Opera Embedding BitTorrent Client

Opera Watch writes "The next version of Opera, 8.02, will have an embedded BitTorrent client. Opera has released today a Technical Preview of this new version on its FTP directory, though they have made no official announcement as of yet."

Prediction...

[niteskunk]

I predict a swarm of FireFox BT plug-ins within the next two weeks.

I'm not impressed

[ReformedExCon]

The real problem with this move is that even though they have a sort of "first mover" advantage, Opera is at the mercy of the Firefox/Mozilla developers with regards to this feature. Some enterprising Open Source developer will be able to incorporate BitTorrent into the Firefox browser without much trouble, and then Opera, the only significant for-pay browser left, will turn back into an also-ran.

The key for Opera is to get into niches where they stand a chance, handheld computers and cellphones are one area they are very active in. Per-unit licensing for their browser on cellphones makes them a lot of money. I hope they do well into the future.

Re:Prediction...

[Celt]

I've heard its been suggested before and frankly I've been disoppointed that it hasn't been implemented.
I guess now it will :)

Re:torrent

[Kissing Crimson]

Actually, that's not a bad idea. One of the few Firefox 'features' that really annoys me is that each update requires a full download of the installer package. Opera could quietly download its updates through bittorrents (at severely choked rates!) and the present the update to the end user when complete.

Just more proof...

[Kjella]

...that bittorrent the technology is not going away. In fact, it is a vastly superior method that should replace HTTP/FTP for most file downloads. There should be no more need to find mirrors, simply run it and let the program decide which sources are the faster. An integrated client will introduce a lot more people to it. Now, if they get consistantly better download performance perhaps you'll even see popular demand :)

Kjella

Re:Fine, but...

[TheRaven64]

Yes. If I click on a link to an HTTP-served file, my browser downloads it. If I click on a link to an FTP-served file, my browser downloads it. If I click on a link to a BitTorrent served file, my browser drops the .torrent somewhere and I need to ferret around for a third-party app to download it.

Does this sound like a consistent UI to you?

So much for the corporate desktop

[killbill]

What a great way to see that they get banned from corporate desktops across the planet.

This will change Opera browser installs on enterprise systems to go from "officially not allowed but generally ignored" to "hunted down and killed at every opportunity".

The new "vi vs emacs"?

[slapout]

Is "Opera vs FireFox" the new "vi vs emacs" ?

Re:torrent

[ZephyrXero]

I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore. Users benefit from faster downloads and content providers have to pay for less bandwidth. It's a win win situation (unless you break it like Blizzard).

Re:Opera Banned!

[afd8856]

Are you crazy?

Irc chat in mozilla doesn't suck. It has replaced every other irc chat that I had on my computer. I use windows as my everyday desktop (games & graphic apps), but chatzilla, when coupled with dialogmate (a small utility that offers, among others, the possibility to put programs in the systray), is mostly everything I need.

The embeded download manager doesn't suck as bad as you think. Sure, the resume doesn't work, but the downloads can be retried and it has its limited uses. Just as I assume the torrent client will have when is embeded in Firefox.

In my oppinion, this is a good thing. It will expose more people to BitTorrent and will atract more people from the non-firefox users world, as it will be an extra feature they will get.

And open source is innovative?

[GCHQAgent]

Opera is a commercial company and with their relatively modest research and development budget they've come up with a fairly neat idea to incorporate BitTorrent into a web-browser. Now granted, it doesn't take a genuius to be able to put 2+2 together, afterall, one might see it as a simple extension of what web-browsers already provide. What slightly annoys me is comments like 'some enterprising firefox/mozilla will have this feature in a couple of weeks' - couple that with statements such as 'open source drives innovativation'. While I don't doubt either statement, this example is one where open source hasn't driven the innovation. It has helped (BitTorrent is open-source, without it Opera would have nothing). But then, if an Open Source browser developer just 'copies' this feature - where is the innovation? If open source really drove innovation, why didn't some bright OSS developer have the idea for such a feature sooner?

Hrm... why?

[Duncan3]

When I click on a torrent it already automaticly launches and starts. The BT installer is mean and lean, no worries there.

Won't this just mean one more thing for Opera to have to write/maintain/patch themselves?

Still a cool move, just... why?

Re:Prediction...

[patro]

And I predict a blog post from Asa [mozillazine.org] about how Firefox had this feature before Opera.

Re:torrent

[alnjmshntr]

Are you serious? User's benefit from faster downloads in a P2P environment, but it's still nowhere near as fast as a direct download from a fat pipe (at least in my experience).

Especially considering that bittorrent downloads normally take a while to get up to steam.

Re:So much for the corporate desktop

[Anonymous Coward]

What would change? Corporate firewalls stop BitTorrent, and still will if clients are embeded. It's not like they're making a client which pretends its http and is made to go thru a proxy.

Re:And open source is innovative?

[trongey]

"...why didn't some bright OSS developer have the idea for such a feature sooner?"

Because it's a fix in search of a problem. When I click on a torrent in IE, Netscape, or Firefox my client opens up and starts downloading. How would this be better? Now if I were an Opera user I would be loading up a BT client whenever I use my browser even though I rarely use it.

Hey, have the Opera guys been hanging around with the MS Office guys?

Re:torrent

[Solosoft]

Sort of, what if you had that big pipe seeding the download. This way if the pipe gets saturated atleast people can still get the download off other people. Sort of like a "overload protection". Ive been on some torrents with a fat seed pipe and it really speeds things up.

:)

Re:Fine, but...

[Iriel]

Honestly, I don't think that the main problem with IE is bloat at all. The problem that I see people having with IE is the lack of features in the face of browsers that offer themes, extensions and smoother integration of components without the security holes of being welded onto the OS kernel in sorts.

There are a large number of people out there that wouldn't mind a browser that could serve as a convient portal for all things 'internet' as long as it could serve them well. If you make all things so black and white, then cars shouldn't have radios, padded seats, a trunk(boot) or anything other than what's required to transport you.

The problem isn't bloat or features, but final functionality. If it works...

Re:Good feature

[kihjin]

BitTorrent is no different than HTTP or FTP. It's Just a Protocol.

You can't "steal" movies or music (or anything, for that matter) with BitTorrent, either, since that implies that downloading is theft. Theft leaves the original owner lacking in the item you 'stole'.

Either way, this is an interesting move from Opera. Now it's only a matter of time before Microsoft will announce that they are embedding BitTorrent into Longhorn. Like all those other goodies they are planning ;)

Open with...

[Relic of the Future]

I don't know about you, but when I click a link to a .torrent file, it pops up btdownloadgui... how is this any better?

It's good for Opera and BitTorrent

[Progman3K]

Another precedent being set for the LEGAL use of BitTorrent.

Re:torrent

[trongey]

"...I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore..."

Because if the file you want isn't today's hot movie or game then there's a good chance you won't find a seed. Then you get to download 85% from peers and sit around wishing you could get the rest of the file.

Re:torrent

[Just Some Guy]

I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore.

...sez the guy who apparently doesn't have to contend with NAT. Torrent+IPv6 should be nearly universally convenient, but you basically have to configure a list of per-host NAT rules if you want to use it on multiple clients sharing the same IPv4 address.

See also: active vs. passive FTP. Any protocol that requires remote hosts to connect back to your client is going to make your network admins hate you.

Re:torrent

[bwalling]

I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore. Users benefit from faster downloads and content providers have to pay for less bandwidth. It's a win win situation (unless you break it like Blizzard).

Err, it's hardly ever faster for me. When the last version of Fedora came out, I gave BT a try at it and gave up after 24 hours. I switched over to FTP from USF.edu and got 485K/s. Download was done rather quickly.

Another thing that irks me with BT is that it stops periodically, and doesn't seem to want to restart itself. I have to go back to the torrent to get it going again. Most decent FTP clients will just keep trying periodically. It sucks to wake up in the morning to find out that your download stopped 45 minutes after you left the computer.

Re:Apache

[JahToasted]

Well it would probably be better to combine it with the squid proxy cache or a similar system. What would happen is if a large number of people were accessing the same page, that page is cached as a static page so it takes the load off the database. This is how wikipedia does it.

Squid takes the load off the database, torrent takes the load off the bandwidth. combine the two systems and you get websites that are pretty much immune to the slashdot effect.

Re:Way to go, Opera!

[Just Some Guy]

I may just have to switch browsers now.

Out of curiosity, why? Whenever I click on a torrent link, Firefox opens a BT client window in much the same way that clicking on an FTP link opens an FTP client window. What's the inherent advantage of an integrated client?

Corporate firewalls

[Augusto]

> I dont' see why anyone would use a download service that's not bittorrent anymore

Corporate firewalls

Re:torrent

[dragonman97]

I respect BitTorrent, and think it's a pretty damn good system*. However, I strongly disagree with the model of P2P for official file distribution as "the only way to go." I cannot fathom why a paying customer should have to help defer the costs of a company w.r.t. bandwidth. Frankly, the Terms of Service of many ISPs may disallow the practice of file sharing, and in particular, for any commerical use. If a company is going to sell a product to customers that will require heavy downloads, then they must budget for a distributed, high bandwidth system.

*It's certainly helped me out for downloading Knoppix a few times in the past. (And yes, I've seeded it many times over. No, I do not use it for anything that isn't FL/OSS.)

Re:Open with...

[akozakie]

Because Opera has a unified UI for downloads, with a "Transfers" panel, etc. So, you have a few downloads running, one using FTP, one HTML, one BitTorrent. Why look at 3 different windows if you can have it all in one list - progress bars, current speed, estimated time left...

It's akin to asking why Acrobat provides a plugin - after all if I click on pdf Acrobat would start anyway...

Re:torrent

[TobyWong]

I can't get a good DL speed for the WoW patch therefore blizzard "broke" bittorrent.

I smashed my foot on my coffee table by accident this morning therefore my coffee table "tripped me".

Both are cases of displaced blame stemming from user incompetence.

Try forwarding the ports/watching where you are walking next time.

Re:NAT + torrent?

[Just Some Guy]

No, thank God - at least not on Unix. The last thing you want is $random_app being able to request that your firewall open ports. While it'd be convenient, the security implications far outweigh the possible benefits.

Re:Opera following mozilla users?

[lotsofno]

"It looks like Opera is just listening to the mozilla community, and implementing faster."

despite the "Opera has only 2 users" jokes, Opera does have it's own community you know. considering all the features that make it into firefox that were originally in Opera, i imagine quite a few firefox devs are in that community.

Re:Apache

[Em Adespoton]

Mod parent up... the Squid cache is the place to inject bittorrent, not Apache. As BT can handle full folder structures now, it should be easy to even custom craft the torrent so that the html gets transferred first, followed by .jpg, .png and .gif, and then everything else. That way, the page could even load before the torrent was complete. Combine this with the new "trackerless" torrenting and mod-gz style compression on the individual files, and you've got quite a nice little enhanced Squid!

Re:torrent

[STrinity]

User's benefit from faster downloads in a P2P environment, but it's still nowhere near as fast as a direct download from a fat pipe (at least in my experience).

If you were to download the latest version of Firefox today, you'd be right. But if you've ever tried downloading the latest FF milestone on the day of release, you'd know P2P has a definite advantage.

Re:NAT + torrent?

[DeadMeat (TM)]

If your router/NAT box supports UPnP, then apps can programmatically set up port forwarding. Azureus supports UPnP, and it wouldn't surprise me to see other BitTorrent clients following suit.

Most standalone consumer-grade routers have UPnP support built-in, although you may have to turn it on through the router's setup page first. I'm assuming you're using a Linux/BSD computer as your router, so you may want to look at the links on the open-source UPnP SDK project site [sourceforge.net] for pointers about plugging it into your existing setup.

Note that UPnP's port forwarding features are a potential security risk if you're using NAT as a "firewall" (yes, I've heard it referred to as such) to block out all incoming traffic, since malicious apps can now forward arbitrary ports without your intervention. Granted, IMO it's not a big security risk, since you've probably got bigger problems than forwarded ports if you're running malicious code on your computer.