Bittorrent

[Brian Kelsay]

With Bittorrent and its brother BitTornado, getting a file becomes as easy as double clicking on it and choosing where to save.  That is pretty easy if you ask me.  Now for those with a firewall, there are simple instructions on the BitTornado site.  You do need to know how to login to and alter your firewall.  I opened a range of ports quite easily on IPCop, which I then disable after I finish getting the torrent and serving for a while.

As for the Starband users problems, we know it is a problem.  Ask someone to download an ISO for you like the dialup users do.  It took about 20-30 minutes for me to get Xandros last night.  A few minutes to burn.  Hope I remember that part when I get home.

As was discussed on IRC, it would be nice if the FTP would fail over to torrent if the server has more than a certain amount of requests, but at the least, the tracker could come from the same location as the ISO.  It is useful that at least the links to ftp and torrent are usually on the same webserver page.

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>>> Oren Beck <oren_beck at hotmail.com> 10/05/04 02:00PM >>>
Sadly the concept of blaming the user is easier than making things 
simply work .
Making things work simply is the truly non-trivial part we often forget 
about .

Your idea of an alternate protocol is quite well advised .  If no other 
reason than to allow the early adopters some way to GET the Torrent 
software itself .

Even then alternate protocols are smart due to some of us not easily 
adopting Torrent for several reasons .   Forgetting * any*  software 
issues being the problem what then of us on connections totally 
unfriendly to Torrent.
For example Starband and other upload speed restricted users .
The core concept of Torrent was never in doubt , it's the deploying that 
needs work .

What is very disturbing to me is that certain un-named players seem to 
be profiteering on the altar of Torrent !
Charging someone $ 10 for a HTTP download but free as Torrent seems 
quite extreme .
  Not mentioning those who as above are disadvantaged in access to 
Torrent for whatever reason .

I could even understand a priority launch of Torrent seeding to FTP or 
HTTP sites on day zero
as Slashdot effect prevention  by load balancing thru redundancy in 
mirrors -THAT seems a good Torrent use .


Brian Kelsay