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Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown

Posted by kdawson on from the domino-effect dept.

secmartin writes "Researchers at Delft University warn that large parts of the BitTorrent network might collapse if The Pirate Bay is forced to shut down. A large part of the available torrents use The Pirate Bay as tracker, and other available trackers will probably be overloaded if all traffic is shifted there. TPB is currently using eight servers for their trackers. According to the researchers, even trackerless torrents using the DHT protocol will face problems: 'One bug in a DHT sorting routine ensures that it can only "stumble upon success", meaning torrent downloads will not start in seconds or minutes if Pirate Bay goes down in flames.'"

3 of 294 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bit Torrent has recovered before by nedlohs · · Score: 5, Informative

    Which part of "nor did it operate any BitTorrent trackers" do you not comprehend in (from your wikipedia link):

    "Suprnova did not host any of the shared files, nor did it operate any BitTorrent trackers for long. It offered the ".torrent" meta files which would tell a BitTorrent client where it could find the BitTorrent tracker."

  2. BitTorrent is not a Network by KeithIrwin · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is no such thing as "the BitTorrent network". That's like talking about "the HTTP network". It's a distributed download protocol. It doesn't do search and different trackers and torrents are not interconnected in any way. Thus, it is not a network. The ability to use BitTorrent will not be harmed in any way by any one site going down.

    Remember when everyone used suprnova and then it went away? The world of BitTorrent will be fine.

  3. Back to school for you, son by flagg9483 · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network A computer network is a group of interconnected computers. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general overview of some types and categories and also presents the basic components of a network. ... Functional relationship (network architecture) Computer networks may be classified according to the functional relationships which exist among the elements of the network, e.g., Active Networking, Client-server and Peer-to-peer (workgroup) architecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer