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."

Where did that come from?

[Lifewish]

Since when does P2P == stealing? Some people use it for copyright infringement, yes, but I regularly use it for downloading linux isos and legal media (Art of the Saber rocks).

All this means for me is that I can avoid doing too much damage to the hosting servers, which can only be a good thing for underfunded open source projects and the like.

Re:tried the search..

[fimbulvetr]

Looks like it tries to connect to localhost:8002, seems you need to install the daemon too:)

I tried it, and it said...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The file isn't a valid Azureus plugin."

Re:What is BitTorrent now?

[shutdown -p now]

The difference in this case being all that trackless stuff for BT is optional. You can still run a tracker, and provide the .torrent file on your Web server.

Already there!

[kebes]

On google, do a search like:
"whatever filetype:torrent"

and you'll get links to torrents. Of course, a torrent-specific search could be more optimized than that, but even this often gets you what you want.

Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal

[Travelsonic]

Sorry, I can't call it anything else, even if it's a PhD thesis.

So what you are saying is celebrating any form of advancement of file-sharing technologies == "encourageing theft" (or since what we are arguing over involves copying, copyright infringement? Did I read this correctly, or not, and if not, please clear things up.

Sure, you can argue that copyright infringement is not theft...

Argue? It has been clearly been legally established in 1985, and several times in the past decade that copyright infringement, as illegal as it is, is copyright infringement and nothing else. Philosophically it has also been argued against calling copyright infringement anything other than that as well, but that I will leave to open interpretation.

]

...but then don't call people who abuse GPL software "thieves".

People who do lable GPL violators "theives" when also making the statement that copyright infringement is not theft in other posts, well, they are hypocrites.

Re:Where did that come from?

[DrDribble]

The Socialized.Net does not provide any privacy or encryption. What it does provide is a decentralized way to spread and search for .torrent files. This means that when you search for a resource, your computer ask it's friends for them. This is just like you might do when you want an opinon on a used car. You can call a friend who has a similar car, someone who has had cars of the same brand or someone you know that works in a garage.

It scales wonderfully in the real world, and in theory is now also made available in the digital one. :-) Dr.

Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal

[a whoabot]

"If you'd learn some synonyms..."

Or, instead of learning, he could call it those by copying and pasting straight from reference.com [reference.com] like you did?

Re:Defining feature of P2P

[Breakfast Pants]

The only one they successfully sued in court (i.e. didn't settle with) used centralized searching (Napster), so I don't quite see what you mean by every P2P software distributor sued by the RIAA has used built-in searching.

Re:This will kill Bittorrent

[dizzydogg]

Bittorent is designed for a massive swarm of people all downloading the same file at the same time. It won't die under these circumstances, it will thrive. The more people you have downloading the file, the more people are sharing the file. The reason bittorent is faster is because it forces you to share with others, and doesnt allow you to get away with not sharing the file like many p2p programs, where many people with "slow" connections or a cap on their monthly bandwidth turn off their uploads. Thats why so many people download off one guy with other p2p programs, because the file is never shared by so many people who dowload it, the few people who are sharing their copy's queue is swamped.

It's all because of bittorents tit for tat system, where if the seeders are swamped, you'll usualy get your upload speed returned to you from the other peers you are downloading with. If you upload at 5k/s, you download at 5k/s,but if you can do 30k/s you usualy get 30k/s. You swap the pieces you have for pieces your missing with the other downloaders. Your client remembers the people who traded with it succesfully and tries to make further trades with these people since your client can confirm that they are uploading, and thus you will get something in return. Meanwhile the seeders are feeding the rarest pieces to the people it sees as the ones who upload the most to others, and they swap with others and so on, until everyone has a complete copy.

Re:What is BitTorrent now?

[Daedalon]

There are quite a lot of differences in the three major P2P technologies. Here I try to cover the most important of each:

ed2k (eMule [emule-project.net])

• + Easy linking. Links can be shared anywhere: in web pages, IRC, email. The single 100-200 character link contains everything that is needed to download the file.
• + Supports usage with and without a server (in eMule, ed2k server and serverless Kademlia)
• - If you run a server, you can't make it private
• - If you run a server, you cannot control what is shared there
• - Inefficient, seems to waste bandwidth

Direct Connect (DC++ [sourceforge.net], Reverse Connect [sourceforge.net])

• + You can run servers (hubs) private
• + You can see what everyone is sharing in your hub
• + Using eMule-like links has recently become available, though clicking a link doesn't add the file in your queue, it only allows you to search for it
• + Efficient, you can download directly from someone very fast, even through intranet
• - No serverless mode
• - You don't have total control on what is shared in your server
• - Only in Reverse Connect you can download from multiple sources simultaneously

BitTorrent (Azureus [sourceforge.net], BitComet [bitcomet.com])

• + The most efficient p2p yet
• + Server (tracker) admin can have total control of what is shared choosing a directory where he uploads allowed torrents
• + A single .torrent file can contain instructions on how to download multiple files
• - No serverless mode
• - No searching
• - To share download instructions for a file(set), you have to be able to transfer a .torrent file, a plaintext link isn't enough

This has been the situation for a while. In ed2k nothing big has changed for a year. DC++ (incl. Reverse Connect) is evolving, but magnet (TTH) linking has been the only major change in years. When DC++ gets its support for ADC [sourceforge.net] complete, the evolution of Direct Connect is predicted to get a major boost.

What trackerless BitTorrent [bittorrent.com] does is to make every client a small tracker. So it doesn't just enable searching and serverless usage, it also makes sharing illegal files easier (more than it does for legal). Previously, to share content, you had to find a tracker that allows posting .torrents. To share copyrighted content, you also had to find a tracker that didn't care about legal aspects. So sharing legal and illegal content is now equally easy, while it previously was (at least in theory) a little bit easier to share legal content.

Overall, the changes of trackerless BitTorrent would still make it the best available p2p techonology. For certain special cases, Direct Connect could be better, and both DC and ed2k support easier linking than BT, but even that can change in the future: BT could implement a meta-p2p engine, so that you could share plaintext links that make your client download the right .torrent file and add it to your queue. This would make BT superior to eMule in every aspect.

Re:What is BitTorrent now?

[assassinator42]

"BT could implement a meta-p2p engine, so that you could share plaintext links that make your client download the right .torrent file and add it to your queue. This would make BT superior to eMule in every aspect." The latest Azureus already has that (magnet links). For example, try magnet:?xt=urn:btih:GCT5DYD6RADW6TY2ICW54UZDXB6OPC XD

Re:Not so

[petermgreen]

seeds/finished downloaders don't/can't engage in tit for tat and so will give you as much as they can.

so it seems likely that in your case you were simply getting data from a seed/finished downloader when your rate spiked like that.

Re:tried the search..

[DrDribble]

The daemon runs on your local computer. Port 8002 is the web interface. So, if you cannot reach your own computer on port 8002, your daemon is not running. :-)

Dr.