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BitTorrent Guide

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the p2p-for-more-than-just-music dept.

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.

8 of 363 comments (clear)

  1. Probably it will always stay... by RiverTonic · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... 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.

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    This is RiverTonic's sig.
    1. Re:Probably it will always stay... by TopShelf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And as we move forward, file sizes in general will keep getting bigger, making BT more useful over time. Check back in a couple years, and we'll see how pervasive it becomes...

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      Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
    2. Re:Probably it will always stay... by EpsCylonB · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. It's changed fansubs by Apreche · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    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 /.ing away. Something like that will require much thinking however.

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    1. Re:It's changed fansubs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If only there was something like SiteTorrent that found some way to keep /.ing away. Something like that will require much thinking however.

      How about mod_torrent for apache? Right now every file you want to share with bittorrent has has to be configured separatedly and attached to a tracker. With something like mod_torrent you could specify that for example all avi files, zip files etc. on a host should always be uploaded trough bittorrent.

      On a file request the web server starts the tracker automatically if no one else is already downloading the file. There would always be at least one seed, the web server, and users would share the bandwidth load if the file was popular. Even if no one else will be downloading the file at the same time distributing the file trough bittorrent should only impose a very small overhead.

  3. Re:My issue with bittorrent by RonnyJ · · Score: 5, Informative
    Now, my issue is.. why can't I easily help serve that file again?

    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.

  4. BitTorrent by kryptkpr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!
  5. Re:Don't think so... by TwistedSquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    " 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?