Comments on: How and Why BitTorrent Works, a Visualization

By: divemaster

divemaster — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:20:06 +0000

3D visualization doesn’t work yet with Mac, does it? :-(

By: Remains of the Day: Why Piracy Works Edition [For What It's Worth] | Bestel uit china

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:06:34 +0000

[...] BitTorrent Visualization Ever longed for to assimilate how BitTorrent functions though you’re some-more of the visible learner? This really cold BitTorrent cognisance can help! [via TorrentFreak [...]

By: Sid

Sid — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:20:43 +0000

Gud Summary!!!!

By: Remains of the Day: Why Piracy Works Edition [For What It's Worth] | World Wide Web

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 02:05:37 +0000

[...] BitTorrent Visualization Ever wanted to understand how BitTorrent works but you’re more of a visual learner? This very cool BitTorrent visualization can help! [via TorrentFreak [...]

By: Simulatore di come lavora BitTorrent - Totumweb

Simulatore di come lavora BitTorrent - Totumweb — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 19:56:43 +0000

[...] Via | Torrent Freak [...]

By: Remains of the Day: Why Piracy Works Edition [For What It's Worth] | CHARGED's Digital Lifestyle at Work or Play

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:44:18 +0000

[...] BitTorrent Visualization Ever wanted to understand how BitTorrent works but you’re more of a visual learner? This very cool BitTorrent visualization can help! [via TorrentFreak [...]

By: Remains of the Day: Why Piracy Works Edition [For What It's Worth] | Superstars Of Gaming

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:13:24 +0000

[...] BitTorrent Visualization Ever wanted to understand how BitTorrent works but you’re more of a visual learner? This very cool BitTorrent visualization can help! [via TorrentFreak [...]

By: Remains of the Day: Why Piracy Works Edition [For What It's Worth] · TechBlogger

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:27:13 +0000

[...] BitTorrent Visualization Ever wanted to understand how BitTorrent works but you’re more of a visual learner? This very cool BitTorrent visualization can help! [via TorrentFreak [...]

By: Tor Entor

Tor Entor — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 23:24:29 +0000

That is supercool. Love the way the pieces are represented by spectrum colours, and visual completion status, and watching all the peers finish up then adding another peer in. Great stuff (if you’re into that kinda thing ;p) !!

By: mioptr

mioptr — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:36:59 +0000

This needs to be turned into a screensaver.

By: Simulador visual del protocolo BitTorrent para entender mejor su funcionamiento | Bitelia

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:55:36 +0000

[...] TorrentFreak Leer más: BitTorrent, funcionamiento, P2P, protocolo, Simulador, visualización Enviar a [...]

By: TerribleTony

TerribleTony — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 15:38:43 +0000

@5 I’m with you on this one.

By: LOPPSI2

LOPPSI2 — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:53:35 +0000

VPN
hit and run

Or go on the run

By: LOPPSI2

LOPPSI2 — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:51:05 +0000

Read this
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/02/move-over-australia-france-taking-net-censorship-lead.ars

TF: a story here

LOPPSI2: Get VPN or Get a Fine/criminal record …..
Big crackdown on its way.
You aint seen nothing yet

By: Rikita

Rikita — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:51:57 +0000

The problem is that internet connections are not simetrical or not most. My internet connection can do 42KB/sec down & 10KB up max. If I had to wait to seed, it would take me almost 3 extra days to seed equally while having download not touched when done. On my 150KB/60 KB up I do up @ 20-22KB and upload on emule 22KB. If it was symmetrical, I could max both always without compromising my download when upload is done more or it would work better

By: Shailendra

Shailendra — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:15:32 +0000

Datz very cool

By: Just an FYI

Just an FYI — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 12:14:21 +0000

@ 23

Private trackers are not for everybody…you need to have the speed. I do not live in the US and the typical upload speed in this country is 256k; the slow speeds lead to eventually being banned from private torrent sites…elitist…who knows.

By: duane

duane — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:43:09 +0000

Awesome stuff.

It totally murdered by Firefox, though it worked great in Chrome.

By: Daffy Duck

Daffy Duck — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:26:03 +0000

That’s a pretty cool visualisation.
After you get up to 15-20 seeds and add half a dozen or so peers the data bits flying about start making spiral patterns, rotating circles, waves etc.

By: Simulador gráfico muestra cómo funciona BitTorrent « bitaminados

Simulador gráfico muestra cómo funciona BitTorrent « bitaminados — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:35:39 +0000

[...] gráfico muestra cómo funciona BitTorrent Como bien dicen en TorrentFreak (excelente blog, por cierto) seguro que la gran mayoría de personas que utilizan las redes P2P no [...]

By: John

John — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:12:07 +0000

the madness of enforcing ratios if you require a 1:1 ratio is that people behind fibre links easily obtain killer ratios thereby making it impossible for all users to be at 1:1. What usually happens is you get pay to leech so consiencious users get build ratios on the back of the people who pay there money and hit and run, or the site sets up golden torrents etc etc which allow users to boost their ratios. Or, users with low upload speeds have to rip files and post them.
Private trackers do work but so do public. I have had a 100mb/s upload link and a crappy 100kb/s and have managed both pretty well so it is possible.

By: NubCakes

NubCakes — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:50:35 +0000

“The fact is that a large number of downloaders (I would say over 50%) don’t seed up to 1.1 once their download is finished. I have seen this happen. For example, there is a particular torrent that’s very popular with 20 seeds and over 200 leechers. I have seen the number of seeds remain at or around 20, even after leechers complete their download. They don’t seed, they just disconnect!
Seems like the whole bittorrent works only because of the minority of very generous peers.”

No joke and actually I think 50% is being far too generous, more like 80% seems reasonable to me.

But this is why private trackers are better than public and partly why SLR (meaning speed) ratios are usually so bad on public and the reverse is true for private trackers. It doesn’t matter what a user wants to do, they must seed back (to the rule regime defined which often isn’t 1:1 before any idiots start calling private users elitists because “people can’t seed back” lol).

But nonetheless you’ll still have many people complaining about private trackers being “elitist” (false), saying how they’re “against p2p principles” (whatever that means) and also extolling the virtues of sharing at the same time. When in the real world a large majority of users on public trackers don’t actually do this.

I know, I know, it’s pretty petty to not allow use of your unmetered upload stream but nonetheless a majority of public tracker users do act in this way.

I don’t see anyhting wrong with private trackers enforcing ratios – if you’re going to share anyway what does it matter?

By: syd

syd — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:26:03 +0000

whenever there is any issue discussed anywhere about torrenting there seem to be different opinions about how things are,not always based on fact-knowledge,i assume,and if you have no personal exchange in real life with people who are interested in the same things you are,file-sharing, it might get hard to deepen your understanding.
if the ip address is visible to other up- and downloaders anyway,i wonder why anybody anonymizes anything at all.
it´s asperger,´using other people´is definitely something i can not do.

thank you.i´ll go there.

By: redbaron

redbaron — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:49:15 +0000

Nice visualization. Quite good for benchmarking actually. :)

By: Simulatore di BitTorrent per capire meglio come funziona

Simulatore di BitTorrent per capire meglio come funziona — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:58:12 +0000

[...] comincia con la divisione del file in piccoli pezzi e la persona che invia i file li manda come peer [...]

By: ?

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:42:35 +0000

@More Noobs LOL

you may do well to investigate the “use proxy server for peer-to-peer connections” option in µtorrent

@syd

useful site to get you started: http://www.checkmytorrentip.com/

By: Obedient

Obedient — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:13:24 +0000

The fact is that a large number of downloaders (I would say over 50%) don’t seed up to 1.1 once their download is finished. I have seen this happen. For example, there is a particular torrent that’s very popular with 20 seeds and over 200 leechers. I have seen the number of seeds remain at or around 20, even after leechers complete their download. They don’t seed, they just disconnect!
Seems like the whole bittorrent works only because of the minority of very generous peers.

By: Pirate Home Page » How and Why BitTorrent Works, a Visualization

Pirate Home Page » How and Why BitTorrent Works, a Visualization — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 04:28:29 +0000

[...] As with most technology, viewing a simple simulator depicting the inner working of BitTorrent is much easier than having to plow through pages of technicalities and insider lingo. Read More : How and Why BitTorrent Works, a Visualization [...]

By: More Noobs LOL

More Noobs LOL — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:47:01 +0000

“Depending on what BT client you are using you might have to activate additional settings to ensure that all traffic goes through the proxy (including name resolution and communication with peers, as opposed to just communicating with trackers). uTorrents documentation states that uT doesn´t support proxying for UDP traffic, hence others might still get your real IP when such type is used (DHT uses it I think, and some trackers also support UDP based announces).”

For someone claiming to have read the documentation this is hilarious. No peer to peer traffic is proxied, only traffic to and from the tracker uses a proxy set in uTor or any other BT client for that matter. Other peers will always see your home IP address whether it’s DHT traffic or not.

“if rats find a fresh source of food,they always send the young and greedy ones ahead to try the food.if they survive,the old ones start eating the food too.”

Several things wrong with your analogy: you are not “sending” anyone, you’re just not doing anything yourself. So mkaing an analogy that claims your “controlling” whether something happens is silly. Also, you have no idea whatsoever if people “survived” meaning all your doing is waiting for a torrent to get old – not controlling some process using other people to make things safer for yourself. How did you manage to delude yourself like this – are you always in this sort of fantasy world so far removed from reality?

Fail.

By: MD3

MD3 — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:50:23 +0000

@14 Dan & @16 Pico
LOL

By: Pico

Pico — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 01:54:45 +0000

In Soviet Russia, torrents download you!

By: A. Nonny

A. Nonny — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:39:06 +0000

In Canada we spell Teksavvy with a K

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:21:34 +0000

Ah man, that picture looks just like a pr0n image to me. I mean, look at the beauty. All those little dots are actually love! The rich shares with the poor, and then the poor shares with the people he cares about.

Weird, but that’s how I see BitTorrent.

Torrents, sharing, caring, love! <3

antiantipiracy.blogspot.com

By: syd

syd — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:13:40 +0000

7 & 8

thank you.the whole vpn stuff gets on my nerves.
slows things down,and ipredator (which i bought for three months) disconnects about once every hour on my macs.
it´s probably the best thing to do to only download older torrent-files anyway.
if rats find a fresh source of food,they always send the young and greedy ones ahead to try the food.if they survive,the old ones start eating the food too.

By: Court

Court — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:10:49 +0000

“In general BitTorrent transfers go faster if the number of seeders in the entire swarm is higher. This means that a torrent with 20 seeders and 50 leechers should result in a better download speed compared to a torrent with 50 seeders and 250 leechers.”

Shouldn’t that read “…if the ratio of seeders…is higher…”? Strictly speaking, there number is higher in the latter example, but the download speed is worse. The difference is the ratio of seeds:leechers is better in the former (1:2.5 vs. 1:5).

By: BottomLiner

BottomLiner — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:09:15 +0000

Well, this one would have crashed anything the dinosaurs could get their hands on at 60 minutes, so I understand.

By: BottomLiner

BottomLiner — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:06:43 +0000

beats the pants off the one featured on 60 minutes.

By: Unauthorized Content Consumer

Unauthorized Content Consumer — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:04:27 +0000

I’ll share the video with my n00b friends. Thanks. ;)

By: Borderliner

Borderliner — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 00:01:18 +0000

@ 3 / syd
By “torrent” you mean the actual .torrent file? It doesn´t matter how you got the .torrent file, other peers see the IP that you´r computer has when downloading using this .torrent.
If you mean “torrent” as in “files at which the .torrent points” then, if you run through a proxy, other´s will see the proxy´s IP. Depending on what BT client you are using you might have to activate additional settings to ensure that all traffic goes through the proxy (including name resolution and communication with peers, as opposed to just communicating with trackers). uTorrents documentation states that uT doesn´t support proxying for UDP traffic, hence others might still get your real IP when such type is used (DHT uses it I think, and some trackers also support UDP based announces).

By: Anon

Anon — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:59:06 +0000

syd, the .torrent file doesn’t hold information about peers. When you connect to the swarm, your IP number will be distributed by the trackers so other peers can connect to you.

Therefore, to conceal your IP number you need to use a VPN for the BT client. How you download the .torrent file doesn’t matter.

By: Mehz

Mehz — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:40:46 +0000

cool vizulization, almost crashed my pc lulz

By: theo

theo — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:39:12 +0000

This is way too GEE WHIZ for me guys.

By: WilhelmR

WilhelmR — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:27:27 +0000

Saw it for 5 minutes already.. still waiting for the RIAA and MPAA circles to come in and sue the others.

By: syd

syd — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:25:03 +0000

one question i still haven´t found an answer for:
if i download a torrent using a proxy and open it up in my client,will my ip-address,visible in other clients who download the same torrent,be the one that came with the proxy,or will it change into the ip-address that leads to my isp,if i stop using the proxy that i used to download the torrent?

By: chisophugis

chisophugis — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:23:25 +0000

still not as good as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Torrentcomp_small.gif

and that has been there since 2005 :/

By: anan

anan — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 23:21:04 +0000

tit for tat, love it, and I love how the visualization is done in javascript.