Talk:BitTorrent

Article Cleanup & Layout Restructuring

This article needs a bit of a cleanup so as to focus on the actual technical aspect of the protocal better. As of now, many things that have nothing to do with the actual protocal are littered throughout the article. Anyone thats willing to help restructure this article into more clearly defined, and specific sections please share your ideas here. INO Exodus (talk) 05:49, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Other approaches

After a number of reverts and re-reverts of the windows zip system, I think it's time to settle this dispute on the talk page before it becomes a lame edit war. Can the people reverting it and re-reverting it give their reasons for it here, so this dispute can be solved? This doesn't need to escalate in a full fledged edit war. Martijn Hoekstra 18:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Alternative approaches

Alternative approaches refers to Azureus 2.3.0.2 as if it were an upcoming release, The current version is 2.5.0.4, this section should be updated appropriately, i.e. was the goal achieved? delayed for a future release? --XanderJ 19:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Negatives

Many files can not be downloaded due to lack of seeding. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ergn (talk • contribs) 01:06, August 23, 2007 (UTC).

BitTorrent development history

Come on! Let's see some history, when did the idea of bittorrent first come about? When was the first version released? By what time did it become immensely popular? Let's see some comparisons to other P2P programs like Kazaa. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.146.236.11 (talk) 20:22, 6 February 2007 (UTC).

NOT THE OFFICIAL BITTORRENT SITE

According to this, the above URL and the one cited in 'external links' is *not* the official site of the company, BitTorrent. Instead, it has several hallmarks of a 'fake' site (again, see the link I posted) and asks for email etc. to 'signup'.

I will be changing the 'official site' link to this, the 'real' site. Note that this one has as part of its 'press release' section the recent (and genuine) takeover of uTorrent, which I consider evidence it's genuine. And it doesn't ask for money. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 139.184.30.17 (talk) 19:05, 15 February 2007 (UTC).

Don't make a fool of yourself. The URL you linked to as being the "official site" redirects to http://www.bittorrent.com. Yurimxpxman 14:29, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

It appears the page is 'protected or semiprotected'. I wonder in what way Wikipedia is 'open' nowadays... never mind. I urge somebody deemed 'safe' enough to modify the link to do so, and stop the page redirecting interested people to a place that has them pay for what is free. 139.184.30.17 19:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Uh-huh. The black helicopters will be round shortly to, erm, "correct" this. Please remain calm. Chris Cunningham 15:21, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

See [1]. Bram Cohen is the creator of Bit Torrent, and so I do believe www.bittorrent.com is indeed the official website. - EndingPop 15:45, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

bittorrent.com is the site for the corporation created by Bram. bittorrent.org is the "official" bittorrent protocol site. Bcharles 20:43, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

There are a number of comments referring to this article being protected, so i trust that it was, for some period. I also trust that someone misspelled the mentioned link such that it went to a spam site. Bcharles 20:35, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Bittorrent.com (and the link listed) are both valid and the site quoted provides *free* software...IMO UTorrent is better :-P SmUX 17:20, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Citation

Legal issues asks for cite re: two computers confiscated. Since the article is protected, someone else can add [2] as the citation when the protection is lifted. 58.162.2.122 09:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I find no mention of computers confiscated, so i guess this reference was edited out. Bcharles 20:36, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Typos

Typos! "Word of warcraft should be "world" and out=our. See section 3.5. 140.247.125.100 17:40, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Good catches. As Wikipedia allows all (even anonymous) users to edit, and since this article is not protected, there is nothing to keep you from making the changes in the article text. Happy editing. --StuffOfInterest 17:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

BitTorrent?

Wondering if there's any initiative underway to integrate BitTorrent distribution into Flash, eg for BitTorrent to be used to loadMovies called for from within SWFs. Doesn't seem to be, but figured I'd post a wonder here just in case. -:)Ozzyslovechild 05:47, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I doubt it seeing as how you wouldn't need to load in any swfs that were bigger than say 3mb. Unless maybe you were loading in video files or something. 70.254.88.236 02:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

(substituted leading spaces with ':') --Lexein 19:29, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Are bit torrents safe?

I want to know if torrents are safe and if it will harm your computer or give you anything nasty. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.43.228.152 (talk) 15:25, 26 March 2007 (UTC).

From my experience, programs varies from one to another, I download mine from the BitTorrent program, I tend to use a AVG virus checker when downloading and it has on a few times, caught and destroyed files it claims to have a virus on some often basis, other than that, I have no other problems. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Willirennen (talk • contribs) 14:44, 10 April 2007 (UTC).

Never, ever connect to a tracker that you don't trust. Bittorrent does not prevent creation of trackers containing malware. Avoid sites that offer any sort of illegal or questionable content.  —CobraA1 18:41, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Slow Download

My computer usually downloads files at 500kb per second. When I use the BitTorrent it downloads at 10kb per second. If I wanted to download files, I would have to wait many days. Is there any way that it could download files faster? -Da Man 2000

Nope.Richardfu40 22:00, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The speed at which you download files depends on at least two factors: (1) the speed at which you can receive the file, and (2) the speed at which the source can send the file. You can download stuff from Google's servers very quickly because they have vast server resources. However, if you are downloading from some guy's computer, or a moderately-sized site with heavy demand, then the speed will be very slow. --RealGrouchy 03:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Not Really. If you are using DSL internet technoology, then the download speed is much higher than the upload speed. Since the trackers punish you for not seeding (i.e. not uploading enough) then you cannot speed up the downloads. You only solution is to leave your computer seed the file for a few hours while downloading nothing, this will help boost your download speed since the tracker will notice that you are sharing more. I for one can download at a speed of 1.2MBps, however, even with 1000 peers on, I can only get about 200 kBps download from torrent because the other users have very slow upload speeds. That is all.

Trackers don't punish. BitTorrent is not literally "fair". This is utter nonsense but this is the wrong forum to discuss this. --82.141.60.4 23:23, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

BitTorrent uses optimistic unchoke, which means that if you don't upload enough to the person you are downloading from they will disconnect you and look for a better person to download off. Effectively this means that your upload speed effects your download speed. wiesel 03:40, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

I wonder - should this be put into the article as a limitation? Personally, I've seen this problem with asymmetric connections pretty much everywhere I go. It's pretty rare for an ISP to offer a truly symmetric connection for a household in the USA. In addition, a firewall or router often shuts down uploading because other peers can't find you so you can upload to them. I've heard a lot of people praise BitTorrent, but my own personal experience is that it never maxes out my download rate the way a direct download from well managed server can. Frankly, I think the lack of consideration for asymmetric connections and total ignorance of firewall behavior are major weaknesses of the protocol.  —CobraA1 18:33, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Indexing

File:Http://www.portalprogramas.com/sc/952.jpgTorrentPluribrain was an spanish attempt to create a torrent desktop search tool. But Legal issues killed it --80.59.58.238 00:06, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Added Link

Hi, I just added a link of a good site I came across with a simple bittorent guide and utorrent tutorial for beginners. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Exile.mind (talk • contribs) 13:57, 7 April 2007 (UTC).

2 questions about BitTorrent

These are the 2 questions I wanted to ask about downloading from BitTorrent

1. If I want to change my provider from BitTorrent to uTorrent and transfer my entire file content, is that possible
2. Is it safe to defrag my hard drive with it being full of unfinished Torrent files

Willirennen 14:49, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

1. If by file content you mean downloaded files, unfinished files and .torrent files (metadata), then yes. (Just add .torrents in utorrent and point to corresponding files and/or directories).
2. It should be safe, as long as torrent client is not running (because it would need access these files).

-Yyy 06:18, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

2. Should be fine even if the client is open, because of hash-checking, but i'm not sure, i've never tried it. wiesel 03:44, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Copyedit, combination of sections

The changes I just made may look drastic in the diff( wish diff were smarter), but only truly redundant material has been deleted. Please note a couple of for research, thanks. --Lexein 22:47, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Internet traffic quote outdated

"CacheLogic puts that number at roughly 35% of all traffic on the Internet." following the link goes to an article from 2003/2004, and the article itself mentions supanova, now long closed down. Maybe this quote needs removing / updating? 62.31.72.30 11:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion! When you feel an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the Edit this page link at the top. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes — they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. Martijn Hoekstra 22:45, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the statistic is older than that - it is from 2002 (7 years old now). I have changed the sentence to reflect that so that readers do not think that it is a current quote, but we really do need an updated statistic. I don't know enough about the subject to find where such a statistic might be. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.143.154.57 (talk) 05:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

CacheLogic used to be the company that provided all of the studies. They've changed their name and moved on, it seems. ipoque is now releasing regular studies that could be gleaned for this information: Internet Study 2008/2009. I'll try to see what I can get out of them... Rurik (talk) 12:30, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Not right

This thing is not right. That program is a download program. Any thing that can help us? Richardfu40 21:59, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

• What? Please use this page only for discussion about improving the article.--Lexein 02:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
• I understand your question now. At the top of the page, it says: This article is about the protocol. For the program called BitTorrent, see BitTorrent (client). Cheers. --Lexein 22:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Extent of "Adoption of BitTorrent" section

I think the list of various implementations of BitTorrent looks a bit excessive. This isn't intended to be an exhaustive list, is it? If so, that is not appropriate. --RealGrouchy 03:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• Should not be exhaustive, but should be an concise overview. Adoption implies eager acceptance into both obvious and non-obvious areas, including speed of that acceptance. "Used within organizations", "in games for updates", "in storage servers", "as official distribution method", "used by low-budget operations" - I would keep the first citable examples of a class. The section could use copyedit. Worth discussing. --Lexein 04:45, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

my edit

Ummm...I don't know what happened. Maybe my info was cached on a computer that someone else used to edit this article. I found it in my list of contributions, but I have never looked at this article, and never intentionally edited it. I know nothing of BitTorrent, so if whoever did edit this article under my name made a mistake, please feel free to revert... --Ioshus^(talk) 14:59, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Heh. For a ghost edit it's actually been very productive, bringing the standard of writing in that paragraph up quite a bit. Thank your ghost writer :) Chris Cunningham 19:27, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, glad I, I mean we, wait it could help. Maybe I can coerce it into writing my thesis for me... =] --Ioshus^(talk) 01:22, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

can i add an external link?

i created a website called peerit.com which is built on top of bittorrent 4.2.2. i added digest authentication to the client/tracker, and tied the tracker to a database/acl. clients are modified to login, request peerid, and post to tracker at end of download how much they downloaded from different peerids. tracker only distributes peer list to logged in users who are in access control list (users who have purchased). sellers can post torrents for sale on the website, for a price as well as a payout. the payout is paid to the buyers depending on how much they help distribute. the website payments are integrated with PayPal and Google Checkout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bjschnei (talk • contribs) 18:10, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

That'd be advertising. Work to build up community interest so that someone writes an article on your site and links to that as a related technology. Chris Cunningham 18:24, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

change SUMO Torrent to IsoHunt

IsoHunt is one of the larger search engines, which is more in fitting with TPB and TorrentSpy (especially relating to current MPAA legal action against isoHunt and TorrentSpy). SUMO Torrent is largely unknown, hence this edit should stand. 71.195.250.40 06:16, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism

This entry: "Similar to other programs such as Yahoo Music which borderline on malware, once the program is installed, it forces itself to start upon Windows startup even when the option not to start is ticked in the settings applet." was not appropriate for this article, which is about the protocol, not the client. It's also opinion, stated without citation. It's also false, implying that Bittorrent shares flaws with Yahoo Music, specifically a startup behavior not documented anywhere else. So it's also original research, so it's gone. --Lexein 19:39, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

There's little need to justify the removal of nonsense added to articles by anonymous POV warriors. It was already removed once. Thanks for getting rid of it again. Chris Cunningham 10:19, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Webseeding

The above page redirects to here, but there is no information on it. 82.15.226.236 16:38, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

The 'Adoption' section'

I've just re-organised this section a bit. It used to be much better in the past, but was seriously damaged by what was either vandalism or a very careless edit, made without comment by 83.228.4.216. See diff. In those days it was called 'Legal use of BitTorrent'. In a later edit, Thumperward removed the subtitles from what little was left and then, in this edit, s/he "rename[d] section, [and] merge[d it] with an identical one later on", which effectively killed it off. The structure and sense was gone, but much of the material was still here and still getting edited by many others.

I have reinstated the subheadings, as, without them, new material had been added willy-nilly so that the flow of text jumped back and forth between dealing with games, films and other uses in a way that encouraged repetition and reader confusion.

I have moved the existing comments into groups under the headings. I don't necessarily agree with the current material and I haven't checked it for facts, or followed the few citations that exist to see if they are good references for the material presented.

I reinstated the text of the old subsection about software distribution, as it was much better referenced and more general than what I found here today. Again I haven't re-checked the links or references.

I hope for two things: First that this does not become a link-farm for everybody who sets up or finds what they consider to be a good torrent to advertise it here - these should only be a few of the first, the biggest or the most notable examples in each class of legitimate usage, just to show that such things exist. Secondly I hope that people will take the time to improve the quality of what's here - by checking and updating the existing references and by adding more. --Nigelj 15:51, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Demonoid

Demonoid is said to be a Private Tracker, but it is a Public Tracker. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Horror master34 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

random versus rarest first downloading

The second bullet point under "operation" mentions downloads occurring rarest first. This does not seem to be part of the original protocol which refers only to random order downloading. Is there a specific implementation that uses rarest first? Bcharles 20:05, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Tor for Bittorrent

Tor was not invented to be used for Bittorrent, and using Bittorrent on Tor can ruin its usablility for others. There should be some mention that combining Bittorrent with Tor is unethical, and strongly in violation of what Tor is for. --Moly 21:56, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

how do you know what they want?

i question the wording of the statement:

"Some ISPs throttle BitTorrent traffic of their customers because it makes up a large proportion of total traffic and the ISPs don't want to spend money purchasing extra capacity."

in order to know this you'd either need to be a mind reader or have access to the ISP's internal communications. the citation that backs this up seems to be an opinion piece. so what we have is an opinion backed up by an opinion.

like it or not, restricting bittorrent traffic can also be a way of enforcing terms of use policies that place restrictions on inexpensive accounts in order to justify more expensive, less restricted accounts. so there seems to be more than one possible motive for the behavior.

it's harder to document motive than behavior. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.80.214.27 (talk) 20:00, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

animation

If the image is not animated anymore, than don't say it is. Jidanni (talk) 12:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:BitTorrent.PNG

Image:BitTorrent.PNG is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 05:04, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

An Idiot's Guide to BitTorrent

I edited out that lame part of the article since it had no place in a encyclopedia. Check the history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.203.88.35 (talk) 07:21, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Notes error

note 14 is bugged, fix anyone? Can't do it myself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.80.118.158 (talk) 08:25, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

The original reference pointed to The Pirate Bay's legal page, so I just hotlinked to that same page and removed the reference. The hotlink is more useful than the footnote, since the footnote isn't actually citing anything in this case. Here's where the reference problem happened. --Theymos (talk) 15:09, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Request info on: Scrape-enabled_tracker

I've read this description on some uploads, and I'd like to know what it is.
~ender 2008-03-15 14:58:PM MST

A scrape is when the client asks the tracker how many seeds and leechers there are, without getting a full peer list. The client uses this information to determine if it wants to ask the tracker for a full list. Most trackers support scrape requests, but those that don't will only give full peer lists.--Theymos (talk) 02:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Are Animated gifs really a good idea?

This is the second time in a few days I've had to put my hand over part of the screen so I don't have an irritating flashing image making the article really difficult to read. Can't there just be a static image linked to the animation? I'm not sure the animation really illustrates much anyway. See, all that flashing has made me bad tempered! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.146.233.207 (talk) 00:04, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i have just got a new laptop windows vista i have been tryin to download all day i do not have the software to support the downloads but have no idea which i need is there anyone out there that can help me please —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.171.129.73 (talk) 19:05, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The "plz seed" section

Ignoring for the moment that I'm not sure if the l33t spelling is necessary at all, I find the entire section superfluous and misguided. First, some sort of citation would be nice. Next, in my experience this is not at all what happens: almost all of the time when this sort of situation happens, it is a fraudulent tracker distributing data noise with faked peer/seed numbers. Finally, even if the premise was true, logically it would make no sense: to withhold the last piece and then suddenly give it out would work exactly once, and the amount of people who'd leave the tracker and look for the file elsewhere would be far larger than those who'd profit frmo the one or two seeders who might have left their client running overnight.

I really don't quite understand why this section exists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bringa (talk • contribs) 13:41, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

search.bittorrent.com is broken

http://search.bittorrent.com/ is broken —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.253.159.77 (talk) 08:32, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Question

After downloading a program via BitTorrent, how do you then run(and thus use) that program?--Xp54321 ^{(Hello! • Contribs)} 23:36, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

The same way as you run (and thus use) a program downloaded through more conventional means. --Skrapion (talk) 19:52, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Goto preferences, find where you had BT download the files to (downloads tab). OR, right click the torrent, and select 'Open Containing Folder'. It should take you to it.|Triadbeast (talk) 10:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Bittorrent is finished in Canada

Above is vandalism and poorly written. But for some reason I can't remove it. Can someone else please? Kthxbye Anon Coward 217.74.239.201 (talk) 20:24, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

I removed it --Spacemonkeynz (talk) 00:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Legal Issues

Regarding this line:

More recently, the BitTorrent network has been subject to scrutiny by the BPI.

--- If anyone knows who the BPI are, could you please provide a link?

Danindenver (talk) 16:20, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

indexing

In the article indexing is better described as in BitTorrent index. merging or splitting it? mabdul 0=* 14:11, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

List of file transfer protocols

should we add bittorrent and other P2P protocls to this list? mabdul 0=* 16:55, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the BitTorrent protocol would fit in there. The other P2P clients are a bit more complex, as FastTrack and Gnutella both use simple HTTP for the actual file transfer. Rurik (talk) 14:47, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

The section Implementations should be updated based on information about the unofficial fork of torrentflux, torrentflux-b4rt. The functions "ZIP compression, RAR decompression and Playstation 3 streaming & download support" are in torrentflux-b4rt, along with other functions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.9.177.113 (talk) 03:50, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

ratio - how it exactly works?

There is "ratio" mensioned in article (in "The leech problem" subsection) but nowhere is described how trackers count it. Is client application sending information about how many data it down- and uploaded? So why it sholdn't report fake amount of uploaded data? So maybe trackers take information about one client from other peers? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.81.137.4 (talk) 21:37, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

When clients "check in" with the tracker, usually every 30 minutes, they send information about how many total bytes they've uploaded and downloaded. Rurik (talk) 22:59, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, so maybe you write this to article? 148.81.137.4 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:42, 23 May 2009 (UTC).

elaboration needed on article

explain the "swarm", it is still a rather unknown concept without description. Murakumo-Elite (talk) 08:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

The swarm is the collection of peers that are participating in a single torrent. I can't see a good place to put this in the article, though. Theymos (talk) 18:03, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

I ask about this because there are times where I run a torrent with 0(96) and 20(187)[or relative numbers] and I have NEVER once gotten a clear lock on the complete files, weeks would go by and still no chance at completing it. This was always something I needed to understand to curtail any frustration. Murakumo-Elite (talk) 07:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)