towards bittorrent proxying (was Re: Bittorrent)

[Brian Kelsay]

Gerald Combs wrote:

> 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.
> 
Dude, that is so funny.  I have seen PCs w/ Win2k and XP not spit, but 
spew chunky packets all over a network.  Thanks to a loser PC Tech that 
forgot to shut off the UPnP service on a Ghost image.  Can you all say 
broadcast storm?  Yeah, I knew you could.  As if Master Browser 
elections weren't bad enough.  VLANs, everywhere VLANs, just to break up 
the party.

> 
>>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.

I agree.  BitTorrent works.  It is not that hard to open a few ports. 
If you are trying out ISOs of operating systems and you have a firewall, 
what is the big deal about learning a bit about how they work.  That 
said, it would be cool if an FTP download could fail-over to a torrent.
-- 
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Somewhere there is a village missing an idiot.