Seedbox

A seedbox is a private dedicated server used for the uploading and downloading of digital files. Seedboxes generally make use of the BitTorrent protocol for uploading and downloading, although they have also been used on the eDonkey2000 network. Seedboxes are usually connected to a high speed network, often with a throughput of 100 Mbit/s or more. Files are uploaded to a seedbox from other BitTorrent users, and from there they can be downloaded at high speeds to a user's personal computer via the HTTP, FTP, SFTP, or rsync protocols.

Seedboxes can run on most major operating systems (Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X). More expensive seedboxes may provide VNC connection, or remote desktop protocol on some Windows-based seedboxes, allowing many popular clients to be run remotely. Other seedboxes are special purpose and run variety of torrent specific software including web interfaces of popular clients like Transmission, rTorrent and μTorrent, as well as the TorrentFlux web interface clients.

Seedboxes on high speed networks are typically able to download large files within minutes, provided that the swarm can actually handle such a high upload bandwidth. Seedboxes generally have download and upload speeds of 100 megabits per second. This means that a 1 GB file can take as little as 14 minutes to download. That same 1 gigabyte file can be uploaded to other users in the same amount of time, creating a 1:1 upload:download ratio for that individual file. The ability of a seedbox to transfer files so quickly is a big attraction seedboxes hold within the P2P and BitTorrent communities.

Because of the mentioned high speeds, seedboxes tend to be extremely popular inside private torrent trackers, where maintaining an upload/download ratio above 1 can be very important.

Due to high bandwidth demands for such uses, many server and hosting providers choose to disallow torrents.

See also

• List of BitTorrent clients