Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown

Posted by kdawson on Friday February 13, 2009 @02:45AM 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.'"

2 of 294 comments (clear)

Re:UI Design Fail. by Anonymous Coward · 2009-02-13 03:25 · Score: 0, Troll

That's it.
You are required to be authenticated.
So much for anonymous readers.
And this is a site where people are arguing about privacy?
Is privacy in danger when gov is in the game or when privates are also in the game.
Do I trust more /. or the gov?
And what if I don't trust them both?
Re:This is GREAT for bittorrent by sega01 · 2009-02-13 05:59 · Score: 0, Troll

Troll, -1.