BitTorrent Behind the Scenes: BTjunkie

Written by Ernesto on July 25, 2009 

Millions of people use torrent sites every day, but little is known about the people who operate these traffic moguls. This summer TorrentFreak will feature the workstations and offices belonging to some of the leading figures in the BitTorrent community, starting with the founder of BTjunkie.

In this ‘behind the scenes’ series we will try to uncover some of the mystery that surrounds BitTorrent sites and the people who run them. First up the the founder of BTjunkie, one of the most visited torrent sites, and one of the guys behind the newly launched PublicBT tracker.

“So this is my mission control, believe it or not I bought most of this stuff with baccarat winnings,” he told TorrentFreak, while sharing two pictures of his home base with us. Below he walks us through his current setup.

Desktop 1: My fastest desktop is a Dell XPS 630 with Intel® Core™2 E8400, 2GB RAM, 500GB SATA + 1TB external., and Dual nVidia GeForce 9800GT video card. This machine is hooked up to the very nice 25.5″ Samsung Syncmaster 2693HM monitor.

Desktop 2: The computer next to the XPS is a home built Athlon 64 3GHz, 1GB RAM, 250GB SATA, and it’s hooked up to 17″ Samsung SyncMaster 173P.

Laptop: The laptop is the Samsung X460: Intel Core2 Duo P7350, 3GB RAM, 14″ WXGA screen, and weighs only 1.29kg.

Server: The server I’m setting up to send to a data center is the IBM 326m with Opteron 280, 4GB RAM, 73GB 15K SCSI.

Misc: I have a little apple in my diet, I use my jail broken iphone for monitoring servers & tethering on the go. For all my paper work I use the Canon MP620. The speakers & sub are the Altec Lansing VS4221.

To top it off the BTjunkie founder told us that his Internet connection was just upgraded to a 30Mbit connection. Below are the pictures of his current setup and links to the larger sized images. In a few days we continue this series with the workstation of isoHunt’s Gary Fung.

BTjunkie’s mission control (large)

btjunkie

More BTjunkie gear (large)

btjunkie

Previously: Ireland’s Largest ISP Starts Throttling and Disconnections

Next: BitTorrent Hydra: Anonymous Hidden Tracker Via Tor

55 Responses

1 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:27 by jack

heh, slow news day eh?

J.

2 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:33 by AlZuben

I read an article about alternative bit torrent sites after the announcement of PirateBay’s purchase. One of those sites was btjunkie. So, I did a search and added a couple torrents.

less that 24 hours later, my isp shutdown my connection and informed me that the copyright owner was taking legal action.

hmmmmmm…..

3 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:34 by Joey Frateno

My favorite bittorrent site :) Thanks for the behind the scenes look!

4 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:34 by Steven

Hmm funny, I always imagined it being a bit bigger and more advanced than just a laptop, and Ubuntu with 2 monitors… :P

5 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:35 by Jay

Nice, that silver thing is the Volcano Vaporizer. I have one myself.

6 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:35 by dark

Nice volcano vap you got yourself :)

7 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:39 by al

btjunkie rocks! I thought there would be more to it then that

8 Jul 25, 2009 at 20:59 by sk

interesting!waiting for more;)

9 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:02 by Mark

LOL, I love the volcano there, nice touch.

10 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:10 by Terminator

Also feature YOUR workstations Ernesto and Enigmax. It would be a lot of fun.
I have a feeling that this series will become one of those “whose dick is the biggest or longest” competitions with everyone posting their desktop rig’s specifications in the comments.
Mine has Intel Quad Core, 4 Gig RAM, 2 TB RAID HDD setup. :-P

11 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:17 by Pace

I like the VOLCANO herbal vapouriser on the desk.

12 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:27 by Will

Dell? I’d expect someone like him to build his own gaming rig.

13 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:31 by PDG1

gary Fung is one of my heroes :D

14 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:33 by Dogboy

BTjunkie uses private sites hash`and it can screw up your ratio or even get you accused of cheating

15 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:36 by mirrormagic

blir litt SE & HØR hjemmereportasje dette her lol`ikopter.

16 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:38 by r0ck

@14 Dogboy: People that don’t know how to re-create a torrent w/o their private passkey deserve to be banned anyway. It’s against the rules on most sites to redistribute the same .torrent files.

17 Jul 25, 2009 at 21:55 by headofRIAAmustdie

very clean setup

18 Jul 25, 2009 at 22:09 by Reventon

Gimme a great big toke on the Volcano!! Go Btjunkie go!!

19 Jul 25, 2009 at 22:10 by meh

nice! good machines and vaporizer.. my hero.

20 Jul 25, 2009 at 22:37 by epi

He upgraded he’s connection to 30Mbit = 3.75 MB = 3.57 MiB =)) lol.
I’m from Romania, and here, we have an average connection of 20 Mb/sec ( that’s 2.4 MiB/s )
Top Countries by Download Speed

* 1.20.04 Mb/s Korea, Republic of
* 2.15.93 Mb/s Japan
* 3.15.22 Mb/s Aland Islands
* 4.12.81 Mb/s Lithuania
* 5.12.71 Mb/s Sweden
* 6.12.18 Mb/s Latvia
* 7.12.01 Mb/s Romania
* 8.11.31 Mb/s Bulgaria
* 9.10.59 Mb/s Netherlands
* 10.9.10 Mb/s Moldova, Republic of
* 11.8.39 Mb/s Slovakia
* 12.8.25 Mb/s Hong Kong
* 13.8.18 Mb/s Germany
* 14.8.06 Mb/s Russian Federation
* 15.7.94 Mb/s Switzerland

I have a connection of 4 MiB/s (that’s 32 Mbites/s) @ 9 euro/month.

how do you like that ?

21 Jul 25, 2009 at 22:37 by AC/DC Lover

This guys life must get a bit boring, but nice setup

22 Jul 25, 2009 at 22:39 by Jessica

@epi you are a RETARD

23 Jul 25, 2009 at 23:11 by Craig

Cannabis FTW!

24 Jul 25, 2009 at 23:35 by sk

@epi you are a big,fat retardd!!go home and shut down your pc!

25 Jul 25, 2009 at 23:36 by Flux

@10 Terminator: Looks like your the only dick here :p

26 Jul 26, 2009 at 00:02 by xmido

nice :)

i wrote the btjunkie article in wikipedia. one of the early adopters :D nice to see his setup finally :D

27 Jul 26, 2009 at 00:04 by WoW

Damn … he has a volcano too :P

28 Jul 26, 2009 at 00:18 by mark

lol, my grandma just upgraded a faster pc. aren’t these guys supposed to making thousands off those stupid ads.

29 Jul 26, 2009 at 01:43 by Cordelia

epi’s comment was interesting you muppets!

Secondly for those who didn’t know; BTJunkie is not a tracker, it’s a a BT search site. They just link to torrents in places like TPB, Demonoid and Mininova and a bunch of non-public sites.

30 Jul 26, 2009 at 02:36 by Phoenix

hehe
i see ubuntu login screen :) nice

31 Jul 26, 2009 at 03:32 by Torrentino

Nice setup.

32 Jul 26, 2009 at 04:49 by Jeff

Figures Japan and Korea are at the top of the list for download speeds. Though getting 10.7 Mb/s on Usenet using AT&T U-Verse is not too shabby. If only the area where I lived had Verizon’s FiOS.

The main alternative for high speed broadband in my area other than AT&T is Time Warner Cable (aka Roadrunner). But they are known for throttling both torrents and Usenet.

My desktop PC is similar in specs to his. I too have an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400, but instead of just one 500 GB SATA, I have a 320 GB and 2 1 TBs, plus three externals – a 1 TB, a 300 Gb and a 750 GB.

My most recent addition was an LG Blu-Ray burner.

33 Jul 26, 2009 at 05:00 by Timur

Misc: Storz & Bickel Volcano :D Just like mine!

34 Jul 26, 2009 at 06:53 by happywaves

Hats off to his wife for keeping his room so neat ;)

35 Jul 26, 2009 at 10:24 by kgm

Too funny. The vaporizor gets more comments then the guys computer setup. The owner of the next site they showcase better have a kick ass bong if he wants to outdo this guy.

36 Jul 26, 2009 at 11:42 by bleeper

Ugh look at all those ugly cables….clean it up man ;)

37 Jul 26, 2009 at 12:51 by bluber

@epi – you’re a stupid little retard lol

38 Jul 26, 2009 at 13:28 by /b/tard

22,24,37 = samefag gtfo mah torrentfreak

39 Jul 26, 2009 at 14:50 by epi 2.0

@epi

wow… just wow

I just regained hope and faith in the humanrace… then you smashed that.

wow…

40 Jul 26, 2009 at 14:59 by mattias

woo, go linux.

shame about the little XP screen though :P

41 Jul 26, 2009 at 16:00 by unregistered

A nice and clean setup… however, a bit more information beyond a plain hardware listing would have been nice. E.g., why the need for two desktops and an additional laptop? Is the AMD64 just the old workstation still being around or is it there for a purpose? What software do you use for your daily tasks on these machines? How do you sync data between these? What’s your backup strategy?

Can’t wait for the next part in this series.

42 Jul 26, 2009 at 17:04 by france

@epi
….does there,in romania,learn you how to be smart but not supercilious ?

Don’t Take It Too Bad

43 Jul 26, 2009 at 17:31 by Luke

@epi

You just had to say you live in Romania. Now they all know how stupid most of us are.. :))

44 Jul 26, 2009 at 17:34 by pimpdoubt

Damn, I figured his setup would be a little better than mine on account of the fact that I work minimum wage manual labor..

45 Jul 26, 2009 at 18:30 by isidoror

@epi: that’s a lot of decimal points? In romania you use multiple floating point?

46 Jul 26, 2009 at 21:23 by Anonymouse

Shitty article

47 Jul 27, 2009 at 01:48 by enonemous

I’m not the only one who likes to get vaped and download sh*t for free!

Nice setup, i want a job like that :)

48 Jul 27, 2009 at 02:54 by klitoratii

i love the vaporizer!

49 Jul 27, 2009 at 03:08 by Gergith

Hahahaha

I read this from Google reader, and I followed the link because I didn’t see Volcano listed in the mission control equipment :D

i’m happy to see all the other posts about it too

hehehehehehe stoners :D mmmmmmmmm 600$+ high

50 Jul 27, 2009 at 04:24 by JJ

I like how all the monitors are Samsung :P

51 Jul 27, 2009 at 15:22 by Bob

Ubuntu baby, yeah baby yeah

52 Jul 27, 2009 at 20:09 by nah in San Diego

Im surprised I thought it would’ve been alot more than just this.

53 Jul 28, 2009 at 02:15 by anonymous

whoopididooooo!

54 Jul 28, 2009 at 18:54 by anon

I see computers all day who cares. Nice vape!

55 Jul 30, 2009 at 14:54 by Robbing Hood

Yeah nice Vap and setup.

My setup now makes coffee and lights a smoke up when it detects my weiner warming.

Beat that Quad core boys…… ;p

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