Slashdot Mirror
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."
When somebody uploads illegal content?
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.
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?
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 !
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.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Second time HE has come up on Slashdot today. Scary.
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.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
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.
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.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
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.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Who modded this as "informative"? This is the same link that's in the story.
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.
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.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
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
Is there a second legal use for bittorrent besides "Linux distributions?"
Maybe a second token example would help further the "not for piracy" argument.
"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.
Just like people who buy commercial webhosting accidentally upload warez to their websites to distribute using p2p?
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.
--- What?
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.
Monstar L
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.
And is this story torrented?
I hope more slashdot features will consider torrenting their entire websites so they dont bomb.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
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
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
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.
I haven't seen this been suggested yet - why not just encrypt / password protect the files?
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.
Digital Citizen
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
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.
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.
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.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
"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.
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
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.
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?
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.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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.)
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
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.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Just as a note, HE also offers rather high-speed IPv6 tunnels for free to non-customers. Here's a link.
I use BitTorrent for two things, Fedora distros and X-Plane downloads.
http://www.x-plane.com/demo.html
-David
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
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.
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.
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.
Direct away from face when opening.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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..
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
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.
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.
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
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.
once you go slack, you never go back
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.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
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)
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.
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.
The ______ Agenda
:)
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.
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.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
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?
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
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.
user@host$ diff
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?
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
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.
Code is Speech. No to Censorship.
Anybody know what software they use to automatically turn their ftp site into an torrent seed?
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
=)
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.)
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
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.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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!
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..