Tracking a BitTorrent Swarm in Google Earth
Written by Ernesto on March 22, 2007Do you ever wonder where all the seeds and peers on your torrent come from, and what their houses look like? P2p-monitor.com developed a great tool to visualize a real life BitTorrent swarm in Google Earth.
With the swarm plugin for Google Earth you can lookup the BitTorrent client that is used by each peer, what percentage of the file they downloaded so far, and their exact location. Currently it only shows seed and peers for torrents that contain the word “Borat”.
I can’t really tell how accurate the stats for the swarm are. It looks like Poland, the country where p2pmonitor.com originates, is overrepresented. Apart from this, it is fun to see where all the bits and pieces come from, and it makes you realize how global a BitTorrent swarm actually is.
It would even be better if you were able to hook it up to your own BitTorrent client, so you can pay leechers a visit if their share ratio is not what it’s supposed to be. Perhaps an idea for a future release of this tool?
Try for yourself.
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26 Responses
o_O
WHOA
That’s a bit creepy…hehe
Haha! Look at Poland, it’s like literally crawling with torrents…
Now I can find that bottom that has been seeding me all that great Sean Cody and feed him some seed in person! Yay!
Im a little lost.
If you can find out global locations of other peers connected to you;
Cant Anti-piracy corps. do the same?
What a way to scare away people from doing torrents
SKINS i was thinking the same thing
I actually took time to think the benefits of this but never got one.
I don’t like it.
[quote]“so you can pay leechers a visit if their share ratio is not what it’s supposed to be.” [/quote]
LOL hahahahaha!!! Funny!
is it just me or does anyone think this is HUGE privacy issue?
Even if you are downloading LEGAL (not pirated material) content, I really don’t want it too be that easy for people to know where I live.
I don’t like it either. If swear if anyone shows up at my house we’ll have some good ol’ fashion southern justice.
This is no big privacy issue at all.
First the data is not that good to pin-point to your exact location (like GPS coordinates or something) and second the data used to do that is already available via projects like GeoIP. This is just an visualisation of this data, a nice one ;-)
Remember: bittorrent is not anonymous.
Is the website down?
anyone got a mirror for the file?
?? Correct statement from upper. Your IP can only tell where you are getting your internet from. at most it would show the location of the ISP of the IP. and to respond to taklamakan, from my usage of googleearth, all you gotta do is click (even in pic above) Directions:to here. and bam.. it gives you directions just like mapquest would. but.. since IPs dont tell home info, but more server info.. i think your safe.
ITs not acurate, the maps havent been updated since 1998-2000.
I see my comment was removed. wonder why? (but I’ll try again)
Uuummm, is an incredibly unintelligent article or what? Why are you (Ernesto) trying to make people think their street address is available to the public when they are in a bittorrent swarm?
Do you actually believe this to be true?
Is there no editor for this site? Someone who say, understands filesharing a little better than you apparently do?
First of all, I never delete comments.
Second, I never said their street address is available. Of course you can’t use an ip to track down street addresses. Most of the readers know that. This is just a fun gadget, don’t take it too serious.
I guess you’re upset about the “their exact location” phrase. Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have stated it that bold, but like in most articles on TorrentFreak, you need to read between the lines. I’m sure most readers will know how things work.
My comment seems a bit harsh, sorry about that.
yeah, the “exact location” phrase, the “pay leechers a visit” phrase, and the picture. I guess most people reading this do know, but i bet some people were freaked out. (my comment did get erased though)
Thank you for responding.
What is the username and password to download Swarm Plugin for google earth??
Thanks
Gavin
What is the username and password to download Swarm Plugin for google earth??
it requires username and password to download the plugin :(
anyway, the ablitity to pinpoint exactly where you re like the pic. s quite creepy. =)
Does anyone have a mirror or a copy of this plugin. it looks interesting but the site is down.
Still nowhere to get the plugin?
wondering if they built this from the same thing they had a couple of years back when you could type in someone’s phone number and get their house and other personal info – myself i think this stinks bad as though us pirates dont already have enuff bs to put up with and of course we could always just join private sites not knowing whether theyll be any safer think i better start a legal saving account very soon
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