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Hurricane Electric Offers Bit Torrent Service

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the send-me-your-biggest-file dept.

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."

8 of 265 comments (clear)

  1. What are they going to do by odano · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When somebody uploads illegal content?

    1. Re:What are they going to do by chris_mahan · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

      --

      "Piter, too, is dead."

    2. Re:What are they going to do by 1u3hr · · Score: 4, Interesting
      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.

  2. I know someone who could use it right now... by TexVex · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
  3. No... by TheSHAD0W · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  4. 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.

  5. Re:one solution by chill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  6. Re:What should I do? by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.