Completing BitTorrent Decentralization 236
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."
Meaning of the disclaimer (Score:5, Funny)
really means:
Pleassseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee don't sue my ass.
Re:Meaning of the disclaimer (Score:2, Funny)
Defining feature of P2P (Score:5, Insightful)
With the conventional internet, you were stuck using a centralized search engine which is easy to censor. To censor a network with built-in searching, you have to censor the whole network.
Re:Defining feature of P2P (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Defining feature of P2P (Score:2)
Re:Defining feature of P2P (Score:2)
clearly, this is positive (Score:2)
Re:"the other" browser (Score:5, Funny)
Re:"the other" browser (Score:2)
Then you can just use links like tsn:sith.
--
Evan
Re:"the other" browser (Score:2)
Re:"the other" browser (Score:2)
http://localhost:8002/LeChuck/addquery?sourceid=K o nqueror&Operation=Add&submit=Search&Timeout=5.0&Ke ywords= [localhost]\{@}&Expires=15&scope=Global
Remove any spaces that Slashdot added, and go to settings:/Network/WebBrowsing/ebrowsing and add it. I suggest using tsn as the shortcut.
You can then use tsn:Good Eats style urls anywhere you want.
--
Evan
Re:clearly, this is positive (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:clearly, this is positive (Score:3, Funny)
I tried it, and it said... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I tried it, and it said... (Score:3, Insightful)
right... but read the same page where you clicked.
in bold:
Sorry about that, unzip the file into your azureus plugin directory, the wizard does not work on this file.
so, what I did, in Linux was: and then restarted Azureus. It is now in the "plugins" menu.
Re:I tried it, and it said... (Score:2)
tar -C ~/.Azureus/plugins -zxvf
does the same thing.
Possibility of mainline integration? (Score:5, Insightful)
If this technology works as advertised (and obviously that has yet to be seen) it will only really work by the kind of mass adoption created by inclusion in the standard bittorrent clients. This is how the Azureus distributed database has worked out so well, because of the existing userbase being rolled over seamlessly to its inclusion by default.
If Azureus or other clients decided to include functionality like this, it would effectively leave programs like eXeem dead in the water and provide BitTorrent users with a closed 'single-stop' solution for finding and downloading files.
Re:Possibility of mainline integration? (Score:2)
I think you meant to say open solution.
400%Growth in nodes (Score:2, Interesting)
No biggie (Score:2)
As for Azureus, I don't see the problem with restarting. It may be a bit slow at first, but it quickly picks up.
As for Fireofx... Thats where the Session Saver extension [mozdev.org] comes in handy! My new favorite extension.
Re:No biggie (Score:2)
Re:No biggie (Score:2)
I had the same problem. I didn't have time to dive into it, tho, and it was a fresh FF install, so I just wiped the FF config dir and started again.
SessionSaver has to save it's last 'state' somewhere. Anyone know?
SB
Re:No biggie (Score:2)
Couldn't you just disconnect the network/modem, and possibly delete the cache? Then it'd fail to load and you could open a local page, then plug back in and continue.
Has become like ed2k (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that BT has decentralized tracker and decentralized search, it appears that the only remaining advantages over ed2k (e.g. eMule) are the tit-for-tat algorithm and smaller complete block size before one can begin uploading (256 KB for BT vs. 9500 KB for ed2k).
Re:Has become like ed2k (Score:3, Insightful)
The difference between BitTorrent and ed2k is quite simple: ed2k has a concept of 'shared folders', BitTorrent doesn't. This means that on ed2k you are sharing your upload between 20-2500 files, on BitTorrent you are just sharing it between how many torrents you have open.
Also, the software is far more portable and it's open source also. This means it's got a much bigger 'brainshare' with *nix a
Re:Has become like ed2k (Score:2)
I've never had to wait days to download a torrent.
ed2k uses a credit scheme that seriously penalizes anyone who hasn't uploaded to you in the past. thankfully, bittorrent doesn't (i think).
thats the kind of Phd thesis I like... (Score:5, Funny)
What is BitTorrent now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What is BitTorrent now? (Score:3, Informative)
Meta data search? (Score:2, Interesting)
P2P could even replace things like classified ads or directories. Share a picture of your car with tags se
Re:Meta data search? (Score:2)
Re:What is BitTorrent now? (Score:5, Informative)
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])
Direct Connect (DC++ [sourceforge.net], Reverse Connect [sourceforge.net])
BitTorrent (Azureus [sourceforge.net], BitComet [bitcomet.com])
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.
A few additions... (Score:2)
- Slooooow at single downloads, need a long queue, lots of incomplete files wasting disk space
Direct Connect:
- If the last source on your server goes missing, you often have to jump around servers to find another source.
- Haven't tried RC, but slow clients can block fast downloads (e.g. kick out 2k/s modem user, get 200k/s Uni user)
BT:
- Nearly impossible to find rare files!!!
And I guess it can be in its place to compare with 3rd gen networks too (Freenet, Ants, I2P etc):
+ Anonymous
+ Serverless
+ Does
Re:What is BitTorrent now? (Score:2)
# - If you run a server, you can't make it private
# - If you run a server, you cannot control what is shared there
Both of these statements are incorrect. eMule supports secure user identification based on a public key system. All the server has to do is reject login requests from clients not on a whitelist. Similarly, when a client issues a search request the server is free to do whatever it wants both with the request and the results. If you only want people sharing known good files via your
Re:What is BitTorrent now? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What is BitTorrent now? (Score:2)
For me that is what distinguish a p2p use mainly to share p0rn from BT..
Re:Unrecognizeable anonymous sharing (Score:2)
I don't particularly want stuff getting shared off my computer and bandwidth that I don't know about.
What I could use though is a something that I can stick on my linux gateway to intercept BT streams, handle the torrent itself, so that I don't have to port forward to a single machine on the inside, and the uploading can be done from the internet facing machine instead of from the machines on the
Azureus install (Score:2, Interesting)
Kahless2k
Mod story Redundancy ! (Score:2)
this gives us a redundancy Admins can only dream of in other areas.
The fact that you can have your files spread over a massive number of computers spread across the world is the way of future file distribution. The load changes from a constant one on your server to a one off (well perhaps one day) of uploading it , then as soon as you know it the file propigates itself across the p2p network allowing for speeds unatainable in the classic server-client model which is still prevelant
The
This will kill Bittorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This will kill Bittorrent (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Not so (Score:2)
If you upload at 5k/s, you download at 5k/s,but if you can do 30k/s you usualy get 30k/s.
My lousy DSL cant sustain much more than 8kb/s upstream before all my other net-apps die. There is no upstream left for sending requests.
So I have Azureus capped at 5kb/s upstream to make the net usuable. Guess what? At occation I still get download speeds which maxes my downstream at 80kb/s. And that's when there are still other peers in the swarm.
You may be correct on the rest, but at this point you are wron
Re:Not so (Score:3, Informative)
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:This will kill Bittorrent (Score:2)
Re:This will kill Bittorrent (Score:2)
I don't know what the exact relationship between upload and download speeds is in BT, but it's not 1:1 as you indicate here. I regularly have torrents running at 80k/s - 150k/s *sustained* with my upload rate capped at 10k/s or 15k/s and have even seen it get as high as 400k/s (and stay there until the torrent was finished). Indeed, even with my upload capped at 3k/s I've seen d/l speeds of 50k/s.
Re:This will kill Bittorrent (Score:2)
Moreover, I expect the speed difference is really caused by two factors. First simple algorithmic efficency, BT seems better than the earlier generation of P2P clients (people learned something. Secondly, previous dec
Re:This will kill Bittorrent (Score:2)
From the ground up? (Score:2)
In particular by building both searching and trackerlessness into such a system from the groun up one could benefit from a clean elegant metaphor (both searching a
Re:From the ground up? (Score:2)
Maybe I don't know enough about how BT works but does it do any sort of coordination to make sure the file stays availible if the seed nodes go offline? In particular I thought the tracker needed to have a reference to some seed node which will have the full file. So if you really want to eliminate the
No more webhosting! (Score:3, Insightful)
While one benefit of P2P is psuedo-anonymous file hosting. That is if I wish to spread some information I need not set up a webserver and be easily traceable (ideally once everything goes trackerless). Another one is the fact that the consumers of information can provide the bandwidth for the resources they consume.
The benefits for open sourceesque projects cannot be underestimated. Running community sites like wikipedia is very difficult as they need to pay for lots of bandwidth and server space. A well designed P2P system would turn every user of a resource into a partial server. This means it is no more expensive to provide information a million people want than to provide information 10 people want.
Of course some issues such as file ownership permissions need to be dealt with. However, this is exactly the sort of technology that is needed to realize the great leveling capacity of the internet and turn non-profit groups and individuals into just as important media distribution entities as major corporations.
I fully expect this to change the world.
Re:No more webhosting! (Score:2)
While there are certain to be backups (and likely a good chunk of people serving the same information, to reduce that likelyhood of error), I wonder if it could be introduced like a SETI@Home type of thing -- people serve intentionally or as a screensaver/when the computer isn't being used.
Probably would ha
Re:No more webhosting! (Score:2)
The real problems are not replication but allocation of resources. What prevents someone from flooding all the disk space with junk? Presumably you would need some sort of credit system whe
Well, there you have it (Score:2)
"Shady" communication (Score:2)
Or, depending on how you look at it, propaganda designed to portray modern social tools as "shady" are becoming more popular among those who don't understand the issues.
A Different Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
Port advertising instead of service advertising.
I haven't come across this idea elsewhere, so, please let me know if you actually do it ;)... I would if I had a server handy, it's an easy project.
One centralised server can be used as a central tracker for P2P, or anything else, with no legal implications. The idea is simple. Your server doesn't advertise services, it advertises open ports.
Let's say my awesome new p2p program uses port 23145. On starting up, it sends a packet to central server saying "my port 23145 is open". When someone else asks the server for someone with port 23145 open, there's a chance they get my IP address in return. When I have enough connections, I send a packet asking that I be delisted.
Obviously there need to be controls against spoofing, etc, but the application is so simple that these are pretty easy to do.
Because the central server stores nothing more than IP/port pairs (plus timing and security stuff), there is complete deniability. You have no way to tell which program people are running, either on the server or the client. And you never see any application data whatsoever. It's just as useful for legitimate apps as for legally difficult stuff.
Problem solved. Any program can find other instances of the same program without nasty legal questions being raised. Admittedly they'll have to check the identity of the other program on connection, but they should be doing that anyway...
Torrent of installer? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Legal Bullseye for Bram. (Score:2)
When bittorrent first came out, the AA's didn't know what to attack because as far as Bram Cohen was concerned, he was in the free and clear. Bittorrent did not handle any searching, was not the central host for the clients, and didn't really do anything but make a decentralized File transfer client. So the way that the AA's handled bittorrent was to take out the trackers that were doing the illegal swapping, and this is fine, because basici
Legal Bullseye for Bram. (Score:2)
When bittorrent first came out, the AA's didn't know what to attack because as far as Bram Cohen was concerned, he was in the free and clear. Bittorrent did not handle any searching, was not the central tracker for the clients, and didn't really do anything but make a decentralized File transfer client to spread bandwidth costs and increase speed. So the way that the AA's handled bittorrent was to take out the trackers that were doing the il
Makes torrents worse than Gnutella/Kazaa (Score:2)
The biggest thing Bittorrent has going for it, is that a central authority that you trust, is listing legit files, with descriptions, etc. With Gnutella/Kazaa, you don't have any assurance, hence the problem with fake files.
Bittorrent makes this problem worse (if it goes decentralized) because it downloads chunks completely randomly, so you can't even preview an 9GB
Re:viva la bittorrent (Score:5, Funny)
This is not an example of evolution but rather of Intelligent Design. An intelligence is required to implement the irreducibly complex decentralization.
Re:viva la bittorrent (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:viva la bittorrent (Score:2)
Of course this is evolution! (Score:3, Interesting)
Nonsense. This is quite obviously a form of evolution.
First off, we get IRC. It wasn't well known by the public and searching was quite difficult for the masses.
Next, we get Napster. It was a good server, with huge increases in fitness due to searching, but it was too centralized (even more so than IRC). The main servers got killed with lawsuits a
Re:Of course this is evolution! (Score:3, Funny)
Okay, you got me there. The programs are great examples of macroevolution, but on the micro-scale it's all ID.
In the absense of reliable radio-carbon...dating
This is just science fiction. I mean, do you know what kind of geeks write this stuff? They would be lucky to date anything. Carbon-dating by phone, internet or radio is pretty well out of the question.
of file sharing technology, one must presume both origina
Where did that come from? (Score:5, Informative)
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:Where did that come from? (Score:2)
Sure, P2P is not inherently illegal, but you're kidding yourself if you don't think that P2P is mostly used to facilitate copyright infringement. And, as another poster pointed out, why go to these great lengths to create complicated, decentralized, and massively encrypted P2P mechanisms if what you're sharing isn't illegal?
All
Re:Where did that come from? (Score:2)
And, as another poster pointed out, why go to these great lengths to create complicated, decentralized, and massively encrypted P2P mechanisms if what you're sharing isn't illegal?
Because there exist works that do not infringe copyright but do violate other laws, such as anything related to Falun Dafa (under the law of the People's Republic of China) or anything related to MP3 encoding (under the law of countries that recognize software patents). And even in the case of works whose distribution is unque
Re:Where did that come from? (Score:2, Informative)
It scales wonderfully in the real world, and in theory is now also
Re:Where did that come from? (Score:2)
However, the question here is whether going trackerless is just a benefit for illicit activity. I suggest not.
Read my above posts for a full explan
Re:Where did that come from? (Score:2)
So how do you expect to authenticate the linuxkernel2-6-12.tar.bz.torrent you come across then ?
Re:P2P is not (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:P2P is not (Score:2)
See the BlogTorrent [blogtorrent.com] project, from which there is already a bunch [google.ca] of trackers.
Re:P2P is not (Score:3, Interesting)
Many sites and young projects
It may not seem like much cost to distribute a 50KB file but if you get popular it can add up , then you have alot of other overheads
Re:P2P is not (Score:2)
Even if you have a behemoth of a server(or several) things go down ocassionaly(be it the server , the power to the server , he conection etc) , The redundancy this awards you is unmatched . Several thousand people hosting a link to the cotent which is hosted by several thousand people over several thousand computers
That is the future of file distribution and its a something that i
Re:P2P is not (Score:2)
The thing that would really blow the lid off would be an anonymous, fast, and simple to use P2P system.
Re:Tradeoffs (Score:2)
And yes, while there is a tradeoff between anonymity and speed a reasonable level of both should be possible. A simple to use interface can be created independantly of the other two factors.
Re:Tradeoffs (Score:2)
IP does not apply in any situation, as it is a field of widely varying laws, not a law. Too many people use "IP" as a sort of handwaving. Sort of like two people discussing what kind of algorithm was used to render hair in The Incredibles and somebody comes along and says "You guys are both wrong - they used a computer!".
--
Evan
Re:P2P is not (Score:2, Insightful)
Trackerless BitTorrent allows you to download legitimate free content even if the distributor's tracker happens to go down (for instance, when someone posts a link to the tracker on slashdot, and their server spontaneously combusts). Sure, you don't need trackerless BT, but then again, you don't need BT at all.
The bottom line is that adding a distributed tracker both offloads even more bandwidth from the servers -- which is the whole p
Re:P2P is not (Score:2)
Apart from what mrchaotica pointed out, I'll add one more point - privacy.
If I want to distribute something without being found out, it's my choice.
Wow, folks like you are the reason RIAA and MPAA think any new technology will only be used for unlawful purposes.
I might want to put up legitimate stuff without people knowing it - just because I seek that privacy doesn't mean you shouldn't respect the need for it.
Re:P2P is not (Score:3, Insightful)
However, there apparently isn't any lack of trackers for ilegal content. On the other hand the potential uses of trackerless P2P for legal purposes are huge. We just d
Re:P2P is not (Score:2)
In 1985 there was a man named Dowling who was prosecuted for the "Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property". He was selling bootleg copies of Elvis records. The U.S. Supreme Court in DOWLING v. UNITED STATES, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) [findlaw.com] struck this down because copyright infringement is not theft. You have to deprive your victim of the item in order to steal it from them. Making copies doesn't deprive anyone of what it be
Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people do use the technoligy to distribute copyrighted materials , many others use it to distribute GPL software and linux distros (which is how i get all my distros , via bittorent)
Having a system like this decentralises the network further , which is a brilliant thing as bandwidth is expensive , this will take the load off many networks if it picks up.
Celebrating the freedom to share is more apt , what you share is up to you (and any consiquences there of).
Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Argue? It has been clearly been legally established in 1985, and several times in the past decade that copy
Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal (Score:2)
Yes we are celebrating (Score:2)
Funny, you'd think that after 150 years people would learn a thing or two about bullshit rights, like the "right" to own slaves, or more recently the right to coericevely rest
Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal (Score:2)
Re:Celebrating the freedom to steal (Score:4, Informative)
Or, instead of learning, he could call it those by copying and pasting straight from reference.com [reference.com] like you did?
Re:tried the search.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:tried the search.. (Score:2, Informative)
Dr.
Re:Unstoppable? (Score:5, Funny)
I bet in retaliation, they'll put out crappy music and movies.
Oh, wait...
Re:Unstoppable? (Score:3, Insightful)
1) handed over to them
2) shutdown completely
3) taxed at 95% for any useage (no matter how irrelevant to music/movies)
Re:Unstoppable? (Score:2)
Yep -- with 802.11b linking neighbors to neighbors across the country, you can create a "people's internet", something not subject to any central authority. Hopefully, such a network would thrive with a cathedral-and-bazaar philosphy, and not choke in it's own vomit with a tragedy-of-the-commons philosphy.
Then again, considering the way that the current internet has gone, a people's internet is probably doomed from the start.
Mod Parent Up (Score:2)
Already there! (Score:4, Informative)
"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:Google? (Score:2)
You mean like if you put this into Google:
?
Re:Google? (Score:4, Interesting)
Like this? [torrenttyphoon.com]
Re:P2P != Stealing (Score:2)
Re:Not good (Score:2)
Re:Bit Torrent was never designed to be an 'undern (Score:2)
Now all we need is "required" sharing amounts... just lie and say the files not done until you share it with