Completing BitTorrent Decentralization

Njaal writes "With BitTorrent going trackerless, searching for and distributing .torrent files is a natural next step. The Socialized.Net (TSN) is a pure P2P search infrastructure which facilitates P2P searching and distribution of .torrent files. It comes complete with an Azureus (and Firefox) search plugin. TSN is written in Python and is made available under the GPL. Note that this is part of my PhD thesis, and is as such meant as a technology demonstrator."

Comments

P2P is not

[vlad_petric]

But the whole point of trackerless P2P is. For legitimate P2P (e.g. downloading FC) you don't need all this.

Re:P2P is not

[mrchaotica]

No, trackerless BitTorrent is legitimate too, because it allows people without the resources to run a tracker upload torrents.

Re:P2P is not

[Joe Random]

For legitimate P2P (e.g. downloading FC) you don't need all this.

Trackerless BitTorrent allows you to download legitimate free content even if the distributor's tracker happens to go down (for instance, when someone posts a link to the tracker on slashdot, and their server spontaneously combusts). Sure, you don't need trackerless BT, but then again, you don't need BT at all.

The bottom line is that adding a distributed tracker both offloads even more bandwidth from the servers -- which is the whole point of using BitTorrent in the first place -- as well as eliminates the system's main weakness (e.g. removing content, legitimate or otherwise, from distribution by taking down a single computer).

Re:P2P is not

[logicnazi]

While I agree that currently the only substantial use for trackerless P2P is IP theft. Sure it helps people a little because when they are getting their linux ISOs they don't need to worry if the server goes down. Realistically though for any popular download it isn't too hard to find a server to host the tracker which is pretty reliable.

However, there apparently isn't any lack of trackers for ilegal content. On the other hand the potential uses of trackerless P2P for legal purposes are huge. We just don't see these applications yet because we don't yet have working trackerless P2P. Dismissing trackerless P2P as only being good for illicit activity before we see what develops is the same error as dismissing the VCR as only useful for illegal copying because the media companies couldn't predict the rise of video sales.

Truly trackerless P2P completely changes the game. At the moment P2P offers few benefits besides a certain degree of anonymity so it is mostly used for people who want to share mp3s but wouldn't put them up on their webserver. If P2P goes trackerless if can REPLACE your webserver. Rather than posting your media to a website or single server you can post it directly to the P2P network.

The potential applications are huge. Home users who don't have or want websites can easily use such a system to share files without worrying about keeping their computer always on. Popular, legal but socially akward material can be easily hosted. Right now if I want to share my pornographic home movies I either need to pay money to an ISP which allows porno (most wont and I face the danger of huge bandwidth fees) or keep my computer always on to run a tracker.

In the future if some form of file ownership/change could be implemented P2P could replace webhosting. Imagine if sites like wikipedia could be started up without needing a foundation to pay for bandwidth because everyone who uses it contributes some of their bandwidth. This would finally realize the true potential of the web as equalizing sources of media.

Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal

[FidelCatsro]

Its a technoligy designed to facilitate in the distribution of media , if you choose to abuse it then thats your fault .
Many people do use the technoligy to distribute copyrighted materials , many others use it to distribute GPL software and linux distros (which is how i get all my distros , via bittorent)
Having a system like this decentralises the network further , which is a brilliant thing as bandwidth is expensive , this will take the load off many networks if it picks up.
Celebrating the freedom to share is more apt , what you share is up to you (and any consiquences there of).

Possibility of mainline integration?

[Sv-Manowar]

If this technology works as advertised (and obviously that has yet to be seen) it will only really work by the kind of mass adoption created by inclusion in the standard bittorrent clients. This is how the Azureus distributed database has worked out so well, because of the existing userbase being rolled over seamlessly to its inclusion by default.

If Azureus or other clients decided to include functionality like this, it would effectively leave programs like eXeem dead in the water and provide BitTorrent users with a closed 'single-stop' solution for finding and downloading files.

Has become like ed2k

[tepples]

Now that BT has decentralized tracker and decentralized search, it appears that the only remaining advantages over ed2k (e.g. eMule) are the tit-for-tat algorithm and smaller complete block size before one can begin uploading (256 KB for BT vs. 9500 KB for ed2k).

Re:Has become like ed2k

[aldoman]

Considering the 'official' ed2k client connects to both 'classic' ed2k servers and overnet he's not badly wrong.

The difference between BitTorrent and ed2k is quite simple: ed2k has a concept of 'shared folders', BitTorrent doesn't. This means that on ed2k you are sharing your upload between 20-2500 files, on BitTorrent you are just sharing it between how many torrents you have open.

Also, the software is far more portable and it's open source also. This means it's got a much bigger 'brainshare' with *nix admins who often have 100mbit/sec lines that they can use for sharing from -- compared to the ed2k which has (or at least did when I used it a few years ago) mainly German T-DSL users, which used to be 128kbit. No wonder the speeds sucked so much.

Re:Unstoppable?

[nedder]

At some point they're just going to request that the internet be

1) handed over to them

2) shutdown completely

3) taxed at 95% for any useage (no matter how irrelevant to music/movies)

Defining feature of P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

It is worth noting that every P2P software distributor sued by the RIAA has used built-in searching. Built-in searching is really the big thing that separates the internet from what people commonly call peer-to-peer networks (even though the internet is itself a P2P network).

With the conventional internet, you were stuck using a centralized search engine which is easy to censor. To censor a network with built-in searching, you have to censor the whole network.

Re:Where did that come from?

[Anonymous Coward]

You download the .torrent from a central location. Hopefully the .torrent will even be signed. The .torrent contains a SHA1 hash of the data. Ergo, you do NOT need to trust any of the nodes that are sending you data, just the .torrent (ignoring the fact that SHA1 is broken).

Re:Azureus install

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. I just installed it the manual way..

Move the .jar file to
C:\Program Files\Azureus\Plugins\torrentsearch

Restart AZ.

Done.

No more webhosting!

[logicnazi]

Well perhaps not quite. However, this is where web technology is headed.

While one benefit of P2P is psuedo-anonymous file hosting. That is if I wish to spread some information I need not set up a webserver and be easily traceable (ideally once everything goes trackerless). Another one is the fact that the consumers of information can provide the bandwidth for the resources they consume.

The benefits for open sourceesque projects cannot be underestimated. Running community sites like wikipedia is very difficult as they need to pay for lots of bandwidth and server space. A well designed P2P system would turn every user of a resource into a partial server. This means it is no more expensive to provide information a million people want than to provide information 10 people want.

Of course some issues such as file ownership permissions need to be dealt with. However, this is exactly the sort of technology that is needed to realize the great leveling capacity of the internet and turn non-profit groups and individuals into just as important media distribution entities as major corporations.

I fully expect this to change the world.

Re:I tried it, and it said...

[J_Omega]

right... but read the same page where you clicked.

in bold:
Sorry about that, unzip the file into your azureus plugin directory, the wizard does not work on this file.

so, what I did, in Linux was:

# cd ~/.Azureus/plugins
# cp /[path to saved]/TorrentSearch.tar.gz .
# tar xzvf TorrentSearch.tar.gz

and then restarted Azureus. It is now in the "plugins" menu.