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Caching Torrent files in DNS
bodin writes "This is a proof of concept version of BitTorrent where the torrent files are transported over DNS. This will of course bog down BIND servers all over the planet. Everyone should be thankful that the files are not sent over DNS."
Seriously. I don't pretend to understand 100% of the technology involved, but it seems pretty clear even to me that:
- DNS servers, as the name implies, are for serving DNS information.
- For information to be propagated at a good speed, we don't want DNS servers to be bogged down.
- If we start using DNS servers to send information larger than the usual DNS information, we bog them down.
That isn't to say that I think BitTorrent cacheing isn't possible. I just don't think it's a good idea to use existing DNS servers for it, although perhaps something could be built on similar technology, or dedicated Torrent users could run their own DNS servers if they're that determined to do something so bandwidth-intensive..."It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by a grue." -- Zork
DNS is being used to exchange the Torrent files, which are small, not the data itself, which is large.
The Torrent files are indexes that tell your BitTorrent program where and how to get its data.
This sounds very useful, since what was missing from the BitTorrent network was a way of distributing cached Torrent files, and this is exactly what DNS provides.
Remains to be seen whether it actually works, but it's a neat concept.
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If you read the article and know anything about DNS, you can see that he is splitting the file into 126 byte segments and storing the parts in TXT records of individual hosts. The host naming scheme is quite clever, I might add.
The goal is to offload the duty of serving up the files from the download servers to an existing distributed network. He even mentions that the DNS servers caching these records would consume massive amounts of memory, and then (like a spammer) blows it off as "its [memory] not that expensive today anyway."
If this is actually implemented on a wide scale, DNS administrators will simply stop caching TXT records, putting the load right back on the original download server where it belongs. Or worse, they may stop caching records altogether, which could only lead us all down the path of chaos, death and destruction.
I agree that it's clever, but like a deadly virus, not something that should leave the lab on a large scale.
They are not talking about transfering data directly through the DNS channels. They are talking about using the DNS system to replace the tracker server. In reality they are both doing basically the same thing -- they are both mearly creating an abstration that points to the actual electronic address where are resource is located.
While I am not really to hot about tracking through BIND I do think that the two protocols can learn from each other. What makes DNS so great is that it is a distributed system which balances the load more or less evenly among connected nodes but the system is useless in dealing with dynamic IP, NAT, intermittent connections, etc. that effect most work stations at the fringe of the Internet. This is were P2P technologies like bittorent are starting to excel. Taken together these technologies could create a new hybridized standard that will once again allow workstations to be a presence on the Internet by creating a new Universal Resource Locator (URL) that will transend the barriors of DHCP, NAT, etc. and reinforce the advantage of distributed hierchies to peer to peer.
Well.... The files are small and you have to do a DNS lookup *anyway* to reach the site they are on so maybe it's not toally stupid.... But it's probably a very bad idea to encourage this kind of thing
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From TFA: "due the nature of the DNS it *CACHES* the entries"
No, that's BIND. And a BIND zonefile is just that: a BIND zonefile. All this is about BIND, not DNS. It does not work "over" or "with" or "through" DNS.
It's not clever either. More like abusing other people's resources.
" DNS is well designed to cache for well defined amounts of time."
It's amazing to me how well designed the DNS infrastructure is. Just the right balance of decentralization and authority. Unlike P2P systems it relies on root servers to provide an authoritive content but it also provides a completely decentrized administration infrastructure.
I am shocked that DNS or the ideas behind it have not been used for all kinds of things.
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