Hurricane Electric Offers Bit Torrent Service

heypete writes "Hurricane Electric is now offering BitTorrent tracker/seeder services on behalf of paying customers. One need only upload the file desired to a specified directory by FTP, and their system will automatically generate a torrent file, add it to a tracker for that customer, and act as a "seed" to ensure that the file is available to downloaders. This could prove to be extremely useful for distributors of large files (such as Linux distributions), as bandwidth for the tracker and seeding services does not count against the bandwidth quota for the account."

Comments

What are they going to do

[odano]

When somebody uploads illegal content?

Re:What are they going to do

[Craigj0]

Cancel thier account and charge a disconnect fee I suspect.

Re:What are they going to do

[chris_mahan]

Paying customers. So, name, address, phone number, credit card info. They would be stupid to upload illegal stuff.

Re:What are they going to do

[ciroknight]

Not stupid, naive. It almost seems too much like a trap. Of course this is great for those trying to distribute huge things quickly, maybe lessening the load of a slashdotting, but past that..

Re:What are they going to do

[strider44]

why would it be a trap? You do know that there are files other than warez and tv shows that you want to distribute using bit torrent don't you?

Re:What are they going to do

[sponga]

you mean they solved the problem of credit card fraud? WOOHOOO!

Re:What are they going to do

[cowsandmilk]

uh, I think your account would be cancelled pretty quickly if you were doing credit card fraud.

Re:What are they going to do

[ciroknight]

sure, but most of anything we have to share these days is so laden in copyright, that it would be virtually impossible to be sure if you could *legally* distribute it. Things like pictures you've taken yourself (in RAW format, and a WHOLE lot of them..), or linux distros, or.. welp, im out of ideas.

Re:What are they going to do

[kerrle]

Think small software company that comes out with the next Winamp - or an independant game company with the next Bejeweled. There are tons of uses.

Re:What are they going to do

[cg0def]

yeah only when the RIAA goes after the person that uploaded the torrent they will also go after the company because they are hosting the torrent and that is just as illegal as sharing the file. So the company is begging for some dumb user to get sued and drag them with him/her. Where the heck is the CEO's brain at?

Re:What are they going to do

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

Grandparent probably was thinking about folks using stolen names/addresses/creditcards to pay for access. If the account gets nuked they don't give adamn, it wasn't their name on the account or credit card anyway.

Re:What are they going to do

[strider44]

sites like Machinima.com use bittorrent to distribute legal files. Legal torrents is a site like suprnova that doesn't tolerate illegal content. A mod team that I'm in in fact uses bit torrent to distribute, and a service like this would be well appreciated. By the way, a file doesn't have to be overly large to justify using bit torrent. I've downloaded *legal* files that are only a few megabytes big. (Firefox comes to my mind quite quickly)

But yes, there are plenty of legal files.

Re:What are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

And how long do you think it takes for someone to notice and the account to disappear anyway? One month? Two?

I suppose someone fast could get the account, put up the fantastic four screener rip, and get the word out far enough to get 20 or 30 copies out before the victim gets the CC bill.

Re:What are they going to do

[1u3hr]

Same as they do when anyone puts up illegal content on a website.

The interesting point is that this could create a shining example of "good" P2P, for when they try to legislate all P2P out of existence as inherently evil.

Re:What are they going to do

[Wesley Felter]

DMCA safe harbor. ISPs aren't liable for anything.

Re:What are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

20 or 30 copies? More like 2000-3000.

Re:What are they going to do

[EnderWigginsXenocide]

Yeah, a month or two. In that time the HIGH BANDWITH COMMERCIAL SERVER seed A FEW DOZEN COPIES A DAY over bittorent, and with CLIENT-CLIENT transers total completed downloads could number 50 a day. Say it takes a full billing cycle on the credit card before the rightful owner notices it, calls their bank, and disputes the charge. It takes the bank 12-24 hours to process the stuff on their end. The torrent-trackers bank takes an additional 24 hours to notify them, and it takes another day or 2 for the account to be locked (opportunity give for the customer to explain what's going on.) Total time 30-34 days. That's the potential for upwards of a THOUSAND copies of a 700MB DIVX copy of a movie to be spread about. NOTE: I am LOWBALLING my estimate of the ISP/Torrent-Trackers bandwith.

Re:What are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Judging by their response to nearly 10 spam complaints about the same server I sent to them over an 8 week period, absolutely nothing.

Re:What are they going to do

[idolcrash]

A file doesn't need to be overly large, but that was what BT was designed for. It erases many of the bottlenecks that surround typical one-on-one p2p sending and also takes the load off of servers, which is why it is ideal (and, again, designed for) large files. Not that there is anything wrong with trading small files, but using a server would typically do fine with smaller files, such as--from your example--firefox. Low size and high traffic can also be a bit of a killer, though.

Re:What are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Or FPS modders, for instance.

When a new version of a mod comes out there's HUGE demand, and usually you've got to use a bazillion FTP servers. A few torrent seeds and you're set!

Re:What are they going to do

[strider44]

no it wasn't designed for large files. It was designed purely to reduce server load, be it a large quantity of small files or a quantity of large files. In my example using the traditional server output, the Firefox servers crashed, and the only way to get it for a few hours was through bit torrent, so obviously servers can crash from only serving small files.

Bit torrent was designed only to reduce server load, nothing else.

Re:What are they going to do

[gl4ss]

it was for *large amounts of data*

large being bigger than the .torrents themselfs, of course.

several mb is big anyways, but with ff the torrent acted likely as a secondary server of sorts.. that only very few of the total people hammering the firefox's site would actually use.

anyways.. service like this could be great for sharing *anything* between a group of(trusted) friends(just pgp whatever you're wishing to share..).

Re:What are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is... that people will be able to download ILLEGAL CONTENT on the INTERNET?

This is a travesty! Such a thing should not be allowed to happen!

Re:What are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

The Legal Torrents site shows a grand total of 28 (twenty-eight) torrents. This is 4 orders of magnitude below the average torrent site.

Re:What are they going to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my goodness! The man is going to come get you for distributing photos that have a copyright on them!! Oh wait... you own the copyright. Phew, thank goodness! For a second there I thought everyone was out to get me.

Understand the law. It works. The law is good.

Opportunist Bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen their hosting charges ?

great news except..

[ciroknight]

Some people aren't going to read the EULA, upload some W4R3Z, get arrested/fined/etc, then the Republicans will start shouting again about how P2P is inheiriently evil, and that will be the end of that.

worse case scenario yes, but still, you've gotta wonder about that.

Re:great news except..

[bofkentucky]

Except for the fact that Hollywood donates twice as much to democrats, you pegged that one pretty well.

There are asswipes from both sides of the aisle, at least those of us on the right recognize that fact.

Re:great news except..

[nuclear305]

"then the Republicans will start shouting again about how P2P is inheiriently evil, and that will be the end of that."

Except the fact that the US is not the legal authority over Earth. They may whine, they may try to make it illegal in some way, and they may even succeed but it will never be the end so long as its legal elsewhere.

Re:great news except..

[AnotherEscobar]

<Diabolical>Yes, yes. We will soon shut down all that is good (and of course, illegal), and that, as you say, will be the end of that. You are most clever. Ashcroft will be knocking on your door personally as you are clearly an intellect to be reckoned with.</Diabolical>

Re:great news except..

[1000StonedMonkeys]

Just like people who buy commercial webhosting accidentally upload warez to their websites to distribute using p2p?

Re:great news except..

[strider44]

That could be because they need to pay twice as much to keep them in check. (That was a joke, I'm an Australian, I have no idea.)

I think he might have just been saying republicans because republicans are in power (and/or) republicans have a history of complaining about this sort of thing, not directly because of his political beliefs. I may be wrong though.

Re:great news except..

[unitron]

Well, there's Hollywood the individuals, like Streisand or Heston, who give according to their own political leanings, and then there's Hollywood the corporations, the **AAs, the TimeWarners and the Disneys, and they give in order to own politicians. That heavy bias towards Democrats is probably the result of the donations of wealthy individuals.

Re:great news except..

[Anonymous Coward]

There are asswipes from both sides of the aisle, at least those of us on the right recognize that fact.

The first half of that sentence I agree with completely, the second half, well, not even the first half of the sentence agrees with the second half.

There are asswipes on both sides, so why do you claim that "at least those of us on the right recognize that fact". There are asswipes on both the left and right who don't get it, and there are intelligent people on both sides that do get it.

Re:great news except..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd actually think that Hollywood companies would lean Democrat. Dem's would be far less likely to slap down a fine for swears or boob shots. And it is quite a fallacy to think that Democrats are against big business; they are definately _FOR_ big business, but sometimes it just happens to be different businesses that put them in power.

Re:great news except..

[St. Arbirix]

I guess you missed all the OpenSecrets.org links and Slashdot articles about how heavily the media industry supplements the campaigns of the Democrats. For example: Frtiz Hollings (D-Disney).

Software companies (esp. big ones like MS and IBM) donate down the line between the two parties so don't blame anti-piracy laws on any one party.

I'll bet you think tort reform, phone company monopolies, and poor U.S. education standards are the fault of Republicans too. Hell, even our bloated government bureaucracy is 69'ing the Democrats.

Re:great news except..

[bofkentucky]

Let's take a look at who the democrats have nominated for president over my lifetime.
Carter -- Asswipe, has improved a little, but a still cowardly asswipe with a nobel prize.
Mondale -- Asswipe
Dukakis -- Asswipe
Clinton -- Didn't sound like an asswipe on the trail, wife and his taste in women made up for it once elected
Gore -- Wooden asswipe
Kerry -- Not much to chose from in the primaries, I can respect Dean though, he really believes European style socialism works and is attempting to sell it to us, the rest of them know it doesn't work.

The republican's in that era, for better or worse, have sold canidates who have followed pretty close to what you expect, low taxes, no abortions, strong military , etc. If you buy into it, you can pull the lever happily, if you don't, you are convinced by the liberals that the election of a republican means the end of the world.

Of course, I voted libertarian in 04 b/c I knew I was in a solid "red" state.

Re:great news except..

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, you call Carter an asswipe but you forgot the unprecedented lack of intelligence that somehow managed to get elected after him. There are still people dumb enough to think Reagan won the Cold War. I guess that's the one benefit Republicans get for cutting education funding.

Re:great news except..

[Ohreally_factor]

My theory is that the Studios lean Democrat in campaign contributions because California on the whole is a pretty much democratic state (although we do seem to like Republican Govs), and the elected reps for the areas where the studios are actually elected tend to be dems.

However, one needn't worry that there is a huge imbalance. Obscene amounts of money go to both parties from the giant media teat.

Re:great news except..

[bofkentucky]

Where in the U.S. Constitution does it say congress must provide educational services? Alsom, why am I being taxed at the local and state level to fund education?

Re:great news except..

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about? You just made a list of democratic presidential candidates and called them asswipes.

Look. There are a lot of people in the USA, and most of them put themselves either in the left or right. There are a lot of smart and stupid people on both sides. The stupid people on the left pick on the stupid people on the right (thinking that they are picking on the right as a whole), while stupid people on the right do the same thing to those on the left.

The smart people on either side just accept that there are stupid people on both sides and get over it. Your comment appeared to acknowledge that at first "There are asswipes from both sides of the aisle", but then seems to brush that aside and then claim that everybody on the right is smart, "at least those of us on the right recognize that fact".

If there are asswipes on both sides of the aisle, then it seems logical to assume that there are people on the right who don't get that fact. Yes?

Legit

[StevenHenderson]

This could prove to be extremely useful for distributors of large files (such as Linux distributions), as bandwidth for the tracker and seeding services does not count against the bandwidth quota for the account.

You've got to love that everytime a new p2p program/service comes out, it is always explained as having legitimate uses.

Everyone know that, sure, BT is great to share Linux distros, but in actuality, it will be used to share mp3s, divx rips, and pr0n.

Re:Legit

[ciroknight]

It would be a great way to distribute any commonly accessed data if set up properly, and with an ISP/Hosting provider with an assload of bandwitdh, BT could be set up as a kind of web-mirroring system, like Coral, only with BT as a back end.

Such a system would be fast, and a huge advantage to consumers. Maybe google should check on it ;)

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

BT sucks for mp3s. Files are too small.

Re:Legit

[hunterx11]

The majority of its uses may be illegitimate, but I doubt such users would take advantage of such an aboveground service as this.

Re:Legit

[Klar]

While some may say that not all the things I download with BT are on the good side of legal... it has been very useful to download legit stuff. I've downloaded several Linux distros much faster than I would have been able to do from a regular server, also has been good for downloading other free programs and small time videos that want to be distributed to as many people as possible.

And if you're gunna use a service for non-legit stuff, why wouldn't you use exeem lite or something where you don't give a credit card # or name..

Re:Legit

[iamacat]

You argument may be valid for Kazaa and friends, but BitTorrent is used legally quite often. It provides a unique feature - bandwidth sharing - while classic P2P mostly helps you hide from accountability because your machine is only visible by a few peers.

In addition, BT is inconvinient for illegal use, because URL of the tracker is exposed and you know exactly who shared the file and how to take it down.

Re:Legit

[Ajmuller]

pornography isn't illegal.
So why did you lump it in with those other illegal things?
Do i sense some serious sexual repression on your part, yes I do.

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

If they did that they may be able to start archiving the internet. Well, or at least the big/important areas - not necessarily every Tom Dick & Harry's website.

Re:Legit

[Mistlefoot]

Except for the fact that most of the MP3's traded via bittorrent are fulls cd's or full Artist Discographies I'd agree. As it now stands though a person could go out and in a couple of hours have the complete discography of a large number of artists.

As far as pirate mp3's, for this reason alone, Bittorrent is far faster and offers better results if what is being searched for can be found.

Re:Legit

[Mage Powers]

uh lots of porn is copyrighted.

Re:Legit

[ciroknight]

If they did that they may be able to start archiving the internet. Well, or at least the big/important areas

offtopic, but anyways: Archival isn't/shouldn't be our priority for the internet, but cleaning it up would be a great start. Right now I see the internet as one of the most chaotic, messiest organized network ever concieved. BT could allow us to start locating the more important parts of the internet, and speeding up access to them, and giving the internet some structure.

I think it would be easier to archive the internet if we started doing things like data-metadata seperation (ooh look at the flashy text vs "This day in history" kind of seperation), then actually having a company like Google sift through the millions and millions of lines of repeated text, throw out the verbatum replicas [song lyrics, tabs], and develop a nice stylesheet to represent the different kinds of datas (like a nice XSLT sheet for Tabs,MusicML, or a CSS script for print text).

All of this wouldn't be hard, it would just require investments of time and lots of money for the infrastructure. Oh, and co-operation from lots of different people/companies/etc. Imagine having to figure out the copywrite owners for all of the data...

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

yes the majority of stuff I download is warez (tv shows mostly) but I have downloaded plenty of stuff that is legal. You are saying that "yes there are legal uses but that does not make it right" well I have this to say "yes there are illegal uses but that does not make it wrong." All media distribution scemes have a down side this is no different and does not make it wrong.

Re:Legit

[cg0def]

Are seriously that dumb or you just know nothing about BT. BitTorrent was designed only for sharing legal files buy stuff like OSS projects and companies that distribute free LEGAL binaries. This exactly why there is absolutelly no privacy features in the protocol or any of the clients. And this is exactly why work is underway to create BT2 which addresses all the security problems and allows *safe* use of BT for sharing any files (legal or not). BT2 also addresses some other problem that BT has like the load it puts on you internet connection and the boat load of connections that it opens. There have been several interviews with the creator of BT and he has asked more than once if he would implement privacy control and every time he said that BT was never designed to be used for illegal files and therefore he finds no reason to include the features. Plus atomic energy is great but it also could be used to create a trully devastating weapons.

Re:Legit

[brokencomputer]

mp3s and divx rips aren't necessarily illegal... do I sense some serious misunderstandings of what is legal on your part, yes i do.

Re:Legit

[magefile]

Nice rationalizing :-)

Re:Legit

[timeOday]

Do i sense some serious sexual repression on your part, yes I do.

Get a clue, some people prefer private sexual relations with their spouses instead of with a computer screen.

Re:Legit

[Murphy Murph]

BT could be set up as a kind of web-mirroring system, like Coral, only with BT as a back end.

People leave their bittorrent sessions running after downloading warez because they are rewarded for doing so. (High Up/Down ratio = higher status on tracker site= earlier downloads of new stuff)

Without a similar reward system for users, why should they seed after downloading the latest Microsoft service pack, for example? Without willing seeds, bittorrent is inefficient and a poor way to mirror anything.

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be a great way to distribute any commonly accessed data if set up properly,

Apache should look into doing this for all of their projects. For example, the Cocoon zip file download comes in at 35MB -- most of it is jars that you already have.

The bandwidth saving with just that one distribution would be enormous.

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to chose one or the other.

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't have to chose one or the other.

Hmmm... My guess is that you aren't married. If she catches you looking at porn, chances are that she will only leave you with one choice.

Re:Legit

[Spy der Mann]

Everyone know that, sure, BT is great to share Linux distros, but in actuality, it will be used to share mp3s, divx rips, and pr0n.

Just as there are a few people using the internet for legitimate purposes when the vast majority of the bandwidth is to... quote: "share mp3s, divx rips, and pr0n."

Should we ban the internet instead?

Re:Legit

[Guyver3]

while true, I can think of one current addiction of mine that uses either bit torrent or some other swarmcasting/p2p/etc. tool, and that is Blizzard's World of Warcraft, to patch the client side

Re:Legit

[rkrabath]

I leave my torrent windows open because I would like people to do it for me. "Do unto others" and all that jazz I usually seed 1.5-3X the file size

Re:Legit

[rkrabath]

This is slashdot Lets talk feasibility...

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument has no weight. The first time ANY file transfer protocol comes out it is described as having legitimate uses.

But if you think about it, EVERY protocol has had pr0n, warez, mp3s (well, in the last 9 or so years) transferred over it.

Efficient protocols will ALWAYS be used for both legitimate and illegal uses. Is this a reason to kill any new protocol that Pirates cling onto?

---
Oh, and suck my cock (l33t sig, eh?)

Re:Legit

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got to love that everytime a new p2p program/service comes out, it is always explained as having legitimate uses.

Everyone know that, sure, BT is great to share Linux distros, but in actuality, it will be used to share mp3s, divx rips, and pr0n.

Sharing MP3s, DivX rips, and porn are legitimate uses. They only become illegitimate when you don't have permission from the copyright holder, assuming they are not in the public domain.

I really wish people would get the concepts straight in their heads. "MP3" is not a dirty word, and there's no such thing as an illegal file format.

Re:Legit

[InvalidError]

eXeem simply makes everyone a tracker for what files people are downloading. On the legal side of things, it seems eXeem is a guarantee that the tracker is also a downloader or seeder and therefore more legally problematic for the hosts than plain trackers.

After all, even with eXeem, some initial tracker must be contacted before clients can start tracking on each other because they initially only know about the tracker(s) from the .torrent file.

Re:Legit

[MagikFingers]

I'm inclined to disagree with any kind of structure in a free information medium like the internet. The seemingly arbitrary and random nature of the internet is a breeding ground for the kind of inginuity that creates new technology like bittorrent and podcasting and such. (read: open and unordered architecture allows unlimited numbers of organization, allowing multiple formats to 'evolve' from the medium simultaneously, rather than one determined form of order.) Additionally structure requires a certain tech background which limits the numbers of people involved, which in terms reduces the effectiveness of free information flow. I say leave the backbone as simple as possible. Google and such will adapt by ceating more efficient algorithms (or be replaced by those who do). For example, the most advanced computing system on the planet is sitting on your neck, where on the backbone of seemingly unordered and chaotic array of neurons is converted by a probability function of sorts into all the myriad of wonders of your brain. I can think of no better system to model.

Illegal Content

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. It's linked to your account. You're liable. They delete the illegal content and hold you responsible should the MPAA/RIAA/etc come calling.

Except

[Anonymous Coward]

They've already got web accounts, and they could've been using those for copyright infringement already. The problem people will most likely be new customers that read this news here or elsewhere and see "torrent with no bandwidth fee!!!"

Re:Except

[ciroknight]

Of course, they could already be breaking the EULA; by having them set up a tracker, they can run a service to automatically check incoming data with WHOMEVER they want. Of course, all of this will be hidden in the EULA or somewhere where a user wouldn't expect it.

Besides that, I agree with you. If they're going to use a tracker to distribute illegal data, they're going to use the webspace as well, the tracker just would *legally* let them search your webdirs.

Hurrican Electric... Fremont, CA pride baby!

[aboynoir]

This company was started by some guys I went to high school with at Irvington High School in Fremont, CA.

w00t!!

Re:Hurrican Electric... Fremont, CA pride baby!

[Anonymous Coward]

loser

Re:Hurrican Electric... Fremont, CA pride baby!

[aboynoir]

Coward.

Lawsuits

[djkoolaide]

I predict that, unfortunately, this service will be cancelled within the next two months because of legal threats. Very cool service. Hopefully it can stay around.

What should I do?

[krazykong]

I use Hurricane Electric as my web host. What kind of torrent do you think I should host? Maybe a linux distro, or some other open source project? I want to use my new torrent privleges to bennifit mankind somehow, any suggestions?

Re:What should I do?

[contagious_d]

Goatse.cx - The Movie

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did I miss the opening?

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

The tailer's been all over the net.

Re:What should I do?

[DarkMantle]

OpenOffice.org, you're favorite linux distro, or help out the guys at www.sf.net with some of the larger projects.

The possabilities are quite endless. (and Legit)

Re:What should I do?

[AnotherEscobar]

Um, where were you when the 'Introduction of the Mac' thread was going on?

<Diabolical>Or, hey, heres a thought, seed some Metalica - they're closet Republicans, along with U2 BTW; then we can begin our attack on P2P and all things great and good</Diabolical>

Re:What should I do?

[808140]

I've heard it's a stinger.

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ebert and Roeper gave it a couple thumbs up.

Re:What should I do?

[fm6]

If you did, you must be blind!

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

It opens wide across America in 7 days.

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's a wide release? Good to know its a big opening.

Re:What should I do?

[Squirrley]

of course, the only sane option... porn!

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about uploading stuff to stop the /. effect. Example: The apple movie that was just posted. /. should invest in this they could use it to keep from killing servers with big files.

Just an idea.

Re:What should I do?

[Wesley Felter]

I know this probably isn't what you want to hear, but you should do nothing. Every major open source project already has a torrent, and having two separate torrents for a given file is worse than one.

BitTorrent tracker hosting is not an exotic service, and the people who need it already have it. It's good for HE's customers that they're offering tracker hosting, but it's hardly a new thing.

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dark, deep." --N.Y. Times

Re:What should I do?

[MikeXpop]

Go to your local blockbuster, and rent/rip some good silent era public domain films.

This world needs more Charlie Chaplin.

Re:What should I do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Charlie Chaplin is about as useful as an asshole right here *points to elbow of left arm*.

Re:What should I do?

[travail_jgd]

Live CDs like Knoppix would be good to mirror. At 100-700 MB each, the extra bandwidth would help everyone. If in doubt, the Distrowatch rankings aren't a bad place to start.

Re:What should I do?

[suwain_2]

Porn. Lots and lots of porn.

Re:What should I do?

[drwav]

goto http://www.rantradio.com, they have a few old show archives that you could mirror for them. It's all open stuff and if you need permissions just use the contact link to talk to the admin. I bet they will be happy for your help. The links for the show archives are in the right column near the bottom, or you could just wander around looking for something interesting.

Be sure to mention that your host will seed the file.

Re:What should I do?

[swillden]

Every major open source project already has a torrent, and having two separate torrents for a given file is worse than one.

True, but what would be useful would be to use this system to set up more seeders for the torrents you like. I only vaguely understand the Bittorrent protocol (haven't got around to it) but my understanding is that if HE will allow you to specify a tracker other than theirs for your torrent (the tracker of the project you want to support), then you ought to be able to set up a seeder.

Re:What should I do?

[xtracto]

Porn. Lots and lots of porn.
What are you talking about?
Did you mean pr0n?

Re:What should I do?

[Erasmus Darwin]

"my understanding is that if HE will allow you to specify a tracker other than theirs for your torrent (the tracker of the project you want to support), then you ought to be able to set up a seeder."

From the Slashdot summary and reading the FAQ, it sounds like they aren't doing anything like that. It looks like they've distilled Bit Torrent down to work almost the exact same way for users as HTTP does -- just drop the file to be made available into a directory on their account, and they're done. HE is then automagically generating the torrent file, setting it to use their own tracker, and providing a seed on that tracker.

Glad to see..

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to see they're promoting ABC for bittorrent on Windows instead of all that other crap.

COOL

[cyberfunk2]

Now that is REALLY cool. That's the sort of services I wish MY provider (Comcast) would provide.

Nobody really uses these internet portal sites with all that streaming video (read: comcast ads) stuff they show on TV.

This is the kind of helpful feature people want ! Give us blogs, bittorrent trackers, etc !

Re:COOL

[Jerbol]

alas, comcast is the largest provider of broadband in the us, so they don't need to appeal to niche market sectors like geeks. i mean seriously, if my grandmother were watching the price is right and a comcast commercial came on, she'd be more interested in the "free webcam and video messaging" slogan than a "we allow automatic torrent seeding from our ftp servers so you can share the hottest new linux distros!" now if this were speakeasy that we were talking about...

Re:COOL

[ciroknight]

I wish MY provider (Comcast) would provide.

My condolences.

Re:COOL

[DCstewieG]

You can already use your own computer as a tracker. I don't know how many users it could support (probably a hell of a lot) but I've done it before for getting movies I've made with friends out to those friends after I've edited them. (Believe me, don't believe me, I don't care)

I did it with Azureus which is the only BT client I've used. I don't know if others can do it too. Sure you have to have your computer on all the time but don't you already?

http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/HostAndS hareYourTorrents

Re:COOL

[Anonymous Coward]

And mine. They've fucked up TechTV and TiVO already. Whats one more service?

he.net New BitTorrent Capability FAQ

[Mardak]

http://www.he.net/faq/bittorrent.html

Re:he.net New BitTorrent Capability FAQ

[fm6]

Who modded this as "informative"? This is the same link that's in the story.

Two

[fm6]

Second time HE has come up on Slashdot today. Scary.

I know someone who could use it right now...

[TexVex]

Mandrakelinux. I paid for and got access to their premium content, and just got through downloading nearly 12 GB of Linux distributions and premium software from them through BitTorrent. Unfortunately, it took about five days (and I have broadband). I expect a huge chunk of my downloads came directly from their seed(s) and there weren't enough, considering my download:upload ratio for the entire transfer was about 3:1.

Maybe if they had more seeds, scattered around the globe, it would have worked better. As it is, I feel cheated; if I'm going to subscribe to their service for a monthly fee, it would be nice if they would use some of that fee to give me some good bandwidth to download their product. Hell, I'd seed (limited to 1/2 my upstream bandwidth) for them if they gave me a discount or a free upgrade in subscription level.

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[Malc]

Why would you download 12GB of Linux distro? I can't believe you're going to use it all. I have stacks of Mandrake CDRs going back over the years, all of them used just once (initial install), and none of them used 100% (packages I don't need, multiple packages that do the same thing, etc).

Nearly 4.5 years ago I downloaded the boot floppies for Debian Sarge 2.2. The only Linux distro image I've downloaded since is the Debian Woody 3.0 net install CD (two versions: 10MB and 180MB) and Knoppix (I wanted to see what the fuss was). All other downloads and upgrades have been on an as-needed basis. The very concept of downloading a complete distribution is completely foreign to me now.

So ok, I can see *some* reasons to download whole images. But for most people it's just a complete waste of bandwidth, time and blank media.

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[imr]

You could have asked for an http link to it. Granted, it used to take quite some times too to obtain it, but the new webmaster of the club seems quite responsive.
The other problem is that not enough people go on becoming seeds after their download is finished. One of the moderator of the club became a seeder for one of the isos, and he was the only one besides the mdk seed.

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[imr]

Well, there are the mandrakemove isos which deserve the download and there is also the 64 bit version of the distro.
And if one want to be able to install the distro on other people machines, since they don't have all broadband, you better arrive with the whole cds sets.

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[RobertLTux]

okay try this on for size in my case 1 i like having the file local 2 my network connection (usb wifi) does not function about half the time while running LM10.1 3 its the whole point of my getting my DL DVD-+R/W drive! 4 im going to make a dvd with main and a PLF mirror (and maybe include contrib) 5 because i can

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[TexVex]

I said "distros", plural. I got the x86 ver 10.1 DVD image, the x64 ver 10.1, and the "Power Pack" 10.1 which includes some premium software and nice little extras like the nVidia drivers. Sure, I'm not going to use it all. But I am going to run both installs -- one of them on three different machines -- and use things out of the power pack on multple machines as well. It's nice to be able to just burn three DVDs and have it all conveniently there.

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[Anonymous Coward]

What language is your comment in? I don't understand anything you wrote.

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[ViGe]

Nearly 4.5 years ago I downloaded the boot floppies for Debian Sarge 2.2

No you did not. Debian Sarge has not been released yet. Debian 2.2 was called potato.

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[Malc]

Thanks, you're right. I guess I got Sarge on the brain at the moment ;)

Re:I know someone who could use it right now...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have usb wifi and I installed gentoo just fine...

No...

[TheSHAD0W]

BitTorrent does very well for legitimate content, and so long as they kick out clients who set up torrents for illegal content, there won't be any cause for lawsuits.

Re:No...

[AndroidCat]

Hurricane Electric isn't known for being clueful and keeping on top of client problems. At least not when it comes to spam. (On the other hand, I personally don't recall when I last got something out of their space, YMMV.)

one solution

[Anonymous Coward]

a) encrypt/password-protect it, then
b) upload it

If you limit sharing to your friends, you're completely safe.

Re:one solution

[chill]

a) encrypt/password-protect it, then
b) upload it

If you limit sharing to your friends, you're completely safe.

You better have a lot of "friends". The whole idea behind Bittorrent was the more people using it, the faster it is.

If you're just going to share encrypted warez with a dozen people, there isn't any benefit to doing it via BT than via FTP.

-Charles

Re:one solution

[hkroger]

And how many friends you are going to share the file with? Benefits of bittorrent are not so great if you share you warez iso to your 10 friends. Most propably they're not going to download it concurrently.

Re:one solution

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: If you limit sharing to your friends, you're completely safe.

why not just burn it to CD-R or DVD+R and hand it to them in person or snail mail it...

Re:one solution

[Anonymous Coward]

except you get free, "fast" (reliable?) bandwidth

Re:one solution

[rzei]

Actually the best results would be seen when the user uploads the big file he/she wants to share (with his/her friends) in 25 parts to the tracker. Then all his/hers friends could start maxing out their bandwidth very early.. This would be much more faster even in the case of having 5 friends who access the file(s) and much more faster than using ftp/etc unless you have enough bandwidth to saturate at least 4 of your friends links..

Re:one solution

[wigger_mn]

you must be alot drunker then i am 'all your friends' wtf about a INTERNET HOSTING COMPANY is not fast enough to 'spread the juarez' holy f'n Id.

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

HERE! is a torrent of all the Suprnova torrents

On the other end...

[ameoba]

One of the things that I've been wondering about for a while would be the effectiveness of something like this on the other end. That is, what if my ISP provided a BT proxy that, in the case of multiple clients getting the same file off BT, would only require it to be DLed once to the local network. I guess it'd do something like what, from my understanding, Akamai servers do.

Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[strredwolf]

Looks like not only do they have multiple Spamhaus SBL listings including a few repeat offenders, they're under a SPEWS Level 2 (monitor, don't block) advisory.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[fm6]

I worked at HE for about 7 months. We didn't exactly part on friendly terms, but I have to say that their reputation as a Spam hoster is quite undeserved. I worked in tech support, and a big part of my job was making sure that complaints about spammers got dealt with. Management had its flaws, but they did take the spam problem very seriously.

Their big problem is they don't do a very good job of communicating their policies to other network companies and to spam blacklist maintainers. The communication effort is badly coordinated, and there's a certain short-sighted self-righteousness by key people, who hate the thought of sucking up to blacklist maintainers.

The sad thing is that sanctions against HE mostly hurt their email customers. It doesn't hurt HE, which seems to have all the business it can handle. And it certainly doesn't hurt the spammers, against whom HE is already doing all they can -- and who just move on to another provider when they do get busted.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[Indy1]

couldnt agree more. Spammer Electric got firewalled on my mail server for massive non stop pink bullshit.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[jrockway]

So their policy is to provide bandwidth to people who pay for it. When you start restricting who can and can't host a website, you start crossing the line from ISP to police state :)

Bravo for having some balls, HE.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[fm6]

Actually, HE does forbid spam, as do all the major hosting companies. The question is whether they're serious about this policy, or it's just nudge-nudge-wink-wink.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have worked at a different Hurricane Electric than the one that ignored my abuse complaints for nearly 2 months. A host in their colocation facility sent me up to 5 spams a day from the same host, and did not have a functioning unsubscribe or valid contact information. When I finally threatened to sue them, they had their customer provide me with the real unsubscribe URL.

They are by far the least responsive ISP I've ever dealt with. Every bit of that reputation is deserved.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[EvilStein]

Maybe if SPEWS wasn't such a useless pile of cow shit, that would be important...

I've heard many good things about HE, and know for a fact that they boot spammers if they catch them in time.
having worked for spammers in the past, I know that they move fast.. :(

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[fm6]

A hosting provider can't wave a magic wand and make a misbehaving customer behave. Nor can they terminate a customer upon the first complaint. What they can do is to pass your complaint along and pressure the customer to act on it. Which is obviously what they did in this case. I very much doubt if your (obviously empty) threats to sue made any difference.

Where they did screw up (and this is pretty typical for them) is in failing to keep you posted on the progress of your complaint, and for not keeping on the problem so the spammer was forced to respond quickly. They should probably also have an enforced policy about opt-out links. But these are failure of management and communication, not an indifference to the spam problem.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[strredwolf]

Problem is, the sites they're hosting are the cause of some of the spam and since there's no communications...

Read the article on AOL that was up today.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[Anonymous Coward]

How could they possibly be more indifferent?

Someone hosted in their facility was sending large quantities of unsolicted email with forged headers from a domain with fake contact information and a non-functioning bounce address. Nearly all of these conditions violate their policy, yet it took them 8 weeks of repeated complaints (eventually CC'd to their sales and other listed contact addresses) to even respond to it.

Their response was to make it possible for and only me to opt out, rather than discontinue service to the offender for violation of numerous policies.

The only way they could have handled it in a worse way would have been to entirely ignore my complaints in the first place.

Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers...

[jqh1]

At least some of the complaints are misguided. We run the anti-spam disposable email address spamgourmet.com out of HE. Some enthusiastic sg users regularly report spam that comes to unexpired disposable email addresses, and the reports often wrongly implicate the spamgourmet server (which, of course, sits in HE's IP range) as being involved.

Ironically, one of the most time-consuming tasks involved with running sg is dealing with these false reports.

Not Lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

Not lucky, just marketing dollars well spent.

Re:Not Lucky

[Anonymous Coward]

More like the admin types being slashdottific. Come to slashdot, join the small crowd of buttbuddies and get posted, it's the only way your subs will hit the page.

Hurricane Electric Rocks

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been using he.net for about 7 years and it is flipping awesome. Fast speeds, reasonable rates, decent servers, now this.

I don't work for them, but I really recomend them.

Re:Hurricane Electric Rocks

[queef_latina]

flipping awesome

You're a flipping faggot.

Not that it matters what H. E. offer...

[ThreeGigs]

Considering all of their IP ranges have been on my blacklist for the past two years, who cares *what* they offer. All I know is, as long as I keep them blocked, what they _won't_ be offering me is spam.

What are they going to do-Justify.

[Anonymous Coward]

"When somebody uploads illegal content?"

Offer the same excuses that we hear here.*

*Hey! If they're good enough for here? Then they're good anywere.

Grampa Simpson's advice

[Man in Spandex]

One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time...
- Abe Simpson

Re:Grampa Simpson's advice

[Anonymous Coward]

thank god for you !

Heh

[silicongodcom]

Is there a second legal use for bittorrent besides "Linux distributions?"

Maybe a second token example would help further the "not for piracy" argument.

Re:Heh

[digitalgimpus]

Nobody ever argued the legality of the bittorrent protocol.

It's used by quite a few software companies. Games for example, since they are large in size.

A knife is a perfectly legal tool. It can cut us free when we are trouble, cut our food, or in the hands of a surgon can save lives.... it's when that knife is in the hands of a serial killer that it becomes illegal.

No knives have ever been accused of murder. Only the person who intentionally uses it for the act.

Same with bittorent. It never did anything wrong. It's users were the ones breaking copyright laws.

Same for HTTP. Some use it for kiddy porn. But that doesn't mean Yahoo is illegal, or illegitimate.

Re:Heh

[sepluv]

Aha, you are so funny..not? Maybe, any content that is in the public domain, that is fair use, that you own the copyright for or that you have a license for distributing from the copyright holder.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

I use it to download my piz0rn, and that shizzle is public domizle, my nizzle.

Re:Heh

[rbarreira]

Nobody ever argued the legality of the bittorrent protocol.

It seems they are close to doing it.

Re:Heh

[Bullseye_blam]

It's used by quite a few software companies. Games for example, since they are large in size.

I believe you are referring to game demos... game demos, my good friend.

Re:Heh

[Benaiah]

I use it all the time for downloading the latest game patch

Re:Heh

[reverius]

well, and full games. of course.

did you think this was 1995? the internet is a valid and often-used distribution medium for games at this point--so why not offload some bandwidth onto the customers? Valve and Blizzard get it.

Re:Heh

[Efinel]

Try http://www.legaltorrents.com/
There are many legal content shared with bittorrent protocol

Re:Heh

[arkhan_jg]

Two more spring to mind:

Game patches and mods - I've grabbed several mappacks and patches that were in the 100-300 MB range using BT.

Free-to-download video - the most obvious example is Red Vs Blue.

Basically, if it's a large file that is coming from a particular source, and stays the same for days or weeks on end; it makes sense to create a torrent from it and spread the load around a bit.

Re:Heh

[bbeebe]

During World of Warcraft Beta you could download the latest patch or entire client off bittorrent.

Re:Heh

[painlord2k]

OpenOffice distributions (not only the Linux port).

I confess - I don't really get torrents

[sjonke]

I've tried several mac clients and have found that Azureus by far works the best of the ones I've tried including the BitTorrent one. This seems mainly due to Azureus allowing me to set an upload limit - without that my home 802.11b network seems to get completely saturated with upload, leaving no room for download.

Even after playing around with the specific limit set, the best download speeds I see perhaps rival the best regular download speeds I've seen from a direct ftp or http server. More typically I see what I'm seeing now, trying to download a copy of RedHat Fedora - something on par with a fast dial-up connection at 28 to 40 kB/ps. Am I suppose to be excited by this?

Moreover, when I run Azureus, even if the download speeds (and upload speeds reported for that matter) I see are absolutely pathetic, it slows down my entire 802.11b network so that everybody suffers, contradicting claims that torrents are efficient. On the contrary they seem insanely inefficient.

So what exactly is the point of torrents? They don't seem to result in faster downloads, they require me to provide an upload, they bring my 802.11b network to its knees even when the download/upload speeds are pathetic, and if I try to run Azureus at work I get a call from a (friendly) tech support guy warning me that the network techs are getting very upset that "someone" is running bittorrent (or equivalent.)

So (aside from downloading/sharing hacked software), what is the point of going through all this trouble? I'd rather just click a link in a browser and download the file at what seemingly would be similar or better speeds, and wouldn't get tech support upset.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Capt'n Hector]

First, and I'm not sure about this, but I think Azureus trys to keep your ratio sane. That way, if you limit your UL to 1 kB/s, you can't download at 300 kB/s. After all, that's not very fair. Second, we're talking in kiloBYTES. I don't know of any dileup modem that can get 40 kB/s. Lastly, Unless you have a wicked net connection, I also don't think your wireless network is the bottleneck. You probably have an asynchronous connection, which means your ISP is giving you a shitty UP and fast DOWN. This configuration isn't optimal for BitTorrent, but it still should work. Your network should only slow down if its saturated, and even if you have "pathetic speeds", you may have already reached that point. I can only get about 25 kB/s of upload out of my pipe, and beyond that things start choking. Down AND up. This is on Comcast Cable, fyi.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Anonymous Coward]

I get a call from a (friendly) tech support guy warning me that the network techs are getting very upset that "someone" is running bittorrent
It will kill my networks as well. I think it has to many drawbacks if you are on any type of network.
Poliltely .... It Sucks

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Anonymous Coward]

The secret is to set your upload speed to just a little bit less than your max. For example, my DSL is ~700 down (should be 1500, but the phone company claims I'm too far away from the CO), and ~256 up, which is about 30k/sec. So if I set my max upload to 28, I can upload and download near the max my connection allows. But the grandparent has a point that BitTorrent is useless for dialup users.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[forkazoo]

Okay... I'll bite. I love torrents because they work great. If something is popular, then the ftp site will be hammered. ( a la the slashdot effect) This usually happens, for example, when a linux distro has a new release. For the first few days, the servers are completely swamped, and you can usually only get a few KB/s at best, if you can get in at all. Sure, when you are downloading from an idle server with a better internet connection than you, there is no reason to think anything else will be faster. In practice, the servers tend to not be as idle as we'd like. And, it isn't that uncommon for me to have at least as much downstream bandwidth as they have upstream, for the smaller sites that don't have fat (expensive!) pipes.

So, suppose you have 100 guys with 1 megabit DSL who want to download your latest work from you. (program, movie, whatever). That means, you need 100 mb of bandwidth to feed them all. Have you priced 100 mb of bandwidth? I sure as hell can't afford that kind of pipe. Oh, and you will want to pay for colocation around the globe, so that guys in korea and australia can get decent speeds downloading your stuff, too.

Or, you just post a torrent from your modest DSL line. As the file propagates to those requesting it, it magically becomes automatically mirrored, and your hundred users can download from each other, getting relatively high speeds. Probably higher than what you could give to just two or three of them!

And, BTW, how the hell is 40 KB/sec "dialup speeds?" 56 Kb/s dialup has a theoretical peak of about 7 KB/s. And, you never would have actually seen 7 KB/s on any dialup connection, due to the fact that modems never actually connect ay 56 K, at least not here in the US, as it's illegal. Then, there is the connection overhead, and the TCP overhead, and so on. 5 KB/sec was a very very good day from what I remember of dialup.

Granted 40 KB/s is only 320Kb/s, which is not a stellar connection, but it isn't terrible. Certainly not if you've got a 512 kb line.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Jameth]

Straight FTP is flat-out faster than BitTorrent if the server operators can afford the bandwidth. The issue is that they just plain can't afford the bandwidth. BitTorrent results in their bandwidth usage during peak times reducing to about a tenth what it would be, which prevents them from crashing and gives you a slight slowdown in slow times for a huge speed increase during peak times.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[kngthdn]

If you use 802.11b, your router is probably blocking the ports that BitTorrent uses.

I only got ~3KBps until I forwarded all those ports to my computer. Now I get 275KB/second easy.

Search google for "bittorent ports".

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[darkmeridian]

Set your NAT correctly, then. BitTorrent is designed to speed the downloads of those who have been sharing their uploading capacity. However, those behind a NAT firewall will have difficulty uploading because, well, the inbound connection initiated by the remote system cannot find your NAT'ed system. Hence, you should forward the ports required for BitTorrent. Setting the upload limit will prevent throttling of your downloads (because we have to handshake, basically, for each packet we get). And also set your downloads to set apart the download space in one large piece to reduce the fragmentation of your hard drive. And don't download too much at once.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Warped-Reality]

I downloaded a gentoo universal livecd iso (600+ mb) at nearly 400k/s using BitTornado in winxp.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Anonymous Coward]

More typically I see what I'm seeing now, trying to download a copy of RedHat Fedora - something on par with a fast dial-up connection at 28 to 40 kB/ps. Am I suppose to be excited by this?

Other replies have flamed you for this, but I'll try to explain nicely.

Dial-up connections are typically measured in kilobits per second (kb/s). A v.92 dial-up modem has a theoretical maximum speed of about 56 kb/s, but typically its connection speeds are in the 40s.

According to Azureus's screenshots page, Azureus typically displays its speeds in kilobytes per second (kB/s). So multiply your 28-40 kB/s by 8 (8 bits per byte) and you're getting speeds of 224-320 kb/s. That's pretty fuckin' fast.

So should you be excited? BitTorrent, Fuck Yeah!

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't seem to result in faster downloads, they require me to provide an upload, they bring my 802.11b network to its knees even when the download/upload speeds are pathetic

This is exactly why there needs to be a BT proxy server that you connect to that does all the downloading, meaning that there's just one connection from your laptop to your proxy server.

For one person it helps out. It will really come into play if there's more than one client downloading the same software.

You can run one for your own use, I'm not sure what an ISP's responsibility would be if they ran it and there was copyrighted content on the server.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Gob Blesh It]

You know you can set your upload limit with the "official" client, too? Just drop down the toolbar in the main window (click the lozenge on the right end of the title bar).

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Datasage]

It can be faster. If all internet connections allowed the same bandwith for upload as they do download.

The intial seeds might be on T3's or DSC3s or whatever, but most of the peers are not. If the seeds have maxed out thier connections, you then have to get the file from peers. Most peers probably will not have anywhere near the same bandwidith as the initial seeds do. To get the same bandwidth from the peers as you do a seed, you have to connect to multiple peers, while at the same time, many other peers are also connecting to those peers.

If the upload bandwidth of the swarm was equal to the download bandwidth, you would be able to get speeds as fast as a direct file transfer. But thats ussually never the case.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[sjonke]

Doh! Yep, dumb mistake. kB vs. kb. OK, I see that that is much better than dialup. I still, though, often (not always) see better speeds with regular downloads than I do with torrents, at least so far, and definitely downloading via HTTP/FTP does not effect the network as much (it does slow it down, just not as much.) Oh, and yes I believe my Verizon DSL connection is asynchronous, so perhaps that is the issue, at least with resulting download speeds.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Boronx]

Here's the two advantages as i see it. Most important, it allows users to serve large popular files without buying a lot of bandwidth. You're downloading and not serving, so that's not what's important to you. As a downloader myself, I see the critical benefit here being reliability of large downloads compared to other p2p software. If you're downloading a one gig file, it's still going to take several hours, but if hundreds of other people are downloading it, it's likely actually the file you want and not broken in some fashion. It's reliable in another sense. Set up a torrent before you go to bed, and it's there in the morning. A server outage won't make you have to resume a download, or make the file disappear completely.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[topham]

While your right; with a proper setup you should get much better than that when downloading via bittorrent.

I've had transfer rates of over 350KBytes per second.
I do better than that when downloading from a company such as Microsoft, but not everybody can afford the bandwidth they pay for.

The biggest problem with Bittorrent is having a machine behind a NAT that other clients can't connect with.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Chuck Chunder]

I can't speak to your situation specifically but updating the firmware on my wireless router helped me. The PC I used bittorrent on is actually connected by cat5 but it made the router behave flakily (I think it had trouble keeping up with the NAT/firewall states). An updated firmware has made it sing.

Bittorrent is not designed to help end users directly. It helps distributors by decreasing the resources they require or (if they have fixed resources available) allows them to make better use of those resources by offloading requests to other bittorrent users. The benefit to end users is that they will sometimes be able to access resources that would otherwise be swamped if they were being accessed by a different manner. No doubt some people also simply feel good because by helping seed a torrent are, if only in a small way, helping out a project.

Obviously Bittorrent won't be as efficient as straight http or ftp if the http/ftp server you are talking about can serve you at your maximum rate because there is extra overhead in Bittorrent (negotiating with multiple servers, recieving requests yourself, talking to the tracker etc).

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[queef_latina]

Faggot.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[mp3phish]

However, a significant majority of the people are nice enough to leave their client to seed for a short while after downloading. If everyone did this to achieve a 1:1 ratio or better by the time they stopped seeding, then everyone will get the speed of direct download.

It turns out that in friendly communities (such as bt.etree.org) the users are even nicer and leave their stuff on longer than 1:1 in which case most people get downloads in the range of 100KB/s+

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[apanap]

I totally agree. Usually when I try do download something over bittorrent at work, where we have a 100 mbit connection to a 2 gbit backbone, I get upload in the region of 500 kB/s and download at about 40-50 kB/s. Doesn't seem very fair to me... Plus the sysadmin has come to inform me that "Peer to peer clients are not allowed" several times even if the stuff I've downloaded has been perfectly legal. It is very uncommon that I get speeds that low when downloading large files from ftp/http, and that saves me both the trouble of wasting outgoing traffic and bitching from the sysadmin.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't seem very fair to me... Plus the sysadmin has come to inform me that "Peer to peer clients are not allowed" several times even if the stuff I've downloaded has been perfectly legal.

But that's fair enough. It'll be the inbound connections that make him nervous rather than the content. Don't keep crossing your sysadmin.

Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents

[bbeebe]

If you run Azureus I'm assuming you have your ports forwarded, no NAT problems (green smiley faces), and a decent broadband connection. If you still get bad speeds it could mean:
1. Not enough seeds/peers
2. You have your upload set too low (15-20kB should be min)
3. You have your upload set too high and it's crappin out your DL (should set to ~80% of max).
4. You have a crappy router/firmware and it's gettin slammed due to all the connection attempts.
These are the most common problems with people that think bittorrent sucks, they just don't know how to use it.

Hurricane Electric's reputation as spammers.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how Hurricane Electric made their money prior to this. Do you feel safe giving them your credit card number?

http://www.spews.org/html/S2100.html

Re:Hurricane Electric's reputation as spammers.

[Lew Payne]

How about citing something relevant? Show us a link to an article about
credit card abuse (or illicit billing practices) at Hurricane Electric. Until
you can find one, you're just spewing SPAM.

Doesn't seem to be any access control

[antifoidulus]

I would like to use these things for uploading digital pictures I take(what can I say, I'm a resolution whore), but I would rather the whole world not see my friend wearing a wedding dress with a giant Bart Simpson mask on.
It would be neat if you could put a user name/password on the torrents. Not incredibly secure, but still better than nothing.

Re:Doesn't seem to be any access control

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to use these things for uploading digital pictures I take(what can I say, I'm a resolution whore), but I would rather the whole world not see my friend wearing a wedding dress with a giant Bart Simpson mask on.
It would be neat if you could put a user name/password on the torrents.

BT wasn't really designed for that, but you could use an encrypted ZIP file to do it, or a GPG-encrypted archive for extra security.

Re:Doesn't seem to be any access control

[Night Goat]

I would like to use these things for uploading digital pictures I take(what can I say, I'm a resolution whore), but I would rather the whole world not see my friend wearing a wedding dress with a giant Bart Simpson mask on.
It would be neat if you could put a user name/password on the torrents. Not incredibly secure, but still better than nothing.

Torrents work best if a lot of people are downloading/uploading. If you've got a picture that is only meant for a few people, it would make more sense to just upload the picture to the server rather than use Bit Torrent. That's probably why there isn't any access control. It wouldn't be any use to limit people when you want as many seeders as you can get.

Re:Doesn't seem to be any access control

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you could always encrypt the files.
Afaik, most compression utilities offer password protection.

Can I get that torrent to go?

[UlfGabe]

And is this story torrented?

I hope more slashdot features will consider torrenting their entire websites so they dont bomb.

Supply and demand

[MMaestro]

True but thats because of supply and demand. Every self-proclaimed Linux supporter hosts a Linux distro somehow, sometime, somway in the day/week/month because its easy and the files are generally small (unlike warezed PC games which have been breaking the 5000 megs mark recently).

Compared to mp3s, Divx rips or pr0n, which are generally transferred uncompressed (why do people host songs individually?) come in varying qualities, files names or different hosts making it impossible to tell if a file is a duplicate without actually downloading and checking it.

The end results are simple, you have trillions of pr0n, mp3 or divx rips all over the web, most of which are duplicates yet everyone is trying to download them all in fear of missing one or two 'gems' (hence the analogy : the internet is a pile of crap with a few gems hidden inside). While Linux distros, Windows updates and other legitmate/hardly downloaded software (ie. digital copies of books, their around but you don't hear any news reports about them) remain incredably low when it comes to download stats.

Re:Supply and demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to mp3s, Divx rips or pr0n, which are generally transferred uncompressed
What do you mean by that? jpg, mp3, and divx are compressed formats already (and lossy). Any suggestions on what you could possibly compress them with to make them smaller without changing the quality? Your services would be of great help to commercial interests and warez traders alike if you find something.

Re:Supply and demand

[Anonymous Coward]

png, ogg, xvid

no need to thank me.

mod coward up! encrypt the stuff!

[sinner0423]

I haven't seen this been suggested yet - why not just encrypt / password protect the files?

What's the real problem here?

[jbn-o]

I'm curious what you really mean by "in actuality"--isn't BitTorrent actually used to distribute copies of all sorts of data, illicitly and legally? Or are you focusing on the kind of data (MP3s, DiVX movie files, and pornographic movies in a encoded with a variety of codecs) and trying to get us to read something into that? Maybe I have a license to share that MP3 file (like the Creative Commons-licensed song files first distributed in Wired magazine late last year); maybe that DiVX file is a home movie I made (therefore making me the copyright holder); maybe I'm a licensed distributor of that pornographic DivX file (trying to get people to buy a copy of the movie by giving them a free sample)?

Usually when people place an emphasis on illicit distribution in this context, they are trying to impune the distribution mechanism, as if it is somehow BitTorrent's job to stop the user from doing something illegal.

As a result of my questions, I fail to see how your post is fairly moderated up as insightful.

Re:What's the real problem here?

[StevenHenderson]

You raise some excellent points, but I fear that you are being overly idealistic. You simply state the inteded legal uses of this technology. Isn't this the same argument for Kazaa? I mean, I love my p2p just as much as the next person, but let's not place a smoke screen over our actual intentions to exploit "Fair Use" as much as possible.

Granted, I generalize in a cynical-ish way, but just because Joe Guitar wants to use BT to distribute demos, doesn't mean anyone is going to look for that instead of the Usher album or whatever other shit is on the radio...

Re:What's the real problem here?

[nolife]

What makes the final application used the guilty party? Why not the storage media you put it on? How about the computer? the operating system? The network card? the TCP/IP stack? the high speed internet service? the router companies? Every one of theose things is required to complete the transaction including at least TWO PEOPLE. IMHO, the meida companies want to make the job of protecting their interests as easy as possible with carpet bombing. They are willing to go directly to congress to get the laws changed as well to support that. As a side effect, legal uses are thrawted as well which they also benefit from. More independant online publishing means less income for them. The same reason the National Association of Brodcasters fought long and hard to try prevent small local low power radio stations from becoming a reality and the RIAA with its death blow to the online radio stations.

Re:What's the real problem here?

[jbn-o]

It's not overly idealistic, it's part of the logic by which VCRs were made legal in the USA. In Universal v Sony, the concept of substantial non-infringing uses was key to why Sony's VCR (the Betamax) was allowed to be distributed. The machines could be used to make illicit copies but they could also be used for lawful purposes. The distributor of the tool used to infringe copyright cannot be held liable for users' copyright violations so long as the tool has substantial non-infringing uses. The US Supreme Court wisely chose not to throw out the baby with the bathwater and consider the entire technology tainted.

When the US Supreme Court considers MGM v Grokster a little over two months from now, I think they will re-read the Betamax decision and be compelled to acknowledge that so-called peer-to-peer file-sharing programs have substantial non-infringing uses. This will justify the continued legal existence of the programs and allow the infringing users, not the distributors of the programs, to be held liable for their infringments.

Finally, this issue isn't centered on fair use. However, since you mentioned fair use, it should be noted that there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of fair use. It exists for Americans to continue to enjoy free speech with regard to copyrighted work where the default is to disallow copying, distribution, and preparing derivative works. If we didn't have fair use, it would be far more difficult to express dissent without permission from the copyright holder (which would virtually never be granted.

HE has been good to me

[Infonaut]

I've tried several hosts over the last few years, and have stuck with HE. Their help desk is on the ball, responds quickly, and knows their stuff. Their pricing is excellent, and they pretty much let you do what you want to on shared accounts. No wizards or extraneous b.s.. If you know what you're doing, HE doesn't get in your way.

We've got something like ten accounts with them, and have never had any down time or other problems.

No, I don't work for HE or have any affiliation with them. I am glad to spread the word about them because I've had several other accounts with hosting outfits that just didn't grok good service the way HE does.

Re:HE has been good to me

[fishlet]

Ditto that,

I've been using HE for a while now too and have no problems at all. I have a pretty simple site... a little PHP- but uptime has been excellent.

Re:HE has been good to me

[Zoop]

Ditto--they've been great to me. They really seem to care about good, conservative sysadmining (from a technical, not political, point of view). They managed to transition me from an old box to a new one seamlessly, and they really seem to have customized the Slackware distro to make things work and work well.

I like how they treat me--intelligent enough to get some good tools, but the flip side is they expect me to understand about secure, conservative environments for a shared box. Yet they never come across as arrogant or unhelpful, just realistic and looking out for my site's long-term wellbeing.

Re:HE has been good to me

[cr0sh]

Chalk me up as another satisfied customer - I have had my website on them (shared virtual) for several years now. They have excellent staff - they will help you with issues that you don't quite grok, while at the same time letting you have a lot of freedom for what you do understand. HE isn't for the timid - if you don't understand command line *nix, apache, perl, etc - you will be seriously lacking on their system. But if you do - man-oh-man, they kick!

Re:HE has been good to me

[Daniel Boisvert]

Yup, these guys rock. Here's a paste from my rave about them from earlier today:

I've been using them since 2000 or so, and they've been approximately perfect. About the only thing they could've done better was include cash with the Happy Holidays card they sent me. ;)

Their bandwidth rocks, the systems aren't over-crowded, and the people rock. I had billing issues when changing bank accounts (I forgot to update the credit card number on file to my new one), and I got a pleasant phone call letting me know that my card wasn't going through anymore. I gave them the new card number, and it was cleared up in no time at all--never any downtime.

At one point they wanted to move me off the server I was on, and onto new hardware, and again that rocked. They provided a web form for me to move my own site (whereas many shared hosting providers will just do it without telling you). I moved it at my convenience, and when it got to the new server my disk and bandwidth allotments had been increased to whatever they were currently offering on new accounts.

They run an IPv6 endpoint you can use for free (tunnelbroker.net) and a very stable EFNet server. The free bittorrent tracker/seed thing I got an email about this morning is pure icing on the cake.

I've had folks offer to host me for free, and I've stayed with my paid account at HE. They're that good.

Re:HE has been good to me

[Infonaut]

At one point they wanted to move me off the server I was on, and onto new hardware, and again that rocked. They provided a web form for me to move my own site (whereas many shared hosting providers will just do it without telling you). I moved it at my convenience, and when it got to the new server my disk and bandwidth allotments had been increased to whatever they were currently offering on new accounts.

The same thing happened to me. Three of the accounts we manage for clients were easily and seamlessly upgraded at no additional cost. I'm still happy about it, months later.

music

[Xtifr]

Music. See here for example: 100% legal, redistributable music from bands that have chosen to allow (some of) their music to be shared. Since the Etree BT server was set up a little over a year ago, it has seen several petabytes of legal data fly by. There are, at this point, several thousand bands that have followed the Grateful Dead's lead in allowing taping/trading of their concerts.

In fact, I would have to say that music is the probably the first and foremost legal use for bittorrent, with Linux distributions being a very distant second at best.

OK I'll bite

[rbarreira]

Simply put - the point of bittorrent is to allow servers to distribute big files to many people without the server being brought to it's knee.

Dude!

[Anonymous Coward]

"More typically I see what I'm seeing now, trying to download a copy of RedHat Fedora - ... at 28 to 40 kB/ps. Am I suppose to be excited by this?"

Dude, if you are getting 28 to 40 kilobytes
per picosecond, you damn well ought to be
impressed!

Sheesh, some people are never satisfied.

File Rush already does this - for free

[AIX-Hood]

Not to toot my own horn (ok maybe just a little) but I've been doing this with my File Rush project for well over a year now. We've got a good number of high bandwidth seeds, have worked the kinks out of keeping a stable site and tracker going, and just by looking at our user submitted section, one can see that many people have taken advantage of the free seeding and tracking of their torrents. http://www.filerush.com

You do realize that there are high traffic sites?

[Pyromage]

How about this, from kernel.org as I type this: Current bandwidth utilization 146.96 Mbit/s

There are tons of legitimate sites with that level of traffic. The ibiblio archives come to mind, along with much stuff from archive.org. Don't pretend that there's not overwhelming legitimate usages for BT. That may be true for Napster, but I think you have a hard case to prove, if you're looking at BT.

What are they going to do-Learn.

[Anonymous Coward]

"sure, but most of anything we have to share these days is so laden in copyright, that it would be virtually impossible to be sure if you could *legally* distribute it."

If people actually bothered to understand the law (RTFL) with as much effort as they understood the latest geek technology? Then there wouldn't be so much anxiety, and questions.

I don't get it

[imr]

Someone is paying for that bandwidth, right?
I mean, I "share" my bandwidth and that ISP doesnt need to pay for this bandwidth. But what about my ISP? Doesnt it pay for it?

Re:I don't get it

[KD5YPT]

You are paying for the bandwidth.

What this system do is that the person hosting the website won't be burdened with too much bandwidth cost. Consider as a small "fee" to view someone's website.

Re:I don't get it

[Lew Payne]

Haven't you heard? Ever since COGENT entered the market, excess bandwidth is free.

Re:I don't get it

[fm6]

But what about my ISP? Doesnt it pay for it?

Sure. And if Bit Torrent users were to noticably inflate an ISPs network costs, they'd probably crack down. But no single Bit Torrent user contributes that much, so I doubt if it will ever be an issue.

Re:I don't get it

[slim]

Someone is paying for that bandwidth, right?
I mean, I "share" my bandwidth and that ISP doesnt need to pay for this bandwidth. But what about my ISP? Doesnt it pay for it?

If the set of BT clients handling this particular file is large enough, it's likely that for any given chunk, someone is serving it from a system closer to you than the original seed.

You don't need to be all that lucky for that system to be using the same ISP as you. It's possible for that chunk to have passed over your ISPs expensive link to the rest of the Internet once, but for any number of clients to end up with that chunk as a result.

This is good for you, and good for the ISP. It's the same reason ISPs like it when customers use their cacheing proxies, and the same reason many ISPs pay Akamai to let them host Akamai servers: intra-ISP traffic is cheaper than inter-ISP traffic.

If the data you're fetching isn't popular enough to reach this critical mass of BT clients, then on the one hand, you don't see the same benefits, but on the other hand, who cares? BT isn't designed to handle unpopular files.

Or how about mirrordot?

[game kid]

Or how about mirrordot? Doesn't always mirror pages accurately (page design-wise) but its pages are often up when the others are not, so us link-clicking Slashdotters should see the source more of the time, no?

I personally prefer a mirror link to a torrent download of some unknown zip/html/etc on some tracker that might be pulled thanks to RIAA/MPAA/**AA's arbitrary reasons. (Not that mirrordot can be authenticated either.)

a way to get around the system

[Anonymous Coward]

Rename hotGritts.avi to grandpa's funeral.avi

When the cops come, claim Oooops, I uploaded the wrong ( yet legally copied because I have the DVD sitting right here ) file...

Heh-Legailty.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Kjella writes "A Califorian bill introduced last week would, if passed, expose file-swapping software developers to fines of up to $2,500 per charge, or a year in jail, if they don't take 'reasonable care' to prevent their software from being used to commit crime. "

"It seems they are close to doing it."

That's not arguing the legality of the protocal.

They're saying "you should take reasonable steps to keep people from abusing your product" The gun makers put safeties on their guns, and guns are still legal.

Legitimate P2P authors don't put obscuring technology into their products.

Re:Heh-Legailty.

[digitalgimpus]

Correct.

And there are P2P products used legitimately.

Linux just so happens to be in the forefront of technology. Mozilla.org does too.

So do many gaming companies.

P2P is also used in products such as Skype.

All completely legal.

Bittorrent for web mirroring, pffft

[Chuck Chunder]

Someone suggests bittorrent as some "magic" solution for web mirroring every time it's mentioned but it just doesn't sound feasible to me.

Bittorrent is good at distributing large files. For small files (web pages etc) the resources used in running a tracker that coordinates people getting files from each other isn't going to be significantly less than simply serving up the content in the first place. Peers have to be talking to each other a fair bit for the effort of the tracker introducing them and coordinating them to be worthwhile. For small pieces of content that's unlikely to be the case.

Re:Bittorrent for web mirroring, pffft

[mOdQuArK!]

Bittorrent is good at distributing large files.

It might actually be pretty useful if you could receive a web page + embedded media all in one bundle via BitTorrent (optimized to receive text+images first, of course).

IPv6 Tunnels

[ethzer0]

Just as a note, HE also offers rather high-speed IPv6 tunnels for free to non-customers. Here's a link.

X-Plane?

[nedron]

I use BitTorrent for two things, Fedora distros and X-Plane downloads.

http://www.x-plane.com/demo.html

-David

Bittorrent is more bandwidth efficient!

[Makecash]

Serving files via BitTorrent should be considered when the file size is 10 MB or larger and the number of people downloading at the same time is more than 1. BitTorrent is usually not as responsive as HTTP.
"The server performs two functions for BitTorrent, it tracks files, and seeds them. Because the server can only provide so many seed connections at once there will eventually (not currently implemented) be a limit of 25 torrent files per account. At this time, shared web hosting customers will not be billed for BitTorrent traffic (we don't expect to change this). If this changes, account holders will be notified. The exact features included such as the number of BitTorrent files served per account is subject to change" Quoted from he.net
So i seriously doubt the HE.net users would want to upload and share warez as this most likely would all end up with a nice bill at the end. There is many advantages and disadvantages of bittorrent one i have noticed with downloading torrents is that it has a startup download delay when you first start the transfer. Http is quicker and usually instantly starts with the download.
But technology changes everyday and maybe this is he.nets sneaky secret way of saving bandwidth and being one of the first major companys to sell hosting packages using bittorrent.

Asymmetrical links

[Anonymous Coward]

Could this be the technology/trend that finally sends horribly asymmetrical (X Mb/s download Y Kb/s upload) broadband links into the past?

Doesn't add up

[buddha42]

This must seed at some increadibly slow speed or automatically hop off when it sees other seeds have arrived. They can't just give the bandwidth away for free unless they seriously minimize what actually gets used.

HE ROCKS !!

[meatplow]

I have been a client of Hurricane Electric for about six years. I have found them to be EXCELLENT. Their tech staff is on the ball, and the only problems I have ever had were being on the wrong network during a DDOS. (I DON'T WORK FOR HE)

I am impressed that they are doing this, but it doesn't suprise me. They also give you the option to go IPV6 if you want.

My $.02

HE

[hyperstation]

i went to a load balancing seminar at HE's NOC in freemont a few years ago, but checking out the place and installing my box was pretty neat. especially on someone else's dime.

pretty good service...

FTP!?

[bitspotter]

One need only upload the file desired to a specified directory by FTP

What's the point? If I wanted to distribute by ftp, I wouldn't be using BT in the first place.

Why don't I just generate the torrent locally, and have everyone start uploading right away? If it's about ease of use, they'd do better to just whip up some dead-simple torrent-making software tailored for their service that automatically loads the torrent to their tracker/seeder, and let the torrent start right away.

Re:FTP!?

[Guyver3]

its not about FTP service/distribution

you use FTP to put up the file (hell, use scp).

once in the directory, the software (that was written) generates a torrent and seeds it within minutes....

so what was the complaint again?

Re:FTP!?

[heypete]

Several reasons:
1) Your computer might not be on all the time.
2) Getting enough of the file "out there" with your computer being the initial seed is a bottleneck.
3) I'd rather spend a few hours uploading at max speed to HE's system, where they'd take over the tracking and seeding of the file on their ungodly-fast network. This would result in the file being more widely available and distributed a lot faster.

I also sent in a few request to them:
1) In the event that they finally start billing for bandwidth for BT, I suggsted that they only bill for "seed" bandwidth consumed, rather than tracker communications (which are generally low-overhead anyway).
2) I proposed that they allow customers to generate their own torrents, upload the .torrent file, and then have the customer act as the original seed for the file. If they charge for bandwidth for the service in the future, it might be significantly cheaper to just use HE as a high-availability tracker than as a seed point.

Re:FTP!?

[bitspotter]

This doesn't make any sense.

1) Your computer has to be on to upload the original file in the first place. "seeding" to HE's #2 host would take just as long as transferring it via ftp, and you can start getting other seeds in on the act before the initial upload completes. The more seeds you get earlier inthe process, the better. That's the whole point of BT.

2) You're describing ftp, not BT. The sooner other bt clients can start asking each other for parts of the file, the faster the proces goes. It's the waiting for your initial ftp upload that's the bottleneck.

3) You can always use their tracker from the get-go. ...unless you're using ftp. With bt, their ungodly fast network begins seeding *immediately* upon receipt of any given block of the file.

If you really want to pour your bandwidth into getting the file out so you can shut down, then *it doesn't matter* to which seeder you send pieces of the file to. That is the entire REASON that bt works so much better than ftp to begin with.

Prodigem

[lerhaupt]

Prodigem is a service I've been running since December that allows you to upload content and have my server as a permaseed. It's currently free. Hmm, I submitted it as a slashdot story a couple weeks ago and it got rejected. Check it out regardless. The tracker is chock-full of creative commons goodness.

Re:Prodigem

[guet]

Great site, and a nice idea. Re the rejected story, seems like not much that's interesting gets posted at Slashdot, the only reason they're so popular is the volume of comments on each story.

Wouldn't it be great if someone launched a movie store with BT as the distribution method to limit costs?

... and anyone who buys a knife will stab someone.

[kiddailey]

You've got to love that every time a new p2p program/service comes out, it is always explained as having legitimate uses.

The reason for that is because there ARE lots of non-illegal uses for P2P but everyone mostly focuses on the illegal ones. In case you haven't noticed, there are organizations attempting to rid the world of P2P because they claim the technology is used solely for illegal activities. Oddly enough, they seem to ignore the fact that a fair portion of other internet technologies (browsers, ftp clients, IRC, etc.) are ALSO used to share MP3s, DIVx rips and pr0n just as well, if not better than P2P.

P2P is being used for legitimate purposes.

Case in point: I use it to share over 15GB of freely distributable FPS maps, models and skins for the UT, Quake, Doom, MOHAA and Tribes series -- something that would be impossible for me to do effectively without P2P.

If you tell people something is bad enough times, they'll eventually believe it to be true, whether it is or not. Your message is a sure sign that you're well on your way ;)

Why are they so ignorant

[mp3phish]

Why are there so many mis-informed people on the internet that think P2P == a breeding ground for copyright infringement or illegal files? Bittorrent survives (currently) on a CENTRAL located server to act as a tracker. These people are just adding a central located seed to the mix to guarantee file availability (most tracker sites only keep a tracker and no seed).

What are they going to do with someone uploads illegal files? By golly, they will do the same thing as if someone uploaded an illegal file to their web host of FTP server for download. Ignore it until someone complains and then remove it in the event of notification (and possible prosecution). Just like the hosting business has ALWAYS been run.

Uploading illegal content to this service is NO DIFFERENT than uploading illegal content to your every day pay service hosting provider. Trying to make it out to be different is just plain silly. BTW: FTP as a pay service has existed for several years now.

plenty legit

[clymere]

I used bittorrent for a year before i realized it could be used for anything other than downloading Linux/BSD ISO's. I'm not joking.

Fremont

[queef_latina]

That's pretty much the best you can expect from life when you grow up in Fremont; vague association with the one or two talented people that pop up every five years.

seriously dude, this is the best it's going to get for you.

Sincerely,

. -the rest of the bay area.

Re:Fremont

[aboynoir]

'Seriously dude', you are wrong. I have since moved out of the Bay Area, graduated from college, started 3 of my own business's (record label, taxi company, and a pizzaria) and I travel often. Life is pretty good right now. Anyways, thanks for being an ass.

Re:Fremont

[Anonymous Coward]

I have lived in Fremont.

It takes a vacuous soul to be proud of that shithole. After all, the best part of Fremont, the half-empty Newpark Mall, is in fucking Newark.

I don't give a shit what you've done. You were born of feces in the East Bay's sewer, and your pride in that fact is what disqualifies you from membership in the human race. Die and suck cocks through the back of your neck in hell for eternity, scum.

I FUCKING HATE YOU.

- admin@he.net

Re:Fremont

[aboynoir]

Certainly not the sign of a well adjusted individual. And I lived in the Mission Hills. troll

Along these lines...

[DeepDarkSky]

Current mirroring schemes out there should also offer BT alternatives. For example, if SourceForge mirrors also acted as tracker and seeds for files, it'd work really well.
But I'll bet with this paid scheme, the seeds will remain low (because there'd be less reason to share, because most people will think - there's always seeding anyway)

99.9% of cases where bittorrent goes slow

[Azureflare]

is caused by not having ports 6969 and 6881-6999 forwarded by your router, and open on your firewall.

If you don't have those ports open/forwarded, you're going to see really slow downloads. As long as you have those open, it will take no time to download. I am still a silver club member at mandrake, and I consistently get 400k/s downloads on the torrent downloads. The downloads of the 4 gig PowerPack dvd takes no time at all.

I also seed as much as I download on those torrents. Many others do as well. Unfortunately, you won't be getting uploads from us if you don't have those bittorrent ports open/forwarded on your router.

Re:99.9% of cases where bittorrent goes slow

[vyvepe]

You can select which ports to use like this: "C:\Program Files\BitTorrent\btdownloadgui.exe" --minport 9100 --maxport 9101 --responsefile "%1" This would use only two ports: 9100 or 9101 (if 9100 could not be opened).

Re:99.9% of cases where bittorrent goes slow

[lorcha]

is caused by not having ports 6969 and 6881-6999 forwarded by your router

Why is it necessary to have 6969 forwarded to your client? Isn't it only necessary to have outbound 6969 enabled? Please correct me if I'm wrong here. If he didn't have outbound 6969, it would have taken him a lot longer than 5 days to download anything. ;)

I agree with you about 6881-6999, tho.

No need for BT clients-CLI does everything

[Anonymous Coward]

the btdownloadcurses.py command can do everything, it has lots of options,if you want to you can go with 500K/s download and only 1K/s upload, can limit the number of connections, etc.

Seed for Slashdot

[cgenman]

Whenever Slashdot links to a 50 MB exploding whale video hosted on someone's Atari 7800, post a torrent mirror of said file. It will drive your karma up, and help some little guys out.

And if you're not a customer... my5minutes.com

[LightwaveNet]

:)

www.my5minutes.com

Technical Info:
Hurricane Electric
Hostmaster Hostmaster
760 Mission Court
Fremont, CA 94539
US
Phone: +1.5105804100
Fax..: +1.5105804152
Email: hostmaster@he.net

They've been doing similar things to this a while... now they've just included it into a value added service for shared webhosting customers.

did you mixed kb with kB?

[coolcold]

kb=kilo bit is the speed your ISP provide you with so as the modem spec like 56k modem

kB=kilo byte and 1 byte = 8 bit. for my connection (512kb ADSL), my theoretical download limit is 64kB but I can usually only get up to 54kB. Upload limit, however, half that value.

Depending what your connection is but your download speed doesn't sound too slow

LAMP-style integration of Torrent server?

[torpor]

hi,

i have a LAMP-based server already sitting on the Internet(s), which already does file server-ing through a web interface, mirror pushes, ftp throttling, etc. and i was wondering if anyone knows of a good system for adding torrent to this setup?

we (actually, codemonkey #2) could write some code to integrate torrent.pl, I suppose, but are there other ways? what else in the tools department is good for doing automated torrent seeding, anyone know?

Bandwidth Usage...

[technix4beos]

I for one would have LOVED this service just a month ago.

Our site was put under a heavy barrage by one single individual using a Comcast connection, and subsequentally used up well over 100 GB of traffic by himself when he downloaded a video of Java running on BeOS.

Now in hindsight, I should have used a torrent anyways, but I didn't, as I wasn't expecting this kind of traffic in such a short time.

Here's my initial statement about what happened to us: http://haikunews.org/?id=963

We are now back to normal operations, although we have yet to receive any word from Comcast, other than automatic email replies.

In a nutshell, torrents can be a very bandwidth friendly service for files that become popular, and I heartily welcome the service from Hurricane Electric.

So, what's the news?

[Ahaldra]

technically how is this different from, say prodigem?
With prodigem you can also point the service to *any* file on the net and it creates and hosts the bittorrent and first seed for you - a solution that I would describe as technically superior to this "vendor lock in" solution.
News for nerds? hardly.
Instead disguised advertisement for h.e. sounds about right.

Re:So, what's the news?

[Anonymous Coward]

technically how is this different from, say, advertising for prodigem?

What software does HE use?

[hey]

Anybody know what software they use to automatically turn their ftp site into an torrent seed?

Re:What software does HE use?

[Anonymous Coward]

software that was written in-house almost a year ago, and which was first used for my5minutes.com

That's easy

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

1) Create an encrypted disk image (os x) or zip file
2) Rename the file to the SHA hash of the file
3) Upload the file via this method
4) Distribute the file-hash table and secret password to your trusted downloaders via other secure means of comm

=)

he.net rocks

[Morrigu]

I've been a happy paying customer on their budget-rate plan since '99 or so, and I have to say that their service rocks. Completely apart from their excellent technical capabilities (does your service provider offer IPv6 hosting?), my account's gotten bumped up as they've increased their budget-sized offering, and their technical support is great. I've seen maybe 2 or 3 service interruptions in the whole period of time that I've hosted my site there, and they're great about letting you know what's actually going on ("yes, the server blew up, we're restoring from backup, it'll be online in 2-3 hours") if there's a serious problem.

Automagic bittorrent hosting is just the latest in a string of cool, useful features that they provide. (No, I'm not an employee, just a satisfied customer.)

Hurrah for Hurricane

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I wish they were my ISP, they offer some nice services. Not only do they do this for bittorrent users, but they also operate an ipv6/ipv4 proxy for all of their users. You could sign up for service through them, get a static IP address on the IPV6 Internet, use their proxy, and Bob's your uncle.

One of the reasons Firefox worked

[Andy Dodd]

Is because the type of people who download Firefox are more likely to keep the torrent running after completion, resuling in many more seeders despite the small file size.

Take a look at the Knoppix torrents - Lots of people continue seeding the main ones long after completion, as a result the Knoppix torrents are insanely fast.

Apache Module

[GoRK]

Some time ago I had been toying with the idea of writing an apache module that automatically integrates a tracker and seed. You could apply it on top of a directory or location section and it would convert all the files to .torrent's instead that it would serve up via the integrated tracker.

This reminded me to do some checking up on the idea again, and it already seems to exist now as mod_torrent!

Exist, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, I just followed your link, and it says the project is indefinitely suspended. And I see no download links to suggest that is was suspended as a finished product. I have to wonder if somebody didn't just set that project up as a front to get themselves a sourceforge account.

Guess your good idea still bears working on.

Re:Exist, you say?

[GoRK]

Sorry, I meant to link mod_bt instead. Using mod_bt and probably some mod_perl you could do the automatic/transparent directory -> torrent thing pretty easily. mod_bt does actually exist and work apparently, though it's apache2 only..