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Decentralizing Bittorrent
An anonymous reader writes "Exeem is a new file-sharing application being developed by the folks at SuprNova.org. Exeem is a decentralized BitTorrent network that basically makes everyone a Tracker. Individuals will share Torrents, and seed shared files to the network. At this time, details and the full potential of this project are being kept very quiet. However it appears this P2P application will completely replace SuprNova.org; no more web mirrors, no more bottle necks and no more slow downs. Exeem will marry the best features of a decentralized network, the easy searchability of an indexing server and the swarming powers of the BitTorrent network into one program. Currently, the network is in beta testing and already has 5,000 users (the beta testing is closed.) Once this program goes public, its potential is enormous. "
If it's allowed to be reached anyhow.. I have a feeling it's going to be tied down if it's the "next" big thing..
I'm not the devil.. just his advocate.
It's only for legitimate trade of legal files you own, kids.
Do Not Eat iPod Shuffle
Hey! I have this great thing, but you can't see, use, or otherwise evaluate it on your own. But it will be great when it's done!
Didn't realize these guys were hackers, too. Wonder how many RIAA/MPAA scum got in on the beta test?
just the end was affected. the correct version is
its potential for lawsuits from 'artist' organizations is enormous
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Just imagine the benefits of the system, with so many new trackers, the RIAA/MPAA will demand even more when they haul you into court.
"Your honor, the defendant wasn't just a person sharing the file, our records indicate that he was the person sharing the file, running a server, not just a client on a network with files to share"
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
There are just so many different P2P products these days. Doesn't each new one subdivide the market more? If half of the torrent folks use the new thing, and half stick with bittorrent, don't both of them become less useful? I'm not sure what can be done about that, and I'm not saying there shouldn't be progress. But I miss the days when there was only Napster, and you never came up blank on your search terms. -Lep
I am allowed to criticize you: you are not allowed to criticize me. Sorry, that's just how things are.
I think the biggest win is the ease of finding files. Theoretically this would allow file information to propagate, and I tihnk the most interesting problem that will be faced is stability. How do you make effective searches that do not loop around the network?
This could be a really cool development, and there is a lot of research in the EE/CS community right now going in to studying these decentralized networks. They show great promise!
With the IP addresses still out there, wtf is the point?
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
The only time I ever had a problem with torrents is when downloading something very timely and popular, and the tracker would get soaked. This happened with both Fedora Core 1 and 2. Take away this one tiny problem, and you have a perfect technology.
So BitTorrent took the whole "everybody's on the same network" and converted it into "one network per file".... and now this new system puts it *back* like that? How is this different from every other p2p filewhoring system?
How can you truly decentralize P2P? Don't we still need to hit up a server that has a list of all the people? How can you track the trackers if you don't have a list of who is sharing? The only way I can think is just crude port scanning across subnets...can anyone clarify this for me?
Publishing a torrent is incredibly easy, drag the folder in, pick a category, click go. It hashes it and it starts seeding within seconds.
It still (obviously) needs some work doing to the app to make it more friendly but it's shaping up well.
Get paid to search..It's geniune and
This is excellent news from a user standpoint. I use Bittorrent for just about everything - downloading Linux distributions, game betas and, uh... other commonly downloaded files. But I always seem to be a bit behind the tracker, and when I go to download there are hardly ever more than 5 peers at a time.
What I want to know is: basically, this is an indexing server that will allow torrents to be searchable. What happens with multiple versions of the same torrent? For instance, let's say there are 2 torrent distributions of Gentoo, identical files within the torrents. It would seem this server would ideally be able to recognize the similarities and kind of 'merge' the files - is this possible?
M
Just a minor thing - if half use each, then bittorrent becomes LESS useful and exeem becomes much MORE useful than with only 5000 beta testers.
I say let's give it a chance - never know, it might make up for what you miss:-) Worst case, no one will use it and everyone will stick with regular bittorrent.
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What would really matter these days is anonymity. It's a bit late to develop yet another non-anonymous network, when the real problem is the risk of lawsuits...
I realize that full anonymity is going to be a problem, but at least some degree of deniability and limited IP address propagation would be a boon. SuprNova might have the name recognition to really give something like that a good start.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Pirates will be able do download their illegal wares much faster, without the inconvenience of web mirrors going offline by pesky interference by law enforcement officials.
Let's just be clear: BitTorrent is legal, and can be very useful
but the trackers on suprnova.org pretty much all link to ILLEGAL pirated files.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
How is Freenet not mentioned in this context. It is decentralized and other than the dropped packets / routing needed for anonymity it is swarming dowloads since any node might have the data you need.
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
People might think that the parent post is just mindlessly repeating a cliche, but in fact I've been to Korea many times and I have never seen anyone beloe the age of 50 decentralizing BitTorrent.
The real Ralph Yarro posts as Anonymous Coward. Anyone else is an impostor.
...can I run it on a Phantom?
Another one bites the dust
I think they're ignoring the fact that to be the "next big thing" requires being more than just incrementally better than what it replaces. Bittorrent itself is exponentially better than a FTP or HTTP server when demand is high. And Suprnova works quite well as it is, so I think it will be interesting to see whether Suprnova holds tough if people don't switch to the new technology fast enough.
always produce the best software!
1)With all the lawsuit attempts and legislation in the works, we still haven't seen filesharing development dwindle as much as one would expect.
2)The RIAA and their comrads are lawsuit crazy, but you haven't seen any "cease and decist" orders issued out to projets like this. A bigger thing to note is the fact that everyone seems to be a target - except companies like LimeWire who actually sell the P2P service and make money off of it (they get paid for the ads in the free version as well).
3)How the heck can any judge take these cases seriously, when, like one of my fellow posters made notice of, companies like Sony pratice the business tatics that they do. Their electronics division sells the mp3 players, but the record companies that they own forbid you to transfer the songs to mp3 players.
Go Figure...
Is it made in a cross platform programming language, or at the very least have a open protocoL? I have a nagging suspicion it does not!!!
Until they release some info about the inner workings of this app, there's not much to talk about.
There are serious problems with decentralising BitTorrent. One of the reasons that people have such good transfers on BT is that there is central tracker supervising particular file and knowing all users serving bits and pieces of this file. This way in case of high demand/high popularity files I achieve speeds over 1MB/s (yes, that's megabyte).
Depending on design choices you can have couple of trackers with subset of users on each of them, or every user seeding file has his own tracker. In first case your client wouldn't be able to use all cloud, and in second tracker would disappear when original seeder turned off his computer.
You can of course design some communication between trackers, or elections or some other magic, but it's too early to tell at the moment. I'll wait for more information.
Whatever they do, I hope that there will be some console based client for this, because asymmetric connections at homes plainly suck at upload (hence on torrent at download too), and I'd rather keep running my torrents on the server plugged into the fast network.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Decentralized Bittorrent? Wake me up when they have secured Bittorrent and then I'll listen.
My ISP, Mediacom, scans my network packets to determine if I'm grabbing a torrent of questionable nature. If they see it, they'll send me a nasty email. Hence, I'm on the edonkey networks now because BT is clearly not an option at the moment. I'm sure they'll scan those packets, too, at some point.
Unsecured BT is fast, sure, but if your ISP is snooping...well. And illegal or questionable content aside, it'd be handy for distributing other files to people in a more secure manner.
Or is this out there and I'm just missing something?
Blog,Twitter
The great thing about BitTorrent is that you are being pointed to a known file. You can judge for yourself who points you at a given file by what website is hosting the tracker. This is one of the reasons you don't get the spoofed files on BitTorrent. The fact that you can tell who is offering a tracker also means that the RIAA can. Thus the RIAA can sue this person. I see a distributed bittorrent being useful for non RIAA protected files. Once bittorrent is distributed though, the RIAA will start spoofing it.
"brxref
Any new big thing needs absolute anonimity. I already worry for all of the innocent civilians out there using bittorrent now to get their favorite shows and movies. I'm sure their transgressions are all being logged for future lawsuits.
And yes they are INNOCENT. Here's one good reason why. We first must ask, why did the founders of the US constitution feel it was important for accused criminals to be convicted only by a jury of peers?
I believe this is because they knew that honest citizens doing honest activities will often run afoul of the law, especially in a broken government where England (back then) or corporations today make all the laws. The jury of the peers is built into our criminal justice system in order to prevent just this kind of thing. I mean the hope is that a jury of bitorrent users will never convict a fellow bit torrent user. That's probably why we're only seeing civil lawsuits today by the RIAA and the like. I think I criminal jury trial for file sharing would be quite interesting.
"...being kept very quiet" (until now)
/.ed, so I can't speak directly to Exeem, but it sounds from the blurb like these features are a possibility. Hope it's free in all senses.
This should be good... BT is without question the fastest p2p app (in fact, the only thing that has ever topped out my 'net connection), but it needs two features to kill off the others in my book:
1. Search - it's no fun to rely on third party websites to find things. Hopefully now we'll be able to do this.
2. Anonymity - BT could use an option for a system like Freenet's for making it really hard to tell who's serving who. Combined with the distributed nature of BT, it would be difficult to prove anything at all about BT users.
The article is
Here's another thought: the current BT system is really good at dispersing new content, like distro ISOs and TV shows, through RSS feeds from central websites. It would be cool to be able to subscribe to network-wide custom feeds, to stay informed about new files that match certain criteria.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
It's just a pet peeve of mine, but copyright infringement and theft are two distinct crimes.
I hate it when people equate copyright infringement with stealing. Illegal downloading is more like sneaking into a movie, concert or ballgame without a ticket than it is like theft.
MM
--
By including this sig, the copyright holders of this work or collection unreservedly place it in the public domain.
Anonymity is probably the most important feature of modern P2P applications and crucial for their survival. From my understanding the first version of Exeem does not guarantee anonymity yet. How soon will it be implemented? A great distributed P2P application is Freenet: http://freenet.sourceforge.net
I don't agree with the all-in-one idea. It seems to me the problem would be better solved in a more modular way.
(1) having a search that only indexes trackers, and can then launch an external app of your choice to do the torrent download
(2) improving the bittorrent protocol so anybody with a seed can failover as the tracker
When I want to download torrents, I want to use Azureus, regardless of whether it was a P2P searched torrent or one off a website. I don't want to have to use some all-in-one app that decides for me the One True Way that downloads shall be handled, merely because it implemented the search to find them.
According to them no linux version for a long time. This probably means no open source either. Forget it.
/. will give eXeem a pretty big audience though."
Some other stuff:
"The main problem with kazaa is that it doesn't have hash system which means that if you make MP3 with same name and same size that's already on the network and someone downloads one part of this file from you the MP3 will be corrupted. (This is exactly what RIAA did to kazaa). And since people don't delete bad MP3's from their computer you have more and more of this files in the network. And here is where our client is different you wont be able to corrupt files in the network because they have hash.
One more difference from kazaa is that we wont have entire folders of files on the network only those that will be manually uploaded from users. Kazaa has so many viruses because users don't even know they have them on there computer. So I personally think that we will have a lot less fake files on our network and we also plan to implement rate system so that if people find fakes,
viruses, spyware in one of the files they will vote it as bad so hopfully not many people will download that file.
What we are trying to do is bring best of P2P world and best of bittorrent together."
About eXeem replacing suprnova:
"That's a reporters view on it. Remember, they probably know next to nothing about eXeem, and are doing what reporters do best: bullshit.
I'm an Exeem beta tester that's been trying to give it a fair shake. I'll probably get banned just for this post, but here's some general details about the new client.
First off, it's in beta testing, but it's not ready for beta. It has some serious isses at the moment. Torrents disappear off the network for no reason is just one of them.
Second, they don't have 5,000 beta testers. They sent out 5,000 serials, but my best guess by looking at the network is that there are less than 1,000 actually testing it and never more than 200 or 300 people running it at the same time. They actually sent out new serials to all the 5,000 beta testers because they didn't have enough people.
Third, it lacks the details. With most BT clients, such as BitTornado and G3 Torrent, you can see all kinds of details about the file you're trying to acquire, how many seeds, portions of seeds, how many complete copies are distributed amongst the peers if there are no seeds. Exeem lacks all of these details.
Fourth, it doesn't use bitTorrent. It's based on bitTorrent, and uses libTorrent, but it's not a torrent. It's their own unique format. Exeem will not be compatible with other BT clients. It's use their client or don't connect. It almost appears to be a Kazaa rip off with bitTorrent features.
Fifth. 'But it's open source? Why can't we just write our own clients?' From everything I can tell, they have no intention of making this an open source project. They're talking about the type of ads they want to put in it.
Sixth: Pr0n. A lot of people like Suprnova.org and other torrent sites because there is no pr0n. Exeem has an adult filter, but 'Adult' is one of the more popular categories for Exeem users at the moment.
Exeem will not replace bitTorrent. The problem I see is that Exeem is being developed by the same guys that run suprnova.org. Whether Exeem ever works or ever becomes popular, will they take down what appears to be the most popular torrent site on the web because of it?
There are more problems with Exeem, but these are the major ones that I see. I'm sure some of the coders of Exeem will be reading this post. Please feel free to tell me where I'm wrong and why.
Aero
Please stop hurting America -- Jon Stewart
Well, first, the existing leechers can failover to the new seeder/tracker, and that's still useful to let them all finish even if nothing else.
Second, whichever seeder is elected as tracker can advertise itself for indexing onto the "tracker search" network I proposed in my upthread post. So then new searches find the new tracker.
Third, the web pages or whatever that are linking the torrent can (manually?) re-link a generated new torrent for the new seed, which has meanwhile kept the torrent alive rather than letting it all fall to pieces.
What I am missing from the enormous array of file sharing tools is a simple one. Sharing a virtual LAN with your friends. There are many VPN server/clients out there, but they are all point to point. What I would like is some software that emulates a workgroup LAN, so you could use simple SMB or FTP filesharing over a trusted, encrypted, distributed network. The tricky part would probably the broadcast packages and the IP range.
SSL is encryption, too. Forbid encryption and that lock icon gets broken on every site in compliance with the law.
But there are plenty of outcomes short of that which can interfere with our civil liberties. And more importantly, our ability to do business. You want to send NDA information in plain text over the Net, you go right ahead.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Remember that the purpose of freenet was NOT to share a bunch of binary files.. .
Its intent is to allow people to publish *information*, ( i.e. WebPages ) in an anonymous fashion.. So judging it by 'speed' of your file downloads is an unfair judgment
Anything else that is grafted on, such as p2p type downloads, chat, etc is just that.. stuff grafted on.. and veers away from the original intent.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Given the name, (Exeem), should we assume it is an exe file for running on Wintel platforms?
Suprnova used to have a significant collect of Macintosh resources listed.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
As acknowledged by Bush Jr., but denied by Franklin Graham, who had the nerve to criticize Bush's understanding of theology for saying it. I'm an atheist myself, but that sort of thing annoys me. I hate to give Bush credit for anything, but at least he's less of a religious bigot than many (other?) so-called "evangelicals".
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One is that the Bittorrent protocol is thusfar the best protocol for transferring large files. The clients are designed to transfer large files. The Edonkey/Kademlia protocol exists to transfer large files as well, but it is just not as good as Bittorrent. It is much slower.
p2p has to be looked at as a process. There is the search for information. There is the response to the search. Then there is the request to download a file. Then there is the download of the file. Each of these parts is separate and important. In Bittorrent, only the last part, the download is decentralized. The prior parts are not decentralized, are not p2p - even the request to download goes to a centralized torrent.
Despite this, Many people figure that Bittorrent's partial file sharing, protocol attributes and program attributes are what make the downloading good. Of course, having a good source of current holders of the file - partially or fully, is important, as is having a good hash of the file, or multiple hashes in the case of Bittorrent. But this can all probably be done via p2p as well.
As far as the comments on hashes and file integrity, this is not a problem at all. There are many ways to deal with this. If you want, you can still have a central torrent, but you could only check it once instead of many times. Or maybe there could be distibuted PGP signatures of the validity of certain hashes.
As far as other comments, I'm interested in this so I'm glad to know, although I agree its vaporware until release.
As far as Freenet, encryption, IP addresses and so forth - I think for technical innovation reasons, unencrypting, non-masking p2p technologies need to be developed for now. I'm also glad, alongside this, anonymous, IP masking, encryption-capable p2p networks like Freenet are being created. And once p2p becomes mature, I hope the technologies implement any encryption and anonymity that does not put in too much overhead. Turn it on by default, and let people manually turn it off if they want.
As far as copyrighted material and so forth, I really could give a damn. Big corporations hate the idea of sharing, and trying to kill something like Linux or a GPL open p2p protocol and client is instinctive to them, just like the enclosure of the commons was.
And as far as non-centralization being one of the benefits of Bittorrent, and decentralizing ruining it, I completely disagree. As I said before, file integrity and hashes are not a problem, you can do PGP signatures on hashes or something. Any problem can be dealt with. Bittorrent is good because it is the best protocol to deal with partial file sharing of large files. Any of its centralized features can be decentralized, some of them very easily, as I'm sure Freem is doing.
I am a beta tester, and one thing that I do not like about eXeem is the fact that you have to know what you are looking for. One of the reason I like suprnova more, is because you can browse for the files you want. Also, eXeem is plagued with a interface not as clean as Azureas. Suprnova is better than eXeem.
So, lets just clear all this up:
copyright infringement != theft
copyright infringement != trespassing
trespassing != theft
Makes sense to me.
"But I'm still right here, giving blood and keeping faith. And I'm still right here."
The penalty for sneaking into a ballgame is being thrown out, maybe being blacklisted. The penalty for getting caught with mp3s is having to settle for a $10,000 fine. The value of the ballgame is higher than the value of at least a couple of albums monetarily, and it's infinitely more valuable than any number of mp3s in the sense that the ballgame occurs only once. Is it just me or is there a certain level of disparity here?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Your right about the history. Actually at Purdue University, they have a class called the Philosophy of Western Religions that cover the roots of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They are also often called the Abrahamic Faiths, becuase they believe in the God of Abraham. Linguistically Allah actually mean "The God". As in the one and only God.
But your point about the hostality is wrong. Actually throughout most of history, the presecuted Jewish people found safety with the Muslims. One example being the Jews who left Spain during the Spanish Inquisition, fleed to Muslim run areas. The "conflict" started after one of the world wars, where the then province of "Palestine" in the Ottoman empire was given to Brittian as a Mandate (similar to a colony). They intern had promised that they would make it a "Homeland" for the Jewish people. Tons of Jewish people from Europe migrated there, too many people, not enough jobs, that led to civil unrest, the Brits left the mess, and the Jewish people declared it a sovern country. Then every Arab country around them attacked and subsequenty lost.
So yeah, religion isn't really at the core of the conflict. Its politics. Yes people may use religion to rally people to do immoral acts on both sides, but haven't tyrents always used religion for their evil purposes?
You're a tremendous fool if you think that being an atheist means knowing little about theology.
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