Busting Common Trackerless Torrent Myths
Written by Ben Jones on October 24, 2009The Pirate Bay tracker has been in a state of flux for a few weeks now, mostly offline. If your torrent relies on it, what can you do? The easiest solution is to go ‘trackerless’ and use the Distributed Hash Table (DHT), but there are many myths and misunderstandings that can put people off using it.
DHT has been included with many clients since it first debuted in the summer of 2005. however, over the 4 years of life, many myths and misunderstandings have been spread around. These can put people off using it and can give these users difficulties when a tracker goes down. Currently the Pirate Bay is popping on and offline, and Demonoid has been down for a week or two.
The main problem is that most people just don’t understand what DHT is, what it does, and how it works. Not really a surprise since the documentation and even the Wikipedia page are filled with technical jargon, and no simple explanation. Without that basic understanding confusion is inevitable. We did explain DHT in our jargon piece back in 2006 but after 3 years, we decide to cover it again.
The easiest way to think about DHT is to imagine it as a form of ’super tracker’, in some ways a lot like WinMX and Kazaa of old. A large ad-hoc network of peers pass on information requests about torrents without a central server, meaning no control or single point of failure. No information about the contents or even the names of torrents are passed around, making this legal and hard to shut down.
Myth: You must turn off DHT when you use private trackers.
Wrong — There is an element to a torrent that is called the ‘private flag’. It’s a small flag that marks to a client that the torrent is ‘private’ and disables any method of sharing peers (including DHT), except via the tracker. This flag also changes the hash, so peers on a non-flagged torrent could not connect to a flagged torrent in any case. Most private torrent sites check for the flag, and add it if missing when the torrent is initially uploaded to their site.
Myth: Certain clients leak DHT data and should be avoided.
Wrong (with one exception) — There are always going to be people that want control. When it comes to torrent sites (especially the private ones) they like to express their control through lists of clients you can and can’t use (a form of DRM) and sometimes give reasons to support this. An example would be this statement from a staff member at a private tracker:
Not all torrent clients respect the private flag. But if you are using a client like Vuze, uTorrent or similar if the private flag is on (set by the tracker) the DHT, peer exchange settings etc are ignored. However, if you are using something like BitComet, BitLord or their ilk they ignore the private flag so if you have DHT etc enabled it is going to be enabled no matter what.
This statement is completely false. All torrent clients that support DHT respect the flag. The flag is set by the torrent file, not the tracker (although the tracker can add the flag to the file, it’s still set by the torrent), and BitComet does NOT ignore the flag. The one exception is a single build of BitComet (0.60) that was available for 2 weeks at the end of 2005, and even then, was a fallback only if the tracker was unable to be contacted for a 30minute period. Bitlord is unable to leak to DHT, as it doesn’t use DHT at all.
If you see staff making claims like this, it’s a good indication that the staff is clueless, which might be an idea to leave that tracker. If they can’t get the basics right who knows when else is wrong. Of course, we ask those claiming other clients leak to let us know so we can test it.
Myth: You can be tracked by DHT / AntiP2P groups use DHT to find you
Unlikely — It’s much easier and simpler to use the tracker. Blocklists, used on your client and on the trackers, are generally ineffective and easily circumvented through the use of residential connections. Last year’s University of Washington study showed that they will send letters just based on tracker info.
Myth: DHT slows your system down
Generally not true — It can slow down your connection depending mainly on network hardware. The actual data used in running DHT is low, generally less than 1kilobyte a second. Some routers and modems, however, can have problems with DHT causing lockups and restarts if they run out of ram. This mostly happens with lower spec ‘home’ equipment (such as older Belkins, Netgears and D-links), or telco-provided hardware.
Myth: You need to connect to a tracker, before you can use DHT
Wrong — When DHT is enabled (certainly in uTorrent) it connects to a bootstrap node (such as router.utorrent.com or router.bittorrent.com for mainline, or dht.aelitis.com for Vuze) and uses that to enter the DHT ’swarm’. It’s handed a set of DHT nodes and uses that to build up a small group of connected nodes. Those nodes are then used to get peers. No tracker is required at any time.
Myth: When enabled, it sends usage data back to [insert company]
Wrong — This is another case of people not knowing what they’re talking about. Generally they’re misinterpreting the bootstrap node connection for their client.
When the demonoid tracker was finally resurrected last year, many of it’s torrents were still active thanks mainly to DHT. DHT with Peer Exchange (PEX) is a very powerful addition to the torrenting world, and allows torrents to stay active, irrespective of the trackers stability or even existence. Also, Azureus/Vuze users, despite having their own DHT system, can join in using a mainline DHT plugin.
Should you use DHT? Not if you only use private trackers, but if you use public ones and your network hardware can cope, then yes. It can help reduce tracker load. If you have a question about DHT not answered here, then again, let us know.
Previously: World’s First BitTorrent Powered Live Streamed Concert
Next: EZTV Suffers Downtime Due to Server Troubles
82 Responses
1st :) and well-written article…
Agreed with #1
I JUST finished downloading a file with only DHT and PEX.
Showed up red in uTorrent, but was blazing along at 1,3 MB sec.
Happens quite often nowadays actually.
Thx for the good article TF :)
“Myth: DHT slows your system down…
This mostly happens with lower spec ‘home’ equipment (such as older Belkins, Netgears and D-links), or telco-provided hardware.”
In othe rwords it is generally true, as most people will be on a residential connection using telco supplied hardware. It is therefore not a myth, but actually quite common.
there is another reason why some private tracker dont permit specific clinet. it not not because of DHT. it is that some bittorrent client dont report how much you download and upload which lead to ratio problem. Private tracker do rely on ratio system to make sure everyone doing everything fair. three private tracker i use block BitComet because they dont report right information of how much is your ratio.
I would like some better detail of how “searching” DHT works. I just don’t understand how it can so easily find people in a swarm for a torrent for like every single torrent.
(Its almost hard for me to even explain my misunderstanding)
Excellent article! More knowledge, please.
@ rawr
“In othe rwords it is generally true, as most people will be on a residential connection using telco supplied hardware. It is therefore not a myth, but actually quite common.”
By telco-provided hardware, it means some hardware, just as BT HomeHub. Most people do not use a telco-provided router, just a modem (which may have router capabilities). It was the telco-routers that we are refering to. More modern ‘home’ routers are less likely to have these problems, as they constantly upgrade, but telcos tend to try and use the same stuff, to make support easier.
@ Aquai
The ‘doesnt report upload/download’ myth has been around for a long time, and is false, as far as I know. Goes hand-in-hand with another myth, that it misreports those values to boost download. If you have any evidence, or specific clients that apparently do this, email them to me, and I’ll test them.
+1 to 6
@4 I was going to mention this too…
I know on my router my brother had to change the timeout for DHT traffic to like 30 seconds… by default it was something rediculous like 1 hour and so the connections table would fill up and lag out the router.
WRT54G with tomato firmware.
An alternative to dht is to use any of the open/public trackers listed by the Trackon’meta tracker’.
@11
And use cross-referencing torrent index, like http://isohunt.com or http://bitsnoop.com/ :)
Thank you. I’ve been wondering how trackerless DHT works.
Sounds like it’s basically Gnutella’s method of finding peers?
@6 Oct 25, 2009 at 00:53 by TheSpark:
Its simple. DHT(Distributed Hash Table) is a reference list that is passed around all peers of a small groups of users.
First DHT will map your peers(20 or so) then he will create a list of all the files that you are sharing and pass the hashes to all other peers and when someone ask for them they will direct them to your client and you will receive a list of all the file hashes from your peers so you can direct other clients to them too. If the file is not found on your group another group will be asked for until everybody on the network answer. It could take a long time so it is done asynchronously.
People who believe in myths are generally pretty difficult to convince they may be wrong. If you are one of them, ask yourself this: have I ever done any tests showing what I believe is true? If not, it’s time to rethink those assumptions. Good article.
hi i was just wondering if someone could help me. i was downloading a movie pack an when there was the two last left i got an error msg saying that it couldt reach the folder i was down loading to. i closed it and then tryed to reopen it and got permission denied what happend? i have been waiting for this for three weeks………help
@ rawr
“In othe rwords it is generally true, as most people will be on a residential connection using telco supplied hardware. It is therefore not a myth, but actually quite common.”
A lot of older/cheaper modem routers have trouble just with the bittorrent protocol itself. Had an old Linksys router that would just crash depending on the number of concurrent connections I had set.
Overall unless you’re on dialup or you have trouble with too many peer connections crashing your router already then I can’t see why you shouldn’t use DHT :) I’ve certainly had it help greatly.
Thanks for the article. Magnet links and DHT are both very interesting, especially how content providers can mess with the swarm results in a way that prevents you from connecting. Maybe there’s an article on that around here, but the current workaround of adding a bootstrap tracker URL to the magnet link works well, like they do on EZTV.
Banning torrent clients is a form of DRM? riiiiiiiiggghhhhtt…
@16
Owned.
When backup trackers are provided by sites like http://Pirlog.com
Why DHT ?
lol don’t listen to TF about torrenting
supporting public trackers and other scrubby commentary
DHT is bad, enjoy your 100k down on demonoid, tpb, w/e else you eurotrash use
“DHT with Peer Exchange (PEX) is a very powerful addition to the torrenting world, and allows torrents to stay active, irrespective of the trackers stability or even existence.”
So why are all my Demonoid torrents currently not connecting to anything, no matter how long I leave them running?
DHT and PEX works for me with torrent files from any other source.
(Not having a go at you, it is a genuine question.)
You need to supply a more finite list of routers that can’t handle DHT. I have enough line quality issues as it is, without DHT causing my connection to reset.
Please help by facilitating a list of routers that cannot handle DHT.
I heard that if you use a private tracker and you have DHT enabled then this allows you to seed to other trackers from the same torrent file say mininova that would then show that you have uploaded 5gb to the private tracker when infact you have not but shared it with the public tracker to and this is why private trackers don’t allow it. Might be bullshit to I dunno, just saying what I was told for why it would get your account on pvt sites banned
@14 (in reference to #6)
Wouldn’t that table become very large though?
Who ever said DHT was slow? I’ve gotten at least 2.75MB/s over just DHT alone before!
Great Article TF, Thanks!, very informative and “simplified”
I knew I liked this site for a reason, because it RoKZ!
great article, way to go on helping clear up all the myths surrounding DHT
Often times I get faster speeds by just using DHT and peer exchange exclusively.
Any way… you should make a follow up article to this one to answer all these questions that people are making in the comments.
Well written article btw.
@22 – You’re an idiot. Or more likely, one of the thickheaded douchebags who seem to populate staff and admin positions on private trackers, telling everyone what client to use, what version, etc. all while at the same time not having a f***ing clue what you’re talking about. I’d wager you have difficulty finding your a$$ with both hands, much less have any knowledge of how bittorrent operates.
I agree. Private trackers suck.
Eurotrash, lol, that’s why everyone “loves” Americans.
@22
There is virtually no point in writing extensively about private trackers since the vast majority of people can’t get into them
Right at the moment I have a private torrent with 7 leechers. The problem is, the tracker says only 4 people leech that torrent.
There is (almost) infinite number of torrent clients and possible configurations. Even if all (known) torrent clients respect the private flag, there are different add-ons and tweaks that allow the usage of DHT on private torrents. And once the hash is leaked to the DHT network nothing could be done to stop DHT nodes to connect to otherwise correctly flagged ‘private’ torrent.
I’ll take into account modifying my DHT configuration.. SOmehow, my router sometimes decides to go down.. maybe just too much usage? I don’t know :P
Nice article, btw. Pretty informative.
i love my private torrent sites,
very fast and very reliable. but there is a big draw back. the staff. of course not all but on quite a large amount are jumped up idiots who know little about the protocol and the clients let alone the tracker itself. there response to almost any ratio related question is ‘well u have dht/pex enabled that is your problem’ followed by lots of flaming. when in fact its most likely a network error or even a tracker error. however its pointless to try to educate them it normally results in a kick/ban
From a private tracker faq:
May I use any bittorrent client?
No. BitComet is banned (along with anything based on BitComet source code)
The following are frowned upon:
* BitTorrent++
* Nova Torrent
* TorrentStorm
* ABC
These clients do not report correctly to the tracker when canceling/finishing a torrent session. If you use them then a few MB may not be counted towards the stats near the end, and torrents may still be listed in your profile for some time after you have closed the client.
Also, clients in alpha or beta version should be avoided.
We strongly recommend you use µTorrent. Please ensure you use the latest version. (v1.7 and below are banned.)
I’ve one question I would still like to know about DHT.
Would it be possible to distribute torrents without using a tracker at all? A trackerless torrent, relying solely on DHT?
If that’s possible, the only thing still needed would be indexing sites and dependency on centrally managed trackers will be reduced.
This would make a massive switch to Tor or I2P more feasable than it is now. If that happens, we are truly safe from legal threads by using real anonimity.
Anyone know if this is possible?
bitcomet is maintained by some chinese fuckers who never give a shit about “sharing” unless they are threatened to be crushed by tanks like the incident at tiananmen square 20 years ago, and thats why this client fails so hard.
Besides bitcomet’s apparent fucktardedness, I think TF should debunked (or proved) “some clients are better at connecting to peers” myth.
Listen, DHT is just a way of FINDING peers. Once you’ve found them, you connect to them normally. There is nothing about DHT that is slower or faster than traditional tracking.
@34 Not true. If your client has DHT disabled for a torrent, it will not announce itself to the network. No announcement, no connection, no problem.
@37 That’s based on hearsay. Bad builds have tarnished their reputation, so the listed clients are forever outlawed. It’s ridiculous. Do you really think they’ve taken the time to personally test every one of them?
@38 Yes. You just need bootstrap nodes to get people into the DHT network.
My favourite example of private tracker idiocy is BitMe, which banned the Mainline client (aka BitTorrent, you know, the one Bram Cohen developed when he wrote the bloody protocol) for not following the BitTorrent protocol.
lol, it looks like you need to bust another myth…
I can see that a lot of people is really stupid, I mean, DHT just find peers, it has nothing to do with the speed of the peers. But it looks like some people thinks that…
Sucks that they have been in a state of Flux for so long now. Seems people should just leave them alone already.
JIm
http://www.anonymous.ua.tc
@26
The previous explanation was a little inaccurate. DHT keeps a list of nodes based on the “distance” of their ID from its own, with more closer nodes.
When it tries to find a torrent (from its info_hash) it asks the nodes in its list “closest” to the torrent, the response will either be a list of peers, or a list of closer nodes to try. After some peers are found, a message is sent to add its own address to the list of peers.
For more information, see the specification: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0005.html
Demonoid has been down for about 2 months, not 2 weeks??
Brilliant. I have to admit, I’d been taken in by most of those myths, thanks.
@38 Vuze cleanly allows to create DHT only torrent, but this will work only with Vuze clients (because of specifics of implementation), and this can be a pretty long time for a peer to find a seed
@#44 TheEmpathicEar: I was thinking the same thing. “Demonoid has been down for a week or two.” How long ago was this article written? So much for editing.
Nice article :-) I did not know that DHT could be te culprit of my router problems, I’ll be sure to test it.
But this “(especially the private ones) they like to express their control through lists of clients you can and can’t use (a form of DRM)” statement is extremely far fetched, DRM is merely encryption on a media file and in few cases a chip that prevents ‘unauthorized’ or ‘unapproved’ programs to run.
Asking or telling someone not to use a program is hardly a form of DRM since there is no control mechanism other then the person who is asking/telling.
@32 and anyone else who bitches about how private trackers suck. Seriously STFU private trackers don’t suck usually the people that say that are either the ones who are banned or simply can not join. I use pvt trackers and the speeds are insanely quicker than that of tpb or mininova as well as the quality of the files are much better and the release times are also much faster. Other than having to keep a ratio which isnt hard if your a true seeder and not just a leecher thats the only bad thing about them.
@10
how would you set the DHT traffic timeout to like 30 seconds? I couldn’t find this option in my BT client. Is this on the browser side? I have one of these stupid WRT54G.
I always use DHT. I find that it speeds up my downloads, even when there is one or two working trackers.
^lol you should only have 1 tracker per torrent,
a private one…
dht, peer exchange, LPD is for scrubs.
you all complain about private trackers as if you are a part of them, which you obviously are not.
public trackers are what is causing the euro-crackdown on your eurotrash freedoms, not private trackers.
Being selective on who an what gets uploaded is vital for keeping a site active and alive (and not “OMG SITE STAFF ARE SO MEAN TO ME”)… need proof? scroll down on one of the 10000 articles on shit trackers like tpb and demonoid dieing…
I would like to clear up the technical aspects w.r.t. “how searching a DHT works”. As the name suggests a Distributed Hash Table is a hash table. A hash table is a way of looking up data very quickly (best case O(1), that is constant time) based on hash functions.
A hash function (in general) maps any key to a natural number in a range from 0 to n. In our case the key is the data to be shared and the hash function is defined by the BT protocol. Let’s for the sake of simplicity assume that the hash function just pretends the file(s) to be shared are one large binary number, devides it by 512 and the remainder (0-511) is the hash.
Now we can create 512 buckets labeled bucket 0 to 511 and each time we want to find a piece of data we just have to search through one bucket, bucket h, h being the hash for the data. Associated with the entry will be a list of peers currently sharing the data.
The difference between that and a DHT is that the latter is distributed across several thousands of nodes/peers; a group of nodes is always responsible for one bucket.
PS: While the above is correct, it’s impractical. To achive good security a hash function that is near impossible to invert with a much larger image range is picked. This also ensures less collisions; the number of buckets will be kept low by something simliar to the remainder function though (to reduce memory consumption).
@50
Use Portforwarding. This takes care of the connection overruns.
FACT: If you have proxy enabled, DHT in most clients (including utorrent) WILL leak your IP address.
Private trackers are like microsoft updates. There more trouble then they are worth maintaining. 99.9% there not needed except for rare or specialized subject of torrents.
Why would I connect to 5 peers when i can get same torrent public with 500 peers. I’ts pethetic when my torrent searches are restricted to the 10-50k members when theres a whole world out there to explore.
They aren’t any more secure then public. Private is not faster on average compared to public, not by a long shot. Plus you got stupid adds and begging for donations. Admin trolling around like there something hanging ratios, hit warnings, inactivity, max # seeds, over peoples heads. Sounds like corp BS I try so hard not to be a part of. Not a community that cares.
Some torrents i want to ditch if they feel hot, tracked. Private sites, your there pack mule where donators, admin, and inside friends get hit and go’s without risk that comes with seeding. Sounds fair?
H33t x1773 thepiratebay isohunt, are awsome places to be. Now with demonoid down, i’m just not resigning up with them again.
Ratio feels like credit score rating. Wrok hard to get number up and it’s really pointless.
@56
Fact.. Your an idiot as your IP is already being displayed.. If you actually use a proxy you can hope it wont be yours.. You have probably setup incorrectly..
Myth: When enabled, it sends usage data back to [insert company]…
Better make sure you have proper security setup because you are already being watched by lots of orgs..
–
BitComet didn’t respect the private flag initially.. Was banned from a ton of trackers..
[I explained the entirety of the issue BitComet had with the private flag, in the article. Every other claim about Bitcomet leaking has been debunked repeatedly over the years. - Ben]
@52 most small private trackers suck.. Most just jack others content and reseed with 1 private tracker vs the swarm.. It’s been a month and I am still waiting to go 1:1 on a movie..
PS: While the above is correct, it’s impractical. To achive good security a hash function that is near impossible to invert with a much larger image range is picked. This also ensures less collisions; the number of buckets will be kept low by something simliar to the remainder function though (to reduce memory consumption).
–
<> Incorrect.
Just another reason why private sites are useless shit.
The tracker dies/gets busted/etc, and all the torrents die with it.
Daaaaaaaaaaammmmmmnnnn Yati420, I would say you “own’ this topic /owned
LoL… Not that its a bad thing, very interesting read, breakin it down allot further..
Thx
funny how this is linked to someone’s status… that’s cross-referencing, see the article reference. In any way I like private trackers for the only reason that they offer sometimes the content you can’t find elsewhere. But the rest… the torrents you want have like 10 seeder and 0 leeches, so to increase your ratio without donating you have to download something that you often never need that has the number of leechers you hope will keep your ratio safe. Same with the activity bs, as if some people didn’t have anything else to do… sure, all goes for the tracker.. right! i also agree, telling people what client to use is a form of drm since if you cannot use another client (for legitimate reasons–an example would be that some of them work very well with a screen reader and others don’t at all) is discriminatory, shows little knowledge of everything. I once joined a private tracker that offered apps for musicians and I could not navigate that stupid mouse-driven interface since the keyboard is my only way of working with the screen reader and all, and asked on the support board)where you’d think people would be nice or smart) and the response I got was “use a normal descent operative system like linux” or “change browser”. I made it clear i was using a screen reader and my situation but smart a$$es had to of course step in. I never got an appropriate or working solution so I just left the tracker by not logging in for 7 days. This shows that those people don’t know the kind of public they are expecting, they are of course not prepared do you think they’d care about the comunity they promote so much? and its indeed a form of making easy money with all of the “please please donate” stuff. If making a tracker is someone’s hobby then I find it better to ask local people to aid instead of paying a year of hosting and begging for donations. Funny how most of those private trackers also ask uploaders to have the most bloody expensive bandwith packages. I’d rather have 1000 people uploading some rare content that would be useful to everyone at 30 kbps each than having just 1 seeding like mad at 2 mbits/s for WEEKS.
@52: it’s obvious you aren’t a member of any decent private trackers :P
@52 – And 30 comments later, you’re still an idiot.
“…and Demonoid has been down for a week or two.”
More like a month or two.
Private trackers do suck for all the reasons posted above. Plus, isn’t it all about sharing? I think hiding behind some clubhouse door and excluding others doesn’t go well with the whole spirit of sharing. I’m proud and happy to be part of a world-wide movement that’s open to EVERYBODY. The more, the merrier!
C’mon in y’all…
So far every comment I’ve ever seen here on TF endorsing private trackers / slagging on public trackers seems to be written by a teenager. Their equivalent in the ’80s were known as BBS sysops and they were just as moronic back then. You’d navigate dozens of Dungeons & Dragons themed menus at 300 baud for 20 minutes only to find the same collection of UFO/phreaking/cracking text files as every other board had. It was all just a power trip and they loved making people jump through hoops. Same old story today!
Great article!
Once again best wishes for TPB!
@josh
Most people will be using the equipment provided by their provider. There providers provide current or recent models, not old. Netgear is still crap, yet many people are supplied them and they do not work well with DHT. The router page on the Vuze wiki pretty much spells it out for you.
That said, the problem in a lot of cases is Vuze itself, how it uses DHT seems to murder routers where utorrent will not. So all in all it is a truism, not a myth.
Both private and public trackers serve a purpose.
People who use public trackers exclusively usually bitch about the private ones because they can’t hit and run and they would have to maintain a ratio.
People who use private trackers exclusively usually bitch about public trackers being insecure, having slow speeds and the users being douches.
The fact is both types serve their role. There are many rare things that are only available on public trackers, such as demonoid and tpb, while the same goes for private trackers.
Personally I’ve found rare Danish comic scans on TPB and many rare apps releases on demonoid, that have never been through the scene – and so would usually not show up on private trackers. The community on Demonoid is so huge, and helpful, that I’ve had obscure requests filled almost instantly.
I’ve also found rare music and movies on private trackers that simply isn’t available anywhere on the public trackers. I’m also fairly confident in the applications I get from private trackers – since the files come straight from the scene. There are very few viruses and trojans in the private tracker world.
I could go on listing pros and cons of both worlds, but it’s really useless. One isn’t necessarily better than the other. Private tracker snobs can stick to the private trackers, but that doesn’t make them better people than public tracker snobs – and vice versa.
The last thing I’ll say is that it’s possible for anyone to join a private tracker. It might take a little bit of patience and perseverance, but you can join any private tracker you want by simply making a few friends in the right communities.
Have fun torrenting :)
router hard and soft. wrt and tomato can handle traffic up to 3-4 MBits n second up or down, halfopen 1500. 200 MHz processor I have. looking for something better.
Most private trackers are great. Filled with experienced and technical savvy personnel.
But some trackers, TorrentLeech for example, are populated by incompetent douchebags who have no idea how bittorrent works and lack the skills to form logical arguments.
Of course these admins don’t have the capacity to comprehend how DHT works.
However, since they are by design stupid, they are also unaware of their incompetence and stupidity, and will therefore live happy lives in the belief that they are great.
Great article – thanks
Waffles pwns all -lol
@37:
Ah, another scenetorrents user. I was thinking “Wow, that sounds almost word for word…” For good reason. :)
@63
Couldn’t agree more. I had a 60 gb bandwidth limmit. Yeah, like I can keep my ratio at 1.00. Get your head out of your ass! Its no t like all of us have 500 gb to upload. Also am a screen reader user here. Most private trackers I signed up for had little or no solutions for frr me.
Perhaps it’s time for Torrent Freak to do one more myth busting article. I’m a member of three private trackers and I’ve been a VIP for nearly two years at one of them. It’s apparent that a lot of readers here believe in a number of foolish myths regarding them. Public trackers do have a slight edge over private ones and for good reason. The people attempting to obfuscate this fact do so because they are likely owner/operators of privates sites themselves and are being disingenuous for that very reason. They’re afraid because the truth has the potential to hurt their primary source of income. But please don’t take my word for it. Try both types for a few months and rely on the only opinion that matters — your own!
DHT is awesome. It can add hundreds of peers to a torrent that seems almost dead if you use only the tracker.
Nice article
Most home network routers/gateways/modems will automatically create a port forward mapping back to your ‘puter once you send a UDP packet out of them, to support multiplayer games. Some will then allow any host on the net to send a packet to the port and it will forward it back to your client (an “open cone” NAT.) In that case there is only one mapping per port you use on your computer. Some devices, on the other hand, associate the outgoing IP address in the port mapping so only the queried host can send packets back in. That’s bad because DHT involves talking to a lot of different hosts, which means those devices will end up creating a lot of mappings and when they run out of memory they fail.
Thanks for the great info, we hope to use this info on our site soon: http://www.studentbrands.co.za
Thanks for the well written article.
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