towards bittorrent proxying (was Re: Bittorrent)

[Gerald Combs]

David Nicol wrote:
> So that's what UPnP is for!  

Actually it's so that your toaster, PVR, printer, laptop, and
refrigerator can auto-discover each other on the network.  NAT traversal
is just a small part of UPnP (but it's the part that will let a 12 year
old in Kyrgyzstan shut off your freezer while you're on vacation).

You can see UPnP in "action" by listening on a LAN with Windows boxes
present.  Eventually you'll see them spit out SSDP packets.  Other
competing protocols include SLP (Service Location Protocol) and Jini.


> i think a bittorrent proxy library, perhaps operated by an upstream ISP, would
> make sense just like "web page acceleration" which means, the ISP has
> installed a proxy server makes sense.  Technically.  Businesswise, installing
> and supporting dedicated bittorrent servers for the benefit of your users will
> not make sense until there is demand.  And Torrent protocol would need to
> get extended to support the repository-proxy concept.

Why would you need to extend the Torrent protocol?  Transparent proxies
(whether they use direct intervention, WCCP, or something else) have
existed for HTTP for a while now.