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BitTorrent Chat Demystified

Posted by timothy on from the like-chat-roulette-but-different dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Can you really do group chat with no central server? BitTorrent's Patrick Williams has developed a new app that leverages a distributed architecture to eliminate the need for any servers — even to host a buddy list. He says magnet links are the key."

5 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. I did it at Apple in 1991 by hchesley · · Score: 5, Informative

    Reference: Harry R. Chesley, "Asynchronous Background Networking on the Macintosh," Develop 5, Winter 1991. It was called Rumor Monger.

    1. Re:I did it at Apple in 1991 by hchesley · · Score: 3, Informative

      Online copy of the article: http://www.mactech.com/articles/develop/issue_05/6-30_Chesley_Docv9_CHG.html.

  2. Can you? by JackSpratts · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes, and it's called WASTE. Came out in '03 and I've been "running" a decentralized mesh non-stop ever since.

    1. Re:Can you? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      This has been possible for a long time.
      Some applications that can do this apart from WASTE are:
      - Oneswarm
      - Retroshare
      - GNUnet
      - Torchat
      All decentralized, and apart from torchat they are all activity being developed.

  3. Re:ICQ by errandum · · Score: 3, Informative

    I believe the only central server is for authentication (as it should be). It might also save the "initial" budy list, but a local copy is also kept.

    Or actually, 1 minute in google:

    http://www.mjalali.com/blog/?p=10

    "Skype Authentication Server: This is the only centralized Skype server which is used to authenticate Skype users. "