Ipernity Media Sharing Site Embraces BitTorrent
A site dedicated to the sharing of all kinds of media, from blogs, through photos and video, has embraced BitTorrent. Ipernity.com has been in operation since 2007 and has just finished work on a ‘secret project’ – to implement the sharing of bulky media on the site via BitTorrent and their own tracker.
For years now, it has mostly been dedicated torrent sites utilizing BitTorrent for the spreading of large amounts of data. However, as the protocol, technology and benefits get reported more and more in the mainstream, other sites are getting interested in BitTorrent. Millions of tech-savvy people are already familiar with using this method of sharing files, and since it’s incredibly cheap to implement, BitTorrent makes huge sense as a distribution option.
Created in 2007, Ipernity set out with some simple aims in mind – to allow its members to publish their media – blogs, photos, music and videos, all backed up by a powerful index to locate it all. A free service, Ipernity claims to be the first to offer users the ability to store all types of media, which will build up over time to create their “digital heritage” within a social network.
Due to the huge bandwidth requirements of an increasing number of long videos and massive photo archives submitted from the Ipernity userbase, the site made a decision to implement a BitTorrent sharing system.
“We had more and more demands from our members about sharing voluminous contents, such as full-length personal videos or entire folders of thousands of photos,” Ipernity Managing Director, Christian Conti told TorrentFreak.
To this end, the Ipernity team decided to implement their own BitTorrent sharing system. “We think using the BitTorrent protocol is the right solution to share such content,” said Christian “and that’s the reason why we decided to propose an Ipernity tracker. We are pleased with the savings.”
Christian told us that the Ipernity tracker isn’t an off the shelf item, but a custom in-house private tracker. Like with most trackers it’s possible to see a list of files contained within a torrent along with various stats. From a social networking position, torrent creators can see who from the community downloaded it. The torrent file itself is stored as a file in Ipernity and can be added to albums, noted as a favorite, commented upon and tagged, with the torrent creator deciding who can have access to the material.
In August we reported that EA had chosen BitTorrent to distribute the Warhammer Online Beta, so how long before BitTorrent becomes the standard for other bandwidth intensive projects? Maybe a year or two yet but the sooner it happens, the better for everyone, especially the hobbyist torrent community.
Once plenty of big businesses start using BitTorrent, the sooner throttling ISPs like Comcast will have to come into line and treat this revolutionary protocol’s traffic like HTTP – and let it through, unhampered.
