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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.
No, if Bit Torrent can be implemented as a standard protocol for all web browsers *then* it will have real potential.
./ effect!
Potential dissipate the
... a tool to download very big files like iso's. The other case where it really is useful is when links to large files are posted on slashdot. In that case it's already useful for files over a couple of mb.
This is RiverTonic's sig.
you just need to find different sites for your specific needs, for example one site that will have a weekly torrent for that tv show like to watch, another site for the latest films, another for your cds... yeah, it takes a bit more work than other p2p programs, but it's worth it to get around the bogus files and slow download times of other p2p programs. and where do you find these torrent sites? google...
sig.
I wouldn't call it a P2P application in the typical file sharing sense. Isn't it more of a "poor mans Akamai"?
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!
Has links to warez. I thought slashdot had some policy about not posting links to warez...
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Still, if you're looking for something older than a few weeks, you're looking at something like edonkey, but speeds will be far more pathetic.
The problem with BitTorrent is that "advanced"(ie, unofficial) clients are springing up like weeds, and they let you fudge with all sorts of parameters(how many clients you upload to and stuff, for example). If the p2p authors didn't originally let you tweak it, it's probably because you SHOULDN'T tweak it. Edonkey has seen the same problems- you should see the configuration parameter list for mldonkey. It's horrible- more rope for users to hang not themselves, but the network.
Worse, the "advanced" BT clients let you change your upload rate. Part of the reason BT is so absolutely, amazingly fast is that it forces you to use all your upload, which pisses off the kiddie leechers who don't realize you gotta pay(full upload capacity) to play(maxxing out your download.) I noticed right after the "advanced" and 3rd-party tools came out that speeds dropped.
Please help metamoderate.
You can, just open the torrent file again, and try to save the file to the same location you did before. It'll then check the file is OK and continue serving it for others.
For everything else, http://www.torrentse.cx, which has a comment system for each torrent file so people can post up their thoughts. Also they allow people to upload their own torrents. This site has the following sections: Misc, Movies, TV, Music, Porn, Books, Games, Software, Comics, and Anime.
Also, http://www.suprnova.org is good too, but has been having a lot of problems lately. They have: Games, Movies, TV Shows, Music, Apps, Misc, and DVD
http://www.bitetorrent.com has TV Shows, Movies, Music, Apps, Games, Comics, Anime and Misc. Allows people to upload their own torrent and has a tracker as well.
http://torrents.slash0.org/ also includes TV Shows, Movies, Games, and a Misc section.
The following are the best TV-only BitTorrent sites. http://www.marksailes.uklinux.net/bt/ http://www.tvtorrents.com
Anyways, those are the most popular BitTorrent places. And with me posting this now (and perhaps getting modded up =D), they should be even better and faster (if the website doesn't die from the load first).
No checksums? It uses SHA-1 to verify file integrity. That is pretty reliable!
Resuming with another p2p app? What apps let you do that anyway? When would you want to resume with another app?
Forced to upload? That is what makes downloads so fast. If everyone leeches, nobody gets good download speeds.
My server
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!
...bittorrent will be most useful as an alternative to web downloading huge legitimate files, like the Baen CD-ROMs or Linux distros. It's blazing fast, or can be, but it's just too easy to shut down a tracker/website, just like what was done to Napster. There's no anonymity here, and the only reason sites like torrentse.cx are around at all is that the RIAA/MPAA haven't noticed them yet. Once they do, kiss 'em goodbye.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
I've heard complaints about and requests for "advanced" features, on the mailing lists, on IRC, and of course here. As far as the P2P protocol is concerned, I trust Bram's judgment. There are no plans to include any advanced features like upload bandwidth throttling. Instead, what I'm hoping will differentiate the Java port will be the GUI and ease-of-use, the ability of testers familiar with Java (leading to great security and QA), and code cleanliness.
If you're at all interested in seeing a (mostly) working Java implementation, and the only feature-for-feature 'official' version, check out JTorrent, and drop me a line. If you're curious about other language ports, or other ports with different goals, check out the "btports" Yahoo group. For general questions, or questions about the original Python, use the "bittorrent" Yahoo group, or go to #bittorrent on irc.freenode.net.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
That if we're all using it for web pages (downloading and uploading as we go along) the amount of end user bandwidth (which is unmetered) will increase and the amount of server bandwidth (usually metered) will decrease? Imagine how happy cox would be if every computer on their cable network was functioning as a mini-web server at all times. The ISPs will not like this, and will start either raising rates or capping bandwidth. Yeah, I know bandwidth is getting cheaper, but I'm sure Cox would rather pocket those savings then spend them on network upgrades.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
BitTorrent creates a sparse output file and then populates it with data in a quasi-random order. You can't resume these files with software that assumes that all data up to the end of file mark has been populated, but you can resume with any rsync or any other program program which supports differential file transfers. Rsync will checksum the blocks with missing data, determine that those blocks don't match the remote file, and transfer only those blocks.
" BitTorrent, while being a cool technology, still only exists for users to download files which are either copyrighted (warez/mp3/svcd) and/or illigal (porn of varying extrmes) and therefore will eventually die:" Did you miss the part where major Linux distros use it to send out the latest version?
Downloading the newest Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle at the moment. Bittorrent is really great for getting TV shows before they air, it's like my own personal Tivo that ignores causality.
The BitTorrent FAQ and Guide site is rapidly becoming the main collection point for all information BitTorrent. If you have questions or curiosities, check it out.
The first rule of BitTorrent, is that you don't talk about BitTorrent. Now all the torrent sites posted here are slashdotted, and the rest are being DDoS'd. The key to a successfull filesharing network is that it's not publicized.
What's difficult about publishing content on akamai?
I drop a file on my webserver and the content will be automatically published to a server geographically local to whomever accesses the content. I publish my content directly to my website as I always have. I never publish the content anywhere else.
I don't need to configure individual files to be available through bittorrent.
Clients accessing my content don't need a plugin.
BT & Ak both work well even if my ISP doesn't have a hub running akamai.
If it is in any way a replacement for Akamai - why is BT's website just text? (maybe because you can't bittorrent content like you can akamize content)
Is BitTorrent is a poor man's Akamai?
Hardly.
Besides - bittorrent is just files. Akamai has several different types of services most related to distributed content distribution. From individual files to whole websites can be hosted on the Akamai network. [nba.com] is completely hosted on the akamai network - requests to nba.com rarely ever hit the core servers.
Napster, the obvious first example of P2P file sharing, maintained a centralized index of everything it knew about, which was one reason it could be sued to death, so most of the newer file-sharing applications found ways to also decentralize their indexing (which is harder.) BitTorrent avoids the whole problem - the person running the tracker is the person publishing the file, and the indexes of who has what pieces are transitory. So if the distribution is legitimate, fine, and if it's not, the copyright owner can go sue the publisher who ripped them off.
So from an applications standpoint, yes, the person distributing a file can sometimes use it like Akamai or AT&T or Speedera to ship their stuff out faster, except that it's quasi-free because it's using the downloaders' bandwidths instead of a big caching service's bandwidth. But one big difference is that BitTorrent is designed to handle big files, while the caching services can handle anything - so they're useful for keeping your front page from being slashdotted (or superbowl-commercialed), and for the graphics on your front page, as well as for distributing the new release of your music CD or your software update. The caching services also provide a function that BT doesn't, which is accelerating delivery of small files by delivering them from nearby servers - instead of hauling them 50ms across the continent or 200ms across the Pacific, you're grabbing them from nearby, while BT requires an index hit from the tracker before fetching content. BT scales very closely with demand volume because it is P2P, so the more demand there is, the more servers there are to fill it - the caching services scale because they've got big honking servers spread around the net.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
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.