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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

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 !

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.

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: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: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.

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.

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.