Last week The Pirate Bay confirmed it would shut down its tracker permanently, instead encouraging the use of DHT, PEX, and magnet links. This move confounded many BitTorrent enthusiasts, who were confronted with confusing new terminology and technology. Time for some explaining.
News link: here
BT Vision is a freeview box and digital TV recorder combined - you can enjoy Freeview channels, tv on demand, sports tv and more.
Get a great deal with our digital tv packages or look at the BT credit card for discounts. Visit us to find out more.
BT Phone line
BT Total Broadband
A TV and aerial
Freeview coverage
Want fast, broadband wireless Internet? Get a BT dongle Or get a wireless internet connection from BT .
If you are unsure of how fast your line is, use our broadband checker. You just have to enter your telephone number or postcode below. You'll need a minimum of 2MB speed to be able to get BT Vision.
Want to see check broadband availability in your local area? Enter your postcode in our broadband postcode checker below and find out what is available to you.
BT offers great support including services for computer security and media storage. Contact us and we'll be more than happy to help you.
36 Responses
12.4.2009
Actually, the article did a good job explaining some of the terminology being used, without going deep into the technical details.What all this is basically saying is trackers may die but torrents will not, because of these technologies that have already been available to us for years. Keep in mind I’m not saying trackers will completely disappear just that it will play less of an important role in torrents.You can always do your own research if you want to know more…PS The article does have an initial assumption that you know what trackers are and the role it plays in torrents, so if you don’t already know that it is you might not get as much from the article.
12.4.2009
Magnet links are the best. My Uni blocks the .torrent extension (which can be easily circumvented), but the magnet links just make things so much easier.
12.4.2009
I get those sorts of connections all the time. If you’re downloading some popular TV show episode just after it’s aired you can achieve crazy connections like that. I’ve broken the 2Mb/s barrier a number of times using the magnet links on Mininova. You can download a DVD rip inside ten minutes on a good day.
12.4.2009
Nice – good, concise explanation there…
12.4.2009
Ah. It starts from the torrent you are using that has active DHT nodes listed in the torrent itself, THEN it can discover from other DHT servers older torrents. It IS like gnutella, sans active searches (I guess a free-text-entry hash search can be implemented in BT clients!).from libtorrent.rakshasa.no/wiki/RTorrentUsingDH …"Being an active node (i.e. able to receive and reply to queries from other nodes) generally makes DHT work better because the routing table will hold fresher nodes. However a very stable node will see more and more bandwidth used by DHT the longer it stays active. Continuous uptime of a week will lead to an upload bandwidth of about 10 KB/s as more and more nodes add you to their routing table. This is why the DHT server is usually set to turn off when the last torrent using it is stopped ("dht=auto").The DHT server upload obeys the upload throttle however, and while torrents are active will not use more bandwidth than an average peer. So if you can spare the bandwidth it is a good idea to keep the DHT server running, it makes the DHT network as a whole more reliable. "So just using DHT over a stable node that’s running the DHT server (on a torrent for a long time) can increase bandwidth requirements. Interesting.Does that mean if I seed Ubuntu for weeks that eventually 1/2 my upload cap will be utilized by DHT? That seems damn odd for a trade-off on DHT. I wonder if there’s DHT-only partitioning for throttling in clients.
12.4.2009
Applications are told, but explanations are still past due.
12.4.2009
well it explained PEX, thats pretty clear, but i still have no idea how DHT works
12.4.2009
That swarm in the picture is crazy. I’ve never connected to that many before.
12.4.2009
Peerblock is better.
12.4.2009
I thought DHT was like gnutella, but I still can’t figure out how it gets the list in the first place.If anything, torrents using DHT and peer discovery *are* like a skimmed down gnutella for all intents and purposes; the only thing not working is searches.I’m wondering how DHT bootstraps.
12.4.2009
Really? So where do I get a connection with a download speed of 240Mbps?
12.4.2009
You may have missed the part where these torrents rely on DHT and PEX, not using any tracker at all.
12.4.2009
Yes, that is certainly true. But the point of a seedbox is not fast downloads, but seeding. Hence the name seedbox.
It doesn’t matter how long it takes to put it on my PC, and sometimes I download things that I’m not interested in just to seed them. It’s infinitely helpful in keeping a positive ratio on private sites (which is likely the only place you’d really want one).My home connection is a meager 5 Mbps and I believe the average is somewhere in that neighbourhood as well.
12.4.2009
Nope, they just posted the entire article.
12.4.2009
I’m not saying that those speeds can’t be achieved, I’m just asking you to provide the name of an ISP that gives you a download speed of 240 Mbps.
12.4.2009
Name 1 ISP in Canada that gives you 240 Mbps.
12.4.2009
Sorry to double post but the edit timer ran out before I could update it.Update: And the bittorrent community is only splintered by people who want good quality torrents and people who don’t care. Why does it matter if you’re forced to share? It only makes sense as that’s how the protocol works. I’m fairly sure that both worlds can coexist with each other. Especially since nearly everything is released onto public sites anyway (minus things like custom packs and whatnot).
12.4.2009
go to tpb and use a magnet link. notice the publicbt tracker still used?
12.4.2009
Top Gear & full metal alchemist will generate swarms like that.
12.4.2009
Ratio requirements are the sole reason why private trackers are good. Atleast 80% of public bittorrent users will hit and run(stop the download once finished) every torrent they get. When you’re required to stay above X amount of a ratio not only on a user level but a torrent level it creates a much better seeded torrent which is a bonus to all. I’m fulfilling my ratio requirements while the people downloading from me are getting faster speeds because of me. In a perfect world people wouldn’t hit and run but because of the nature of public sites (not required to have an account) they will always be crappier. Duplicates and guarantee of a virus free torrent are another positive for private trackers. Most trackers only allow one group to upload a single release making it much easier to find the version you’re looking for (no more searching through 600 duplicates that are half assed seeded).
12.4.2009
Yeah, but didn’t lifehacker just basically just paraphrase the article they linked to: torrentfreak.com/bittorrents-future-dht-pex …
12.4.2009
Sure, you could get a dedicated server in a data center and use a 1 Gbps connection to do your torrenting, but you still have to get that data from this server to the computer at your home, which is usually accomplished with a broadband connection.2 MB/s. That’s maxing out a 20 Mbps broadband connection using DHT. In such a case, it would take the same amount of time to download from DHT as it would to dowload from the dedicated server.How fast is your home connection? What is the average speed for your country?
12.4.2009
You are keeping a positive ratio on the private trackers in order to get good downloads speeds. In order to do this, you are using a dedicated server. Given that the majority of people could achieve maximum speed using DHT, private trackers are a waste of time for them. If you guys do all your seeding on DHT, it would be better for the whole community.Private trackers simply offer no benefits to the avarege bittorrent user, and have fractured the bittorrent community. Hopefully, this will unite it.The people who could benefit most from private trackers and seedboxes are actually the content creators distributing their own works. This would provide them some measure of copyright protection.
12.4.2009
*coughinvitecough*
12.4.2009
Even with the leeches, DHT can provide speeds 4x greater than your home connection can provide, never mind the public trackers.The link below shows the stats for a torrent posted 11 hours ago. eztv.it/ep/17741/rush-s02e21e22-ws-pdtv-xvi …Here are the stats for the latest episode of V. eztv.it/ep/17713/v-2009-s01e04-its-only-the …As you can see, there is no problem with seeding on public trackers. As for security, would you download a file from some random website and expect it not to contain a virus? Of course not, but if I was getting it from a trusted source I would, although I would still run a scan in both circumstances. At the end of the day, security always comes down to the user.
12.4.2009
Well that is for a torrent that is 11 hours old. Although popular release groups like eztv will be fairly well seeded any kind of general release after a number of weeks or months will become pretty terrible for anybody to download from. Especially larger files where decent seeders can make the download be a few hours versus a few days. Dead torrents on private trackers are fairly rare due to seeding requirements and the benefits that come with seeding torrents for long periods of time.And I don’t really feel like arguing this point any further but public trackers provide zero improvement against private ones. You’re near guaranteed faster speeds and a higher quality file on private sites vs. sifting through random crap on public sites. Not to mention a good community where you can go for help (provided you’re following the rules). Look at it as a walled garden…
12.4.2009
BT is becoming more and more similar with emule/eDonkey.
12.4.2009
Many places…you just have to know where to look…
12.4.2009
Who said it was in Canada?
And for all the non-believers out there…this is on a gbit connection. img101.imageshack.us/img101/7992/testzo.png
12.4.2009
It’s not an ISP in Canada and like I said there are many guides on the internet about seedboxes and which ISP they’re on and where so you should just use Google…
12.4.2009
I HATE BIG BROTHER LETS ALL HOPE THEY GET THE N1 OR BIRD FLU….. ***** THE SYSTEM
12.4.2009
On some well seeded private sites where seedboxes are abundant you can get in excess of 30 MB/s. I’m a big fan of uploading over 100 GB in a day.
12.4.2009
So………. do I have to download a new version of PeerGuardian or what?
12.4.2009
what’s the point of magnet links when you still end up on a public tracker?
12.4.2009
Private Trackers FTW!
12.4.2009
Peerguardian only slows your internet down by blocking random ip addresses.