no problem. ...
I don't see any analysis of why I might want to "donate" my bandwidth to some person I don't know, or why I should expect bandwidth from anyone except the person I'm downloading from.

There is no need for any analysis to convince you. If the method is effective, it will be used simply due to economics. Suppose a thousand people behind cable modems want a video from a server on a modem link. Here is a simple CS101 problem: figure out the schedule that lets that file propagate to all thousand users in the shortest amount of time. Hint: it does not happen by everyone downloading from the server.

Now tell me why I shouldn't open up some of my bandwidth for the privilege of being among these thousand users and getting the file I want as soon as possible?

It doesn't work well with NAT, as mentioned above, and the solution is not to proclaim NAT "broken"

The solution is to banish NAT back to the depths of hell where it came from and roll out IPv6. Oh well, one can hope...

I keep all my ports closed anyway, I'm not going to open them for someone else.

Sounds like an old maid :)

Re:what's so great about bittorrent?

[42forty-two42]

[...] and I don't see much content using this at all. I got my Red Hat ISOs from Red Hat with no problem.

The example you used (the red het ISOs) is irrelevant. Bittorrent only works if people are still using the torrent - if nobody's using it, there's nowhere to download it from. Wait for the next distro release.

[...] why it uses an out-of-band .torrent file instead of some other communications protocol that replaces http.

I don't see any analysis of why I might want to "donate" my bandwidth to some person I don't know, or why I should expect bandwidth from anyone except the person I'm downloading from. Because it works faster. If you don't want to donate bandwith, then you're only slowing the network. The network will then shun you, as that kind of behavior is detrimental to the speed of the network.

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just replace it with a blank index then instead of wasting time with a redirect? It's not our fault some jackass linked your site.

Re:Bit Torrent is not understood by /.ers

[Splork]

So if someone wants to have say, a video blog, they shouldn't have to pay for the zillions of megabytes in bandwith

What?!? Of course they should. If someone wants to have a video blog they sure as hell are going to have to host it somehow. bandwidth doesn't grow on cat5 trees.

slashdotters obviously have no clue how bittorrent works and the actual details about what bandwidth it can actually partially recover. so i'll explain something to all of your deaf ears and eyes:

it is only going to be useful when the bandwidth load on the server is high due to sudden large instant demand (ie: slashdotting) for large objects (cd images, large distributions, hi-hi-red images, videos, etc). at that point many of the peers downloading will help save bandwidth by serving the portion they have already downloaded to others. but after the initial rush is off, not many seeds will be left as most people have downloaded it and bittorrent has been closed or exited on its own (nor should there be any) as the server has plenty of bandwidth to satisfy requests itself at that point. that's the servers job. to be the reliable source of content. bittorrent just helps lower the peaks during high load (peaks over short periods of time are often what server-colo sites charge for).

quit trying to use bittorrent as your sole hosting solution so that you never have to use any bandwidth. that's what MNet is for (distributed storage and hosting) or possibly freenet.

bit torrent?

[Tuxinatorium]

Wouldn't it suck to be stuck out in a torrential downpour of bits? As in, a core dump?

Re:bit torrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

The '0's are OK, they just bounce off; its the '1's that hurt. Damn pointy things they are.

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[anotherone]

redirects are a lot more fun.

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

hello i like niggers

This idea is based on misunderstanding

[henrypijames]

This RFE does not make much sense.

First, I like to point out that the name of the protocol/application in question is not "Bit Torrent", but "BitTorrent".

This aside, let's differ between two kinds of possible content to be handled via BitTorrent: web content (HTML, images, Flash animations, etc.) and offline content (software, music, video, etc.).

The first kind of data is not suitable for BitTorrent because they are too small. (This is a "basic knowledge" about BitTorrent, if you don't understand why, please refer to general technical readings regarding the protocol.) The second kind of data is mostly not suitable for being embedded into a website, people normally download them and proceed with them outside of their webbrowser.

But even if any data of the second kind is indeed embedded into a website (like a video, although I never watch video embedded in my webbrowser), it's not a good idea to bind this embedding process to BitTorrent, because every "BitTorrent connection" has a lifespan which need to be specifed by the user himself. A file keeps being uploaded after its download completes within BitTorrent, until the user decides to "finish" this file. If a video embedded into a webpage is downloaded via BitTorrent, when should the upload of this same video stop? Immediately after the download completes? Or when the user leaves the website? Both are rather too soon to keep the file healthy alive.

What would make sense, however, is to write a BitTorrent download manager plugin, perhaps a sidebar, similar to the new download manager of Phoenix/Firebird. The user could handle his BitTorrent downloads within the interface of the webbrowser, and at the same time keep control over the lifespan of each of the files being transfered.

In the end, I fully agree with Olivier (Bugzilla comment #1), this is a plugin issue and WONTFIX.

No offense here, but I think the original "bug reporter" has not understood BitTorrent's field of application and mode of operation quite well (and, has not got the name "BitTorrent" right).

Henry 'Pi' James
BitTorrent dev team member

PS: My opinion here is personal and does not represent Bram (the author of BitTorrent) or any other co-developers, although I'm pretty sure they would agree with me.

Ain't the next Napster...

[TheSHAD0W]

...Because it shares files, but doesn't search for them. It's also best when used with files larger than an MP3, and when more than one person is downloading the file at the same time.

If you want to see the next Napster, try WinMX, or Shareaza, or any of the "lite" versions of the various P2P sharing systems you can find at ZeroPaid.com. They're much more suited to trading stuff, rather than people helping each other downloading particular files.

And yeah, BT can help sites trade pirated music and movies and whatever, but the web pages the .torrent files are stored on are fixed targets, much like Napster was, and are susceptible to the RIAA/MPAA/SPA dropping on their asses.

Thanks, I'm never visiting slashdot again

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever linked to that disgusting pic (I clicked expecting to see some sort of statistic on warez percentages on bittorrent), is an asshole (a troll as an editor? how..original). Oh, and don't bother with the "good riddance" posts - I've already heard them all.

Re:Thanks, I'm never visiting slashdot again

[Anonymous Coward]

Open your mind a little asshole. Some of us love the tubgirl. Coming across her by surprise is a rare but welcome treat.

show some initiative

[sohp]

It's open source, for pity's sake. Get your lazy butt in gear and write it yourself, it's really not that hard. That is, if you know the first thing about writing code and aren't just a selfish immature punk who expects freebie handouts. Scratch your own damn itch.

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering it was the submitter and not the editor...

A solution already exists.

[Anonymous Coward]

Visit Bitzi.com.

Search for the file you're looking for. View the ratings people have given files, click on the 'magnet://' link for the file you want.

The 'magnet://' link (actually a crytographic hash) opens in Shareaza (see Shareaza.com for the excellent Windows client, bitzi lists a few other clients for other platforms), finds the exact file you're looking for (or waits and keeps searching every now and then if it's not available) and downloads the file.

When downloading (while simultaneously uploading to your peers in a swarming fashion - just like BitTorrent), Shareaza uses cryptographic hashes to make sure the download you asked for comes through intact, uncorrupted, complete and exactly the right file you asked for.

Ta-Da! Problem solved and you never have to bitch about P2P networks again.

An exercise

[The Bungi]

If you like Recoat.net, are a Slashdot reader and don't like Tubgirl, may I suggest one of their fine mental exercises.

Don't cheat!

CHANGE THE GROSS LINK YOU RETARDO "EDITORS"

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, too busy boning Taco's porker wife?

Don't hide your light under a barrel.

[jbn-o]

I think it'd be a great feature....but it would also suck Mozilla into the P2P world of legal BS. Do we want it there?

If the program has the ability to share data, it's already "there". Besides, I think there is now some good case law reaffirming the point in the landmark Betamax US Supreme Court case to point to. It's a good thing to tell people such programs are no more copyright infringing by nature than a VCR or a copying machine is. At least Judge Stephen Wilson said something similar in his decision:

Defendants distribute and support software, the users of which can and do choose to employ it for both lawful and unlawful ends. Grokster and StreamCast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights.

We need to legitimize technology that encourages sharing by showing that such technology is okay, not help those who would demonize it by hiding our collective light under a barrel.

Mozilla and Bitorrent - see what happened

[kwoodie]

hey cliff when you name something "warez and porn" you better know what your talking about Nice going cliff, why don't you watch your classifications!

BitTorrent is not suitable for webpages

[skookum]

First of all, torrents are not that useful for small files. If a website had a LOT of images it might be reasonable since you can create a torrent of a number of files and somewhat avoid the small file penalty.

Second, the BT protocol is far from established and stable. Bram mades non-trivial changes in minor release numbers, eg the 3.1 to 3.2 changes. He is very interested in backwards compatibility but things are still at the stage where that is not guaranteed and there are all kind of extensions that people would like to add to the protocol.

Finally, BT would be of little use to the "average joe who has a few pictures of his backyard roller coaster" that gets posted to slashdot and dies. First of all, he or she would not know that a slashdotting was coming, and therefor would have to have a tracker running all the time, ready to serve the torrents. Currently the "reference" tracker is written in Python, which means joe schmoe needs to somehow get that running on their server... in the case of peoples' homepages that are susceptible to slashdotting, usually it's lightweight/free hosting and they don't have the option of saying "Hey sysadmin, can I run this Python server on some funky port (that will need to be opened on your firewall)?"

Also, any change in the web site would require the torrent to be rebuilt, and the old one removed.

Finally, the tracker would die under a slashdotting. While BitTorrent allows the "heavy lifting" of the transfer to be spread out amongst the swarm, every user that wishes to join must contact the tracker... indeed, as users download they constantly contact the tracker to get updated peer lists and keep the tracker's info fresh. If a site cannot survive serving a slashdotting through Apache (which is highly tuned for what it does) then it's certainly not going to be able to provide the CPU and Ram that the poor little python tracker is going to require to manage a swarm of tens of thousands. Go to any of the illicit trackers (such as torrentse.cx) and note that while the web pages may be relatively snappy, the tracker is what gets killed and always has very long connect times and LOTS of timeouts. The admins of torrentse say that they are getting about 4000 hits a day, and they are pulling their hair out writing custom trackers in php and mysql (and spread over multiple ports) to cope with the load. Now, how for the love of god is joe average's tracker supposed to support a near-instantaneous 50,000 hits or more? It makes no sense.

DO NOT CLICK ON THAT LINK!

[theridersofrohan]

the warez and porn link (http://torrentse.cx/) that is.

First slashdot troll article summary?

Re:DO NOT CLICK ON THAT LINK!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, that was a decent tracker site, until it got all /.'d to hell. Bastards...

Moron Editors

[Anonymous Coward]

For anyone who hasn't realised, the only torrentse.cx re-pointed to an "image" is because these dumbfuck twat Slashfag editors labelled it up as a "warez and porn" site which invoked a Slashdotting. If I were the site admin, I'd be pissed off too.

Cliff - you're a fucking retard.

tubgirl link

[sarabob]

Half of the point of putting the domain name after a link is to prevent us from clicking through to fsking tubgirl/goatsex links again and again. So why should article summaries be exempt?

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Workpad z50 User]

It's more like "Butt Torrent" now...

I did notice that the Jap-porn politely obsfucates the girl's sexual organs...leaving the fountain from her anus flowing onto her face clearly seen. I think we should bomb Japan one more time...

p2p: Analogy = Gossip. as hard to battle

[jago25_98]

- of course I think a technology shouldn't be restricted due to a small minority use that has little impact ((complete descruction of all media companies being small impact naturally)), especially as to restrict it is to shoot oneself in the foot

We're gonna see big political change on IP but before we get it it looks as if lots of people are going to have to suffer 1st, inc. record companies and p2p'ers.

- p2p? gossip as analogy. Imagine there's a rumour going around at work about you and so-and-so, and (s)hes a married (wo)man. What so you do? One tactic is to outgun them with your own gossip, trying to drown out thier gossip, or best of all respond before they form an opinion in thier mind.
Thus, this is what I expect will be the line the governments will take. `Can't beat them, so join them' It'll be an extention of the powers that are so obvious over Newspapers, Radio and estabilishged media. I expect this'll be achieved by corruption too like is it aided currently, (in all Developed Countries?). The anti-terror laws etc introduced surely will get killed off in time as the try-to-silence-them approach doesn't work on the bigger scales.

Right, got half a pound of Cemtex here, anyone want a snip?

Some of this is the hosting problem's fault...

[weave]

If you want to simply use Mozilla to launch your bittorrent client and you set up the correct help app info, but when you click a link, it displays garbage in the screen, it's not the fault of Mozilla, it's the fault of the web server.

The web server needs to send out the correct content-type info. Does BitTorrent have a mime type? Or just an extension?

For example, on some sites if you click on a file that ends in .wmv it doesn't open in windows media player. .wmv is not in the mime.types file of your standard RH distro (at least as of 7.3). The solution is to add..."

video/x-ms-wmv wmv

" to the mime.types file on the server, apache then sends out the correct content-type, and if Mozilla has the wmp client registered for that mime type, all works wbell.

The reason IE works is that Microsoft will trust a file extension to determine content type over content-type info, and that little tidbit has been the source of many an exploit over the years...

Downloading distros

[Gothmolly]

I get > 300 KB/sec (yes, kilobytes) from some RedHat mirrors, and thats the limit (roughly) of my cable modem. There is no bandwidth crunch.

Re:Downloading distros

[Istealmymusic]

There is no bandwidth crunch at this moment. There is, however, shortly after the release of a brand new distro.

good idea

[cr@ckwhore]

Linux needs a decent implementation of bittorrent ... the protocol is a good idea, but the author's own implementation really sucks. AFAIK, there aren't currently any other options. Since bittorrent is used through a web browser anyway, it would make sense that a torrent client is included with the moz distro ... whether it be native, plugin, or external doctype handler, its not a bad idea. Anything but the current nasty python implementation would do just fine!

BTW, I've never been successful at getting bittorrent to work... finally threw in the towel after a couple of days trying and decided that until a good client exists, bittorrent isn't ready for primetime.

Re:good idea

[Istealmymusic]

Huh? BitTorrent has an excellent, cross-platform (Python) implementation.

Good job Slashdot...

[l0ckj4w]

Good job at taking down torrentse.cx, you bastards.

Re:They have a working url..

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to kick a dead horse. I sure am glad idiots like this are roaming the earth to ruin a good thing for a few people. Oh wait, no I'm not.

Re:Don't click on the Torrentse link (warez and po

[Anonymous Coward]

fyad fyad lol

what

Thanks a lot, asshole.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks a lot, asshole.

motherfucking asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

motherfucking asshole asshole

NAT -- Network Address Translation, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand these comments about NAT. How does NAT "break" the internet for a NATed box? If every internal packet is translated to the external ip and vice versa then what is lost? Is the problem really not firewalls? I'm getting the impression that there is something fundamental about NATing a box that makes 100% transparancy impossible. What would that be?

Re:NAT -- Network Address Translation, right?

[markov_chain]

With NAT, client machines can't accept incoming connections because they are not visible to the network. Yes, you can set up port forwarding at the NAT point, but you can only do it for one machine per port. If all 100 machines behind your NAT want to serve Web pages from port 80, you're out of luck.

This is fundamentally bad. The Internet's purpose is free exchange of information, where any node can serve bits to the rest of the network. The reason letting kludges like NAT take root is dangerous is that it makes some nodes less free than others, and potentially prevents innovations that would be possible in the original open network.

BitTorrent Sites

[Anonymous Coward]

torrentse.cx torrentse.cx torrentse.cx torrentse.cx torrentse.cx torrentse.cx torrentse.cx torrentse.cx torrentse.cx

Awesome site. :)

torrentlinks.com torrentlinks.com torrentlinks.com torrentlinks.com torrentlinks.com torrentlinks.com torrentlinks.com

Hope this helps.

Good point, but there's a couple problems

[Istealmymusic]

• I agree with your first paragraph, although there is such thing as a .torrent file. You can save it, email it, and open it with your BT client. But fundamentally, I agree.
• True, but you can't use BT for streaming video anyways. Streams require blocks to be contigious, BT, in interest of efficiency, does not. Other networks (Overnet, ed2k) don't either, because it creates a problem of last block rarity.
• Your second, third, and fourth applications of BT are also invalid. Inline video isn't going to be large enough to effectively utilize BT, images doubly so. Flash is pretty small also. BT just doesn't work for small files - it would be cool, but it just doesn't work that way. Unless BT is left open, the file won't be shared either. This opens a new problem - if the client is integrated into the browser, when does it close? Never?
• Last paragraph: Then how is the URL supposed to look? torrent://http://example.com/foo.torrent? Does the "torrent:" URL scheme just download from the path portion treated as a URL and open it in BT? How useful is this really? If torrent:// only says to open the file in BT, isn't a media type enough? BT is not useful for displaying inlined images: where does the progress bar go? Do images display partially as they download? Movies won't show in sequence, you still have to wait for the whole file to finish. So scratch that inlining idea. Images are too small, and Flash is smaller.

Feel free to refute these points -- only good can come of it. I've love to hear your ideas.

WARNING: .CX LINK IN ABOVE POST! (bh)

[Anonymous Coward]

bodless head