More About Bit-Torrent

I recently trying to pay more attention to bit-torrent, for my interest is to find out how I would be able to make use of bit-torrent to build a database replication service. Pretty cool huh ?

First of all, let's find out more about Bit-Torrent. Ok, it is created by Bram Cohen it is actually a protocol (standard) for information distribution. In a way, what this means is that if you want to send someone a file, use bit-torrent (protocol) to chop it into pieces and send over. The other party would be able to reassemble it because it is a standard; right ?

So, how it works is that you have a large file, you need to make a torrent out of it. Then as the first person downloads the file, you will start to have two nodes in the whole Internet who will help you to distribute the same file. As the third person start to download from either the 1st and 2nd source, you will then have 3 nodes doing the following things simultaneously.

1. Sourcing the file (for the pieces that you have downloaded)
2. Downloading the file (for the pieces that you haven't downloaded)

So, this is really cool.

And to find out how to create a torrent (file to be distributed with bit-torrent) ? Check this out.

Another thing to take note is the tracker, which is the pivotal to the solution where it is like a server. The purpose of the tracker is to track the activities of torrents; knowing how many nodes are there and etc. Find out more about trackers here.

Bit-Torrent is known to have two problems as documented in Wikipedia.

1. Does not offer anonymity
2. Nodes gradually die out, which results in lesser and lesser torrent sources for older torrents (older files)

And the issues with throttle ? According to here, it can be overcome with encryption and certain clients offer it.

The next big question is whether bit-torrent is open standard ? The answer is yes and you can obtain the specification from official site and unofficial site.

So, it is possible to do what I am trying to do, and to jump start it, just go ahead to study an open source project such as Azureus.

And to conclude this...

Let me share with you two things:

1. There is a Malaysian bit-torrent portal which I heard offers fast download speed for Malaysian download. But you have to register first.
2. Check out toolbarpro's torrent seek

ToolBarPro's TorrentSeek is actually a web browser tool bar customized for seeking torrents.

Ideally, it has core functions of tool bar such as short-cut for search engine, email checkers, games and other gadgets, pop-out blockers.

Check out the following screen-shot.



Another screen-shot here.

It is a tool bar for web browser, it is not a torrent client and it offers a ticker which provides summary of pre-registered rss feeds (for short-cuts to popular torrents). It provides a listing of popular torrent sites, so that you can start searching for torrents right away.

ToolBarPro currently is available for Microsoft Windows 2000, XP and Vista too (for both IE and FireFox latest editions).

Go download it!