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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."

11 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Heh by digitalgimpus · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  2. Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers... by fm6 · · Score: 4, Informative
    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.

  3. Re:What should I do? by DarkMantle · · Score: 2, Informative

    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)

    --
    DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
  4. HE has been good to me by Infonaut · · Score: 3, Informative
    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.

    --
    Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
  5. Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents by Capt'n+Hector · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
    Africus aut Europaeus?
  6. Re:I know someone who could use it right now... by TexVex · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

    --
    Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
  7. Re:Doesn't seem to be any access control by Night+Goat · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:Heh by reverius · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  9. Re:FTP!? by heypete · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  10. 99.9% of cases where bittorrent goes slow by Azureflare · · Score: 2, Informative
    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.

  11. Re:Heh by Efinel · · Score: 2, Informative

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