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Ask Bram Cohen about BitTorrent
It's a clever P2P 'information broadcasting' concept, as the simple diagram on the BitTorrent home page shows. It's gotten a fair amount of notice, especially here on Slashdot. And reader Ignorant Aardvark wrote to us about BitTorrent sites disappearing, possibly because of RIAA/MPAA intervention, so this technology is now generating some controversy as well. The person behind BitTorrent is Bram Cohen, and he's agreed to answer 10 of the highest-moderated questions about BitTorrent you post here. So ask away (after reading the project FAQ and other info about BitTorrent and Bram, of course). We'll run Bram's answers as soon as he emails them back to us.
If I'm not mistaken BitTorrent was originally created to make it easier for people to access ISO Distros using the P2P concept, taking strain off the servers that originally hosted them.
I guess with the news that it's gathered as of recent did you ever foresee people using BitTorrent for illegal purposes? (i.e. hosting full albums, distributing illegal ISOs, obtaining full length movies) Do you fear the consequences that often come from the RIAA/MPAA?
Bram,
Do you have any plans for improvements to BitTorrent to improve some of its (few) weaknesses, such as searching for torrent files, bandwidth usage by trackers and inability to download if the tracker goes off the air?
If there is controls built in to stop certain traffic such as the Matrix,what makes you think that this will last any longer than Napster?
Are you taking any precautions for your clash with the RIAA/MPAA?
Useless sig.
why did you choose to code it in python?
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Do you feel that BitTorrent's core functionality can one day be integrated in the operating system as a file system? The ability to share files among disparate systems in remote locations can be seen as extension of what was started with HTML, et. al.
It's not very often that someone downloads the latest greatest software package and finds it ships as interpreted source, in a previous era this would reek of "unprofessional" but with languages like Perl and Python, it's more common and respectable, and this package helps to that end. Why did you choose Python? Is there something Bit Torrent does that Python handles in a saner fashion than other languages or was it a simple case of, "I know Python"?
Do you see uses for the BitTorrent code and architecture other than file downloads?
As the person with the most in-depth knowledge of BitTorrent, what do you see are the weaknesses of the BitTorrent model?
As more and more ISP's subscribe to the theory that a consumer does need as much upload bandwidth as download(as seen in the current cable modem/DSL industry), how will Bittorrent scale to meet the problems it was set out to correct? It seems to me that it would severly limit the benefits of having an application of this nature.
BitTorrent has seen a wide array of usage since it debuted. Many have been surprising and it has caught the fire that makes sofwtare a success. How do you personally measure the success of BitTorrent? Has it achieved the goals you first set?
Torrentse.cx is down because it was originally supposed to be a semi-private [or at least obscure] site serving a medium-sized community of people. The problem is that it got so popular that the guy who runs it [the enigmatically named hello.jpg] went waaay over his bandwidth cap and shut it down to prevent him from going bankrupt. There is no RIAA/MPAA conspiracy going on.
p.s. yo Bram, it's James.
Do you think BitTorrent could (or should) ever be expanded to cover an entire website, rather than just one file at a time?
:)
It would save a lot of small sites from being flattened by a larger website. ***ahem***
BitTorrent Transfer Protocol maybe
Probably an obvious Yes, but if so what was the nature of the threat ?
Obviously what people do with Bittorrent is outside your control, but what do you think will happen in the coming months/years regarding the growing control methods of the **AA industries, and consumers needs for a flexible product? Do you have any suggestions on what should be done against piracy? As someone who created a product that provides a valuable service, where do you see bittorrent in all this?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Does the RIAA/MPAA scare you? I would hate to build something, put my 'blood, sweat & tears' into something and then have these 2 breathing down on.
I installed BitTorrent yesterday in order to get Red Hat 9. I'll be honest, it didn't work that well for me(I'm impatient, and it was faster to repeatedly try ftp.redhat.com and dl it once I could get connected.) Maybe I didn't wait long enough for it to work, or perhaps I wasn't sharing enough to get a good dl rate from the network.
At any rate, I'm clueless as to how this thing works, or even what it is doing at the moment. There is no UI, no shortcut to any docs, nothing. Was this intentional, or is it because Bit Torrent is still in development and things like a UI and documentation are low on the list? Currently I have Bit Torrent installed, but I have very little idea about what it is doing on my computer or what I can do with it - other than hunting around the net for FAQ's etc.
I'm not complaining - I just haven't had the time to look for these things. If they were there I probably would have used it more.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Popular tracker sites (where you submite a .torrent, and it modifies it and becomes the primary tracker) seem to have a scaling issue. I won't mention the site but their are trackers that get 2,000,000 hits a day, and 50k-65k visitors. Trying to download a torrent tracked by an overused tracker such as this one, can be frustrating. While bigger/faster hardware is a temporary solution, what other options exist for scaling trackers better?
.torrent could have an array of tracker sites, that seemed like a quick and easy hack to get some scalability, have you seen or thought of any others?
Now, I'll also say, I wonder about performance of PHP trackers (as this one is).
I also saw some place where you mentioned the should use round-robin DNS for the tracker host to "scale". This isn't a good solution though, as any network engineer who runs a large internet accessible website will tell you. Cachine of DNS records make round-robin not as effective as it needs to be.
I saw a suggestion where a
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Bittorrent is a great protocol, similar in many ways (but clearly superior, for large files, to) ftp. Like ftp, though, there's no way to easily search for files. It seems to me torrents should have some additional metainformation in the .torrent file itself (such as the content type, bitrate, etc.), instead of just the file name. And then perhaps you or someone else could easily write a global torrent search system. Have you given much thought to this sort of thing? Any plans? Or are you hoping someone else will take these ideas and run with them?
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
Ask Bram? I'm so stoked!
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Now that BitTorrent has grown into something that's completely out of your control, do you have any fears that the powers that be will come after you seeking damages for things other people have done with your software?
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Do you have a new url for the Matrix Reloaded .torrent file?
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
If you were to start from scratch, what would you change about bittorrent? Decentralized trackers? Imposed bandwidth caps? Better karma system?
Now that the product is in a semi-usable state, has the decision been made to feature-freeze and to focus on quality control? Running the OSX client turns my iBook to mush. The linux client brings my dual AMD MP system to its knees. I love getting large files (ie: ISOs) at great speeds, but when it renders my computer useless for the duration of the download it ceases to be useful.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Bram, what's your take on BitTorrent alternatives or alternatives that use the BitTorrent network?
when come back bring pie
Supposedly, through user donations, they are moving Torrentse.cx to another server. The current server reached its bandwidth limit and Hello.jpg decided to just leave the site down until the new server is in place.
What are your view of ethics, morals and programming and your motivation?
Obviously, there is a problem with decentralized p2p that you solved. Is it the fact that there was a request, self-created, that you were solving? Or was it in hopes of doing something 'good'?
What are your views on working on other technologies that are on the fence, like DRM, exploits? I don't mean in terms of creating to be malicious, but for learning or for profit.
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
I remember certain adult movies being released to test out bittorrent. Why are you only allowing tests of rather tame isos now?
You've got a paypal dontation button to help compensate you for your non-trivial expenditure of time...how well is that working? Is it an adequate revenue stream, or just enough for a pizza or two?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
Bram,
0 5/27/133822 3&mode=thread&tid=188&tid=97
:)
Do you feel you might be a target of litigation or any sort of legal action because you're the "point" person for this project? Stories like these prompted my question:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/
It looks like the media companies are looking for someone to "drag over the coals."
You've been asked on the mailing list a couple of times, and I haven't seen an answer.
:)
What are your plans for the future direction of BitTorrent? Do you have any plans to design a protocol to enable trackers to coordinate? Any plans to enable BitTorrent to dynamically start sharing a file from an "upload" directory, based on distributed searches? In other words, are you interested in making BitTorrent a "full-service" P2P app in the style of Kazaa, etc...? Or are you happy with the functionality as it is?
Or are you perhaps waiting for the BitTorrent community to start chipping in some of the work, rather than leaving you to do all of it?
(Note: I'm not saying that it's somehow insufficient the way it is. I'm really just curious about what your plans are. One thing that keeps me from attempting to help with coding at all is that I have no idea where BitTorrent is headed, or if you even want any code contributions at this point.)
Have you had any talks with akamai or download.com or other big players about possible partnerships? Do you see money in your future?
User-based Search and Share is the defining feature of other P2P apps like Kazaa and Gnutella. While Bittorrent is more of a swarm downloading protocol, do you have any plans to impliment a user front-end to do something like user-based hosting or searching or tracking of .torrent files?
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Have you been contacted by any companies for use of bittorrent? I'm sure in many corporate environments it could be used to cut down on the size of servers required to handle large files.
I'd like to hear your stance on the unofficial BitTorrent clients that are showing up. Some of these clients do more than just present a more user-friendly interface, they allow people to tweak some settings, most notably throttling their upload speeds.
Since BitTorrent's model of "everyone sharing the same data" is fundamental to it's success, it seems like a client that selfishly restricts re-uploading is the complete opposite of the BitTorrent philosophy.
Any thoughts on future changes to eliminate or minimize this kind of cheating?
Cinsidering the system wasn't originally designed to be a music / movie swapping system, would you have any qualms with working with, rather than against, the record and movie industry to make the program less contraversial? What are your views on their attitude towards Biotorrent (IE: Do you think they'll ever make compramises with those that make these systems) Sorry if that question is too long / complicated, but it could be interesting.
Yup...
For situations like I am in (behind a corporate firewall), there is little chance of getting permission to poke a hole for BT.
However, it is just at the edge of feasibility to set up a bastion host running some form of BT proxy, whereby the basition runs BT, and the clients inside connect to the BT proxy via a web interface.
Has any thought been given to something like that?
www.eFax.com are spammers
I think that bittorrent can be of significant commercial interest. It might be used for software updates for instance. Have you pursued this path or have companies approached you?
I certainly hope you'd keep a free version available, but a more feature-rich version would surely land you a great deal of money with the right pitch.
It seems that P2P is quickly becoming a "killer app" on the Internet, and BitTorrent certainly brings it into the mainstream.
However, NAT gateways render P2P useless, especially in large organizations where port forwarding is rarely an option. How do you see BitTorrent dealing with this problem until IPv6 is fully deployed and we can all have a private IP address?
The US Army: promoting democracy through unquestioned obedience
You recently had some success in distributing RH9 isos. Was RedHat involved with this process? Are they evaluating your technology for other applications (esp. up2date)?
While I am moving away from RedHat because of the changes to up2date, it would be interesting to see a major UNIX player (perhaps even a BSD) begin distributing errata via Bittorrent - perhaps even allowing a configurable parameter to control the "willingness to upload."
Bittorrent integration into Solaris patchchk would also be quite a coup for your team, granted that they are perl-centric.
In my recent test, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were downloading the same link, over the same time period (although they weren't started at exactly the same time) and were even on the same broadband ISP (with the same bandwidth).
Why did Tweedle Dee seem to have great speed, maxing out his bandwidth, when Tweedle Dum couldn't seem to get higher than modem speeds? Is the bandwidth evenly distributed? Is there a preference system? Is it first come first serve? Does Tweedle Dum simply have bad luck?
Create a Chord-ring for each single file, every chunk of a file gets its own key in the 160-bit keyspace. Replace the trackers IP with an entrypoint to the Chord. In short, everything stays exactly the same, only clients lookup chunks in the DHT instead of asking a tracker about them. Why don't you do that ?
The mistake you made was trying to use BitTorrent to download an oldish file. The way BT works best is when there is a /. effect occurring. When a new ISO of RH9 comes out, there is a bullrush to get it which overwhelms mirrors. BT solves this by having users DL from other users and the mirrors at the same time. Once the majority of users have DL'd the ISO's, they are going to close their BT client. It's been weeks since the RH9 ISO's came out, so most everyone has closed their client. This means you are mostly DL'ing from the seeding servers and not the users. The seeders aren't really built to handle massive bandwidth.
BT is a temporary solution for getting high demand files. It works in an inverse supply-demand curve: the higher the demand, the higher the supply of bandwidth.
IANAL, but I play one on
Why did you choose to use binary format for .torrent files instead of clear text?
When, in Windows mind you, if I drag a random file (probably one over 1GB) into BitTorrent's sub EXE (or right-click, send-to), it not only tries to read the entire thing, but:
1) Won't exit nicely
2) Won't exit forcefully
3) Won't stop reading my hard disk after I delete or move the file
4) Won't let me reboot or logoff
The only way I can get it to stop reading my hard disk at all is wait until i get so mad that I forcefully pull the battery out of my notebook and scream "DAMN YOU Bram Cohen!!!"
What I'm getting at... why did you decide to write BT in Python? From the splash page of the BT website, it seems like you're eventual target are companies, or rather, the customers of companies. I can't help but think that Java would have been a better choice, not only for better platform support, but since it's already mass-deployed, and it's superior browser integration, not to mention it would be a much smaller download (currently ~= 3MB for Python-based BT). Are there any benefits of using Python (other than it's refusal to exit when killed via task manager... heh)?
I'm wondering the obvious: have you been approached by any Big Corporationtm-type groups to pull the BitTorrent source and binaries from your site? What about scare tactics? Have you spoken with a lawyer yet to determine just how much liability you'd have were someone to attempt to sue you?
(Incidentally, I'd assume your liability to be zero, but the way the world's running right now, scapegoating has become a popular hobby.)
- Cloud
I love BitTorrent, it maxes out my cable modem at 200 down, 30 up; no other method of downloading can fill the pipe.
The only problem is the reliability of certain sites with content -- which I'm sure you have no relationship with; but if BitTorrent could piggyback off Freenet, it might go a long way toward improving the stability of these sites.
Also, are you going to do anything with the bittorrent.com site? (That's the one Mozilla "suggests" first when I start typing "bittorrent" in the URL bar.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
What's the advantage of BitTorrent over, say, the FastTrack network? What's the difference, if any?
Considering that Bittorrent is used for more legal purposes than illegal, and that many web companies would see bittorrent as a money saver since bandwidth costs are one of the highest costs of running any web based infrastructure, do you see, or have been approached by Microsoft, Mozilla or Opera to natively support bittorrent in their next browser releases without any external Bittorrent application?
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
As far as I can tell the genius of BitTorrent is allowing peers who themselves do not yet have a complete file to share the parts they do. With all dew respect to the effort taken, the rest is just functional glue that allows the system to work as it should.
The eDonkey protocol used the same basic premise. How is BitTorrent different to it and other P2P protocols and why did you make that choice?
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Have you heard about any large sites/companies like SourceForge adopting BitTorrent as download mechanism? From what I understand, this is what BitTorrent was originally planned to be used for the most.
Would you accept a job offer from, say a major movie rights corporation, that plans to use [a variant of] BitTorrent for distributing its DRM Video-on-Demand data?
... to have an official "start time" for files, posted in advance, so that people can get ready then hit it all at once. Makes more sense than just posting a file at random, with people all over the world at different time zones trying to make use of the features of bit torrent to not do it correctly, ie "at the same time for maximum effect".
I think one of the most interesting thing would be to hear what thoughts a developer of a p2p network has regarding illegal filesharing.
How does it make you feel that people are using your software to illegally distribute copyrighted material?
Anyway, here are some questions:
Yeah yeah I know, one question per post, sorry
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
It seems to me that people would be an lot less likely to use P2P software for illegal purposes if the software provided more accountability. But, at the same time I can see the benefits of anonymity, especially when it promotes civil disobedience as a form of protest against unjust and unreasonable laws. What do you think about balance between accountability and anonymity in general and in bittorrent particularly?
We've seen how BitTorrent is valuable for distributing large files (like iso images) across the internet, but have you thought about other uses for the technology? A couple ideas that come to mind are:
(1) extending the HTTP protocol to allow web sites to become p2p. This would alleviate bandwidth problems for sites that serve medium to large sized files (such as photo galleries).
(2) file servers. A company with a heavily utilized file server could offload a substantial amount of the load to the client machines for commonly accessed files.
These would only apply to static/read-only data, of course. Any thoughts?
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
> Measure Twice, Cut Once, Swear like a Sailor, buy another.
Ah, so you installed a new shower curtain rod last week too, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
BitTorrent's trackers track users' downloads. It is not only a single point of failure, but also a privacy problem if the data downloaded is legally or morally questionable.
:-)
Do you see this as a problem that needs to be fixed eventually?
Or do you think it's the problem of those people who use BitTorrent and have something to hide?
So it's a feature?
Do you see BitTorrent as a remedy for the "slashdot effect"?
"dope will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no dope"
Many freeware/shareware folks like to keep download stats for marketing purposes, so P2P software and mirrors really irk them....
In order to foster more love from freeware/shareware distributors, could BitTorrent be made to inform the end user (me) that BitTorrent was going to send a "notice of download" (not including any personal information, such as an IP, etc) upon sucessful download (that I could preview before sending of course)?
If *I* was Warner Bros, and eveyone offered to distribute and pay for all the bandwidth for the next version of the Animatrix, while I still got to see download statistics, i'm not sure I'd even would need to provide a direct link to the 150 meg QuickTime files.
With this kind of feedback mechanism, the software/media providers get all the love - download stats, far far far less bandwidth used -
and we get all the goodness - their free movies, software, freeware, data, etc. Its the ultimate mirror.
Or am i missing something?
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
If you're on a win32 box, you can run:
"btdownloadgui.exe --max_upload_rate [X] --responsefile file.torrent"
Where [X] is the rate of kB/s. This will throttle the bandwith available to BitTorrent.
On a *nix box, I believe you just subsitute ".py" for ".exe"
Every day more and more BT clients are popping-up, with features not originally intended for the protocol. Do you feel that these features, such as multi-tracker search features, are doomed to kill "the network?" On the flipside, what are your thoughts on other, "classic p2p" clients now incorporating BT technology (heh, IANAM*), such as the new Shareaza beta?
And I know I'm cheating here, but:
What can you, me, or we as a community do to ensure that BT stays pure, or at least, survives in it's original, intended state?
put the what in the where?
How do you plan to use the $10 I gave you?
I suppose you have little to fear from the RIAA/MPAA. Outlawing BitTorrent would be like outlawing ftp or http. Those guys are already facing embarrassment in that their arguments against p2p can be used against search engines and the internet in general.
It interests me how you have a hybrid solution - a P2P app that relies on server-based files to function.
I've noticed several ideas (and have a few of my own that I won't bore you with) for taking the last step, and making BitTorrent no longer rely on a torrent-aware server to function. I must assume there is some reason that you're not pursuing this direction, and was curious as to why.
"for the time being, i am using bittorrent more and more because it is fast as hell, but I really think on the long term it will be a blip in history due to its centralised model. i mean, i sure as hell wouldnt want to be a seed node for a big hollywood movie considering the president set by recent lawsuits."
This is precisely WHY BitTorrent will continue on for legitimate uses, and not for distributing "big hollywood movie". The users commiting a crime with the tool will be prosecuted, not the tool maker.
one of the lessons learned working on mojonation in its original days was that "search is hard" so its best to leave that up to the people that know how to do that very very well.
Many home NAT gateways come with an Evil feature called UPnP that ms is pushing for the future. basically they let any "application" inside behind the NAT detect the gateway and easily ask it to open one or more ports thru to the host in question using some extreemly bloated soap-ish xml-ish queries to the NAT box.
;)
"application" is in quotes because microsoft makes it super easy to send people an auto-executing "application" to their Outlook mail client.
bittorrent doesn't support UPnP but things of that nature can be supported. It is intended to make P2P networking behind nat much more plausable.
Whether or not it is the intention of this poster, the questions are loaded with traps the MPAA/RIAA would love to use against you in court. BTW, you really should start a legal fund raiser of some sort. You WILL end up in court, because you WILL be made an example of. On the flipside, if we can all stand behind you when that happens, it will be us making examples of whomever comes after you. Of course, I don't know you personally, but I believe you are a Nederlander. That's good. Stay there, and for god's sake don't set foot on US soil for a while and maybe they can't get you into court in the first place.h tml
So, anyway, Bram, thank you for the technology, sorry I sound so conspirist. :)
I know this sounds paranoid, but look at the way SCO tried using arbitrary old quotes from RMS, ESR and even Almighty Bruce to "smear" them here: http://www.sco.com/scosource/quotes_from_leaders.
The same thing is becoming a court tactic to attempt to show cause, i.e. Napster pretty much lost because of the "especially since they are exchanging pirated music" quote: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-241977.html?tag=rn
put the what in the where?
Do you also feel the whole commercial copyright agenda has distracted people from focusing on the system and networking aspects of your project? In other words, do you find or think that social issues have dramatically impacted yourself or other people who are simply trying to develop leading edge applications?
Words to men, as air to birds.
easy: host the .torrent on your website and count its hits.
semi-easy: run your own tracker for your content.
the bittorrent tracker knows how many people attempted to download the content and how many people actually finished getting the whole thing (they become seed nodes).
complaining that bittorrent messes up your hit counts is like complaining that someone taking your content and hosting it on another server to ease your load messes up your hit counts.
Bram isn't doing anything illegal. If you think he is, perhaps we should outlaw FTP, HTTP and not let you turn your computer on.
.ISO files surviving the Slashdot effect.
BT is a file sharing tool, but unlike other P2P applications, the centralised trackers (and their hosts) are the immobile weak points. Hell, trackers are regularly crushed by the traffic generated by their own *users*.
90% of the trackers I've seen are sharing legal files, or files that have nothing to do with the MPAA - for example, unlicensed fan-subtitled Japanese animation is booming. But the community is very good at removing files when movies / series *do* get licensed for a US release. I don't think it's a widespread threat to the MPAA - illegal distribution points would be extremely easy to knock offline and prosecute.
There is a demonstratably good use for BT, witness the Red Hat
There's a grey line with the TV show download sites, but if the video streams don't cut out the commercials... I don't see why anyone would want to complain about that ("you're viewing our advertising - stop it!" doesn't make much sense).
And the RIAA has no threat with BitTorrent as it's extremely unsuitable for small files. 100MB+ torrents are probably the sweet spot. Sure, albums could be bundled together into one larger torrent - but with P2P music people usually only want that one song that's good from an album and aren't going to want to download the rest.
It can also be a pain in the ass to share anything with BT - but that's a good thing.
This is what I think we need. This is a "this post" meets "that post" post. :) .torrent files. We also need mod_torrent for apache. Your files are server per usual to non-torrent browsers, but apache automatically makes .torrents of each directory, serving them as such to the enabled browsers. Good bye /. effect. As a bonus, not using apache with mod_torrent to server your sites would be considered abjectly stupid.
We need a Mozilla Firebird addon and an IE plugin for
put the what in the where?
Bit torrent uses tcp I feel really deserves its own protocol definition. There should be no reason why you couldn't embed in HTML the following code:
<IMG SRC="bttp://massive-hirez-image.jpg">
Have you thought of this before? Would you (as the creator of the technology) be willing to write an RFC?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
My reading of US copyright law indicates that non-commercial, publicly accessible archives are allowed to make copies of copyrighted media for distribution to other such archives. This is in the first chapter under the fair use sub-section 107.
Do you think that BitTorrent fits the definition of a publicly accessible and non-commercial media archive?
First, we should stop calling bittorrent "p2p". That brings up too many bad connotations. It's NOT a filesharing service.
YES, many are using it as a warez service right now.. but ultimately, this is JUST like offering the files for download themselves.. just a bit more abstraction. Instead of offering a file for download, you are offering a meta-file that describes where to download the file.
Yes, bittorrent is awesome.. for distributed downloadnig.. it's one of those things that just makes sense on the internet: If a bunch of people want a big file, why not have all the people currently downloading it help each other out with the download, to relieve congestion on the main link? It makes perfect sense, and it works equally well for any kind of file.
Yeah, there has been an absllute orgy of open warez trading.. but that's ONLY because they can now download faster and keep up with the load.it's got nothing to do with sharing files over bittorrent.. if anything, putting up downloads with bittorrent is more involved than just putting up a file.
It's like blaming HTTP for early warez trading over the net.
BitTorrent seems to have better data-side handling than Kazaa or any of the other FastTrack programs, since BT will handle directories, verify file integrity, fragment less, and seed better (since it doesn't always just start at the front of a file).
But it seems that there is a giant disadvantage to BT that FastTrack/Kazaa have inherent, that makes Kazaa more usable.
1) Built in search. Requiring webpages to find downloadable files just seems to be a waste. It makes files harder to find, and since more downloaders gives faster speed, missing a search hurts downloaders.
2) No "share directory" leads to download degradation. Once a file is no longer new, and people have closed their BT client for that download, they no longer are listed as sources, even if they are using BT for another file. So even though tons of BT users have the RedHat ISOs, downloading them through BT today will be slow or impossible. (Although really, without a search, you couldn't share everything anyhow since nobody could find your stuff...)
So the big question is, why is there no built in search, and do you foresee a time when a Kazaa-like search feature gets added to BT (Which would obviously require an addition to the standard)?
I was reading the FAQ in order to formulate an insightful, provocative question, when I stumbled upon this tid-bit:
- Does BitTorrent contain spyware or adware?
- No, BitTorrent contains no spyware, adware, or any other kind of -ware.
I applaud you for avoiding many of the pitfalls of other computer projects by avoiding the plethora of "-ware" that poisins many a good idea, but have you run into any problems avoiding the inclusion of so-called "soft-ware" in BitTorrent?As a follow up, since BitTorrent is obviously not (per the FAQ) software, what is it? Is it, as I suspect, an amorphous semi-intelligent entity working on gathering it's resources in order to become the Supreme Master of All?
Thanks for your time, and for your great contribution to free
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
Bram Cohen
;)
Extracurricular activities:
1992-3
Co-captain of Math Team, Stuyvesant High School
1992
1st place team, New York State Math League
Individual High Scorer
1992
Passed American Invitational Mathematics Exam (AIME)
So how often did you get wedgies at your school? Curious nerds NEED TO KNOW!!
Has any effort/thought been put towards bit torrent page distribution? Specifically, a way that one can use BT to mirror webpages. A way to get around the /. effect, and as well would work wonders the next emergency that comes out (see 9/11).
On one of the other BitTorrent stories, someone suggested making a module for Apache, mod_torrent, that would, when asked for files of a certain type (like ISOs, and they would contain only GPL'ed software of course) or over a certain size (1 MB? 5 MB? 20 MB?), would send a torrent of it, and if there were no seeds at the time, would seed the file itself.
That sounds like an awesome module. Do you see it happening? Would you assist someone who was trying to write such a thing?
anyone agree
Could the BitTorrent protocol be used for things like streaming radio and TV?
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Currently P2P networks generally form almost entirely at random- you're as likely to connect to a server on the other side of the world as you are to connect to a server 5 feet away that has the same file. This means you use up bandwidth on all the links on all the machines inbetween. Clearly you can reduce the total amount of bandwidth used, and often latency and throughput, if you (mostly) go to local servers. Are you planning to include any strategies to help minimise this in Bittorrent?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Hi,
.torrent files out of files on your server, and seed them? Right now this requires several different packages, including the tracker, maketorrent, and the client (for seeding the files). Having all of this as a single package would be nice for people who want to use BitTorrent for it's many legal uses. Of course, the warez communities who use BitTorrent solely as a P2P app wouldn't benefit from this, but from what I understood it is your desire to promote only the legal uses of BitTorrent.
One of the more useful things I see BitTorrent as is what its name implies: A temporary P2P network to alleviate a 'torrent' of downloads. I especially like the way GameTab News (http://news.gametab.com/torrents.php) handles it: They are always a seed for their torrents, and remain a contributing uploader as long as the torrent is on their site. My question is:
Do you see a BitTorrent server package, perhaps as an addon to Apache or something, that will run a tracker, make
Yours respectfully,
Clint Olson
P.S. Thank you for making this wonderful program!
BitTorrent's tracker performs a necessary function, but as we have seen recently it's the achilles heel in an otherwise robust network. A distributed tracker network would solve two problems: One, the loss of one node wouldn't affect everyone's ability to download. Two, it could recognize when different torrents pointed to an identical file (or identical pieces) and combine their clients, resulting in higher bandwidth. Is there a plan to make a distributed BitTorrent tracker?
Have you considered implementing non-linear downloading of files such that the end segments of a file are given just-as-high priority as the beginning segments of a file? In effect, users could download the last 30 megs of a file before they've located the first 50 megs of the same file. Doing so would avoid the problem of users disconnecting their clients once they've finished a download, and increase the likelyhood that a complete copy of a file is distributed across the network.
(I don't think it currently works this way)
I recently began using WxPython after deciding it would offer the best cross platform support for my project. The gui for BitTorrent is the first program I've seen written with WxPython that has had such a large userbase. I was wondering what issues you've had with it, and if you still feel that it was the best choice for the job.
Everything will be taken away from you.
well, not only is centralisation a legal problem in many cases when you are dealing with sensitive or illegal material, it is also a big technical problem as is the topic of this thread.
you are citing the same legal precident that was central to my point. this fact is what is going to keep bittorrent pigeon wholed into the niche of distributing non-controversial content (in the long term), which may be just fine by the authors. its really good at that, when you can find the .torrent file, ie when the indexes are not slashdotted. but i think a lot of people are searching for a more general tool that lets you distribute controversial content in similar fashion, and for this there is freenet. plus freenet handily gets around the other related problems of centralisation of the torrent lists getting slashdotted.
of course the legality of content does not nessesarily reflect its morality. think decss. i can think of many cases where people need a mechanism for distrution large files free from censorship, like video of official state abuse and whatnot. for the long term we really need a decentralised distribution system like freenet/bitorrent that preserves our rights. so for a long term solution, i think bottorent's centralization of indexes are a dead end.
like i said, i use bittorent more today (first thing i used it for was redhat 9 iso's), but i feel that its archetectural design problems are going to lead to it being dwarfed by freenet (once freent stabilises more) on the long term... and i'm ok with that.
tasty electronic music vittles
What are you talking about? I didn't want to check everything in your post because it sounds like crazy troll blather, but the torrent files for Slashdot effect victims ist still live and well. The Original site is live and well also.
I read the internet for the articles.
I don't think BT even has the concept of push/pulk as such. I am behind my own NAT, and a firewall which denies all incoming connections, and I can use BT just fine.
:)
:)
The way it works, it seems, is that BT requests peers from the tracker, the tracker gives a list of peers to connect to, BT connects to whichever of them are alive or reachable from that specific location on the Internet. After that, the BT clients tell eacother which parts of the file they have, and which parts they are interested in.
I don't know specifics, but it seems that BT stays in contact with between 20 and 40 peers at one time, but only uploads to 4 at a time. The 4 which give the highest *download* to you back. i.e., if you have extremely fast upload to another peer, that peer will put you in its own first uploat slot, so that you get download from it. BT seems to continously 'test' the other peers that it isn't actively engaged in data transfer with, to see if any of them offer faster speeds, while prioritizing 'testing' peers it has recently established contact with.
This results in, that when you first start downloading a file, it might take some time before other peers give you enough pieces to start uploading, and really get download speeds. The start-time seems to be between 5 to 10 minutes, by experience. I'm sure someone could come up with the statistical average for this based on the default BT settings
Anyhow, what all this means, is that initially, the fastest hosts will find eachother, and distribute the file to eachother very quickly, after which, they will upload to the peers they get fastest upload to. (provided the user doesn't close the torrent)
What this also means, is that, if you have alot of async users (such as ADSL and capped Cable), they will on average only get as much download as their upload, provided there are high-speed uploaders that can fill in the gap between the different asyncs. In a way, I suppose, the average download speed of async users equal the average upload of them, plus any high-speed users which provide a "boost". This makes it, of course, entirely possible, and not uncommon, to be uploading at a faster speed than you are downloading. This is not a bad thing, you're not selfish, are you?
Anyhow, back to the original topic. As I've understood it, the tracker gives you IP's to connect to, of both completes, incompletes, and peers with nothing of the file. It's not technically "push" type connection, but in practice it is, since you'll most likely connect to a wide range of peers with different parts of the file you want.
However, an issue NAT users could have is the number of connections their NAT machine allows them. BT uses between and 20 - 40 in default config, I'm told. If the NAT can only keep track of, say 5 or 10, per user, it might just drop the oldest connection, forcing BT to constantly connect to more peers, as the older ones are dropped. This of course makes it very problematic to maintain any sort of connection with BT, and thus you never see any download nor upload. Note that most NAT's just ignores packets they aren't keeping track of, so the connection would just time out, without the user getting any error messages from BT.
Another issue is Windows 9x. Windows 95 and Windows 98 by default only allows 100 connections. Open 2 - 4 torrents, and you will exhaust this limit, creating sporadic errors such as ENOBUFS (Not enough buffer space). I don't know about more recent versions of the windows operating system, I've heard the max number of connections is artificially limited in some versions though, but don't take my word on it, I might just be spreading FUD
Bram: When is the new version of the Mac OS X client coming out? Supposedly the 3.1 version will be updated 'soon' but it's been stalled for as long as I can remember!
Maybe you should use BitTorrent to reduce your bandwidth load and costs.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
We all know that BitTorrent is most effective on larger files, both because the overhead is more effectively amortized over a larger file and because larger file still = longer download time = longer time on network = more time spent as a seed.
Have you thought of any ways in which the basic technologies of BitTorrent might be applied to increase download speeds for smaller files than those for which it is currently efficient? My best idea on the subject is to package several small, related files in archives whose format would allow you to see *where* in the archive the files you actually want would be located. There would be considerably many people out there who would want the whole archive's contents, who would act as seeds, and those who only wanted certain files could get the archive directory and download the file portions that contained the files of interest to them.
Is this an area which interests you at all, and if so, what are your own plans on the matter?
If people are to respect the law, perhaps the law should begin by respecting the people.
Have you done simulations of the propagation of data from seed(s) to leeches to compare the mean and standard deviation of a leeches transfer time for torrents of different sizes for a set of virtual peers with certain download/upload bandwidth and firewall conditions? What is the relationship between the combined available upload bandwidth of the seed(s), the number of peer leeches their firewall status and download and upload bandwidth, to the transfer time for a file of a given size for a client of a given potential download/upload bandwidth and firewall status?
Will you please stop posting links to individual torrent trackers? They are already overloaded with bandwidth as it is, and getting slashdotted is not helping the situation.
I belong to a very popular forum that found this article and has said some nasty things about ./ and its users, but I will not post them as I do not want to reduce my karma with flamebait material.
Having said that, I strongly urge Slashdot's editors to think twice about posting the actual links (or any stories relating thereto) of torrent trackers.
Respectfully yours, - Brad C.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
I'd like to see a feature that restricts uploads and/or downloads to hosts within a geographic region.
In New Zealand, our national bandwidth is generally free but international is extremely expensive once a given cap is reached. Bittorrent is very difficult to use in this situation because it is so easy to run up a huge bill.
Any clients support this?
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
BT seems to be the perfect tool for prevntion of slashdotting of file mirrors; do you ever plan to extend this functionality to a "mini p2p webserver" that would allow website owners to distribute their content to ad-hoc mirrors provided by subscribers/first viewers and then switch to a "tracker" mode, just feeding (appropriately modified) torrents pointing to those mirrors to the readers? I believe this could do wonders to relieve the /. effect, especially if clients will be allowed to keep/share lists of peers to reduce tracker load.
it is an obvious observation that a p2p client relying on a central server for various features is asking for trouble. we know the scalability of bittorrent communities has been crippled in having to rely on apache for key features -- see torrentse.cx (where else could you get 300k/s downloading a file that from a server that takes 45 seconds to generate the index page...)
many bad things have been said about this centralized nature, some that _must_ be fixed in bittorrent (one file one port??), some that just make life easier (really, if you wanted 'search' and better scalability, dump the torrent files on gnutella not apache...) that said, there are some cases where that centralization is necessary... if it weren't for the fact that the torrent files are static, and the fragment download ordering is relatively random, the typical torrent's sustained 100k/s would be more than ideal for streaming video.
given that bittorrent's strength has been shown to be the case where large numbers of users want exactly the same data at the same time, have you ever seriously considered implementing a streaming varient of bittorrent?
are there any quirks inherent in either streaming media formats or the bittorrent protocol that preclude the clients uploading streams to each other to distribute the bandwidth in the fashion we've come to love in our torrents? (aside from needing a _really_ big local buffer, and _no_ lag in the tracker)