Researchers Warn of Possible BitTorrent Meltdown

secmartin writes "Researchers at Delft University warn that large parts of the BitTorrent network might collapse if The Pirate Bay is forced to shut down. A large part of the available torrents use The Pirate Bay as tracker, and other available trackers will probably be overloaded if all traffic is shifted there. TPB is currently using eight servers for their trackers. According to the researchers, even trackerless torrents using the DHT protocol will face problems: 'One bug in a DHT sorting routine ensures that it can only "stumble upon success", meaning torrent downloads will not start in seconds or minutes if Pirate Bay goes down in flames.'"

Re:Is it me.

[PhilHibbs]

My front page just switched over to only displaying headlines and hour ago, I have to click through to each article now to get the summary!

Re:Tag this FUD

[aceofspades1217]

you just violated the most important rule of usenet -_-

Rule 1 of usenet: Don't ever talk about usenet.

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

They already have servers in other countries. The swedish servers was "stolen" by the police in the raid.

Re:Bit Torrent has recovered before

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, Bittorrent survived, but the trackers didn't. According to a talk at 24c3, one (public) tracker after the other collapsed due to the heavy load, after TPB shut down.

Re:Is it me.

[Bashae]

Go to Preferences > Index and disable Beta Index (should be the first checkbox). I've had mine disabled for a long time and I never see any significant changes to the UI I know and love.

Idle is still green though :P

Re:Bit Torrent has recovered before

[nedlohs]

Which part of "nor did it operate any BitTorrent trackers" do you not comprehend in (from your wikipedia link):

"Suprnova did not host any of the shared files, nor did it operate any BitTorrent trackers for long. It offered the ".torrent" meta files which would tell a BitTorrent client where it could find the BitTorrent tracker."

BitTorrent is not a Network

[KeithIrwin]

There is no such thing as "the BitTorrent network". That's like talking about "the HTTP network". It's a distributed download protocol. It doesn't do search and different trackers and torrents are not interconnected in any way. Thus, it is not a network. The ability to use BitTorrent will not be harmed in any way by any one site going down.

Remember when everyone used suprnova and then it went away? The world of BitTorrent will be fine.

Re:Not in sweden.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be damned sure that the prospect of doing additional 1-2 years jail time for not complying with a court order ... prepared to spend 12-24 months in prison

Sir, the Swedish legal system does not believe in jail time. To get 24 months of jail time, you would have to kill someone. In cold blood. With an axe. And then set fire to them. And eat the remains. Even then, you're more likely to get an excuse from the judge than jail time. It is very very hard to get jailed in Sweden.

The folks at Piratebay will be convicted and they will face "dagsboter" (fines) of several million, I guess. But I don't think they will be serving a single day in prison.

Re:UI Design Fail.

[bigstrat2003]

It's yet another concept the overlords think is cool, but no one else does (more specifically, it's a way to influence what stories get picked a la Digg). We shouldn't care about it.

Re:Bit Torrent has recovered before

[melikamp]

Within a week? I wouldn't expect to wait that long.

1. mininova.org
2. torrenthound.com
3. btmon.com
4. monova.org
5. torrentportal.com
6. torrentreactor.net
7. fulldls.com
8. bittorrent.am
9. extratorrent.com

Back to school for you, son

[flagg9483]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_network [wikipedia.org] A computer network is a group of interconnected computers. Networks may be classified according to a wide variety of characteristics. This article provides a general overview of some types and categories and also presents the basic components of a network. ... Functional relationship (network architecture) Computer networks may be classified according to the functional relationships which exist among the elements of the network, e.g., Active Networking, Client-server and Peer-to-peer (workgroup) architecture. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer [wikipedia.org]

Re:The market will find a way

[Bearhouse]

Nothing wrong with the protocol. That's like saying there was something 'wrong' with IP if all the DNS servers were nuked...

Re:The market will find a way

[commodore64_love]

>>>How long did it take to recover from mininova? Not long...

Or Demonoid? Or niteshdw.com? When those went down, my torrent program immediately switched to dht: and was able to build a database of ~500,000 users. I continued downloading and seeding demonoid/niteshdw torrents for MONTHS.

There were only two demonoid torrents which failed to complete with dht:, so I used isohunt to find a backup tracker, and switched to that. The second torrent had no backup tracker, so I uploaded the file to torrentstorm and within days it was alive again.

Eventually I was able to complete downloading everything, despite RIAA's shutting down the trackers.

Re:This is GREAT for bittorrent

[Andy Dodd]

I've had no problems finding relatively old content on public trackers, long after most people stop seeding them on private trackers because they're no longer able to get any credit for them.

Re:BitTorrent is not a Network

[Idiomatick]

supernova wasn't a tracker, TPB is the biggest tracker. Slight difference there. If TPB goes down, alot of the trackers will have to fill in the gap and its a pretty big burden, some trackers could get crushed. I think what will happen is a index like isohunt will take control completely. Then all trackers will be small but there will be thousands of them. In this way the riaa can play whack-a-mole with the trackers as much as they want to no avail. And the index are innocent or atleast fairly easily replaceable. And we won't see a repeat.

Don't you believe it....

[westlake]

one of the guys running the site said they had made arrangements such that the actual hardware is no longer under their direct control, so even if they are all found guilty, it would be outside their ability to shut it down, even if ordered to do so by a court.

There are few better ways to piss off a judge than to go into court with an argument like this. You Are Not A Lawyer [slashdot.org]