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BitTorrent Guide
An anonymous reader writes "BitTorrent is the new latest/greatest P2P app to come and one of the MP3 rags has published a guide to it. Shareaza has already started to implement support for it, though support is in the early stages. The ruling is blazing fast downloads, but the difficulty of finding .tor files and other issues shows it is still a work in progress with strong niche potential. Information to host files on BT can be found here." It remains to be seen if Bit Torrent can outlive P2Ps bad rep since it is a really useful application.
If you're into the whole anime thing, like I am, Bit Torrent is a godsend. BitTorrent is the biggest thing to happen to digital fansubs since DivX.
/.ing away. Something like that will require much thinking however.
Prior to BitTorrent acquiring digital fansubs of anime was extremely difficult. Especially if you weren't at a college campus. The files are 200MB, so dial up users are out. Releases were made on IRC fserves, so propagation was slow. Things made their way slowly onto other p2p networks like WinMX and DC, but you were never able to find anything and everything. And only IRC fanboys could get things guaranteed as soon as they came out.
BitTorrent changed everything. Check out Anime Suki. The fansubbing groups are now setting up torrents of every episode they release. And every day the newest ones are listed as they come out. So anybody who has a fast enough connection, or is willing to wait for 200MB can get fansubs when they come out, guaranteed. The best new stuff is not limited to the fanboys anymore. And you don't have to deal with other p2p networks where people will do "trad3z onli!" or otherwise cancel your download. And no queues either.
The problem with BitTorrent is that when a file is no longer popular, BitTorrent becomes useless. And if a file is small BitTorrent is also useless. You need lots of people downloading and uploading and you need a big file. Prior to BitTorrent putting a video on a web page either meant you were badass or a big company with big ass servers and bandwith. Or nobody visited you and it didn't matter. BitTorrent brings video back to the web. WebMasters no longer need to fear crashing and burning if they host an awesome video.
If only there was something like SiteTorrent that found some way to keep
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Indeed. It's more of a mirroring tool than a "file sharing" tool. Wanna download the latest Madonna mp3? Use kazaa/gnutella/whatever. With bit torrent you'll have a hard time finding the seed file.
For an example of how little mainstream content it carries compared to other p2p networks I did a search for porn with a torrent file search engine. I was dissapointed with the results.
The torrent creation guide relies on the stock completedir; bleh... a much better replacement is MakeTorrent. Currently it's an enhanced/modified completedir (sources are available, so you can use it under *nix), but I'm working on a complete rewrite. There are guides here and here.
I'm also developing an alternative client, and many people prefer the interface to the stock one.. it's called burst! (front-end is released GPL, back-end currently still relies on the python code which is MIT).
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
I wouldn't call it a P2P application in the typical file sharing sense.
No, it isn't a P2P application in the typical file sharing sense. Bit torrent is perfect for short term kinds of downloads.
Let me give you an example.
Let's say I make games and I release a patch for it once a month. If every one of my hundreds of thousands of users tried to download that patch at the same time, my bandwidth would be slashdotted so to speak. Even if I could handle the load, I'd be consuming gigs and gigs of bandwidth in just a few days.
But if I torrent that file to all my users then the bandwidth consumption spreads across the internet like a virus (for lack of a better word) and I save money. It's also better for the user because they're not relying on a central server to supply the file. If my server goes down 12 hours after the patch is released, the file is still being distributed across the net.
Obviously in 6 months the torrent won't be as reliable a downloading source because the patch is too old and not as many people are patching. After a week, the rush of people grabbing the file at the same time is over and then I release the real thing instead of the torrent on my website so the people who were too late in the patching can get it.
The beauty of torrent is timing. If you have a popular file to share at a specific time, torrent's your application.
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
As many have pointed out, if you have an asynchornous connection where you can download way faster then uploading, then uploading too much blocks TCP ACKs and kills your download speed. This is why clients that let you adjust the upload rate "sprang up".
This does not give people an excuse to leech. I'm currently co-ordinating with a number of other developers to create an anti-leech tracker (it keeps track of how much you've uploaded and how much you've downloaded, and will begin to warn and/or deny you at a certain ratio after a certain ammount of time).
The reason BT's speed is dropping is not becuase people are limiting uploads, but becuase popularity is growing. There aren't 100 people on a file anymore, there's 2000.
Do a little test. Grab BT Availability Checker from that page, and run it on a torrent that's got lots of people (new simpsons episode, matrix reloaded, whatever).
If you're lucky, half of the 50 or so peers you're sent (out of 2000!) will be actually alive.
There is currently no way to "match up" people who should be sending things to one another (one the same ISP or LAN), but again, we're working on it.
BT is still in it's infancy, but the future looks good.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
I d/led it yesterday for the first time. I liked it, so I of course donated $5 to his Pay Pal account. Within a couple of minutes, he wrote me a thank you e-mail.