mirror volunteers sought for BitTorrent, system for reducing server load
Hi,
The e-mail I am forwarding, below, is something that might be of interest
to maintainers of highly loaded mirror sites.
BitTorrent is not in any way endorsed by Debian; I've merely agreed to
forward this call for help to this list as it seems moderately on topic and
shouldn't bother anyone much. Anyone is free to act upon it or ignore it.
Please direct replies regarding the below post directly to Hunter Peress
(respect the Reply-To), or to the appropriate BitTorrent forums.
----- Forwarded message from Hunter Peress <hu.peress@mail.mcgill.ca> -----
Subject: free/free and mature p2p swarming. mirror volunteer(s) sought
There is a free (in every sense of the word), opensource p2p app out
there called BitTorrent http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/ ( or
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bittorrent ). BitTorrent is NOT a
search network, its not for sharing of files. Rather, its sole purpose
is to lighten serverload for specific files where they are legitimately
in demand.
Important: there WILL NEVER be any financial incentive with BitTorrent.
I'm not even paid to write this, rather, I've been using BT for a few
months, and as a user that works with the developer and I am excited to
see it to success.
BT has been well tested for over a year and after many thoughtful
revisions, it is ready to fulfill its mission of reducing outgoing
bandwidth for all and any organzation (free and struggling, or
commericial and well funded).
Being a Debian user, I know that a great place for it would be on a
Debian mirror.
So, here is the deal:
This will be a pilot project that asks that you let BitTorrent serve
your complete iso archive (obviously, there is no reason for you to stop
the activities of your normal mirror in anyway as this pilot need only
operate alongside). The current version of BitTorrent is only
designed for large files, so this pilot program would NOT be for the
package archive part of a Debian mirror).
Immediately, you WILL see that BitTorrent allows more people to get the
same file for a fraction of the bandwidth. Hopefully, this pilot will
see BitTorrent into a permament spot on your server.
TECHNICAL DETAILS
(see more on the website http://bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/doc.html).
OVERVIEW:
-The role of the server is to maintain the list of connected
clients, and to begin the transfer of data for A GIVEN FILE into
the network. Almost instantaneously, the clients begin helping
themselves out by sharing parts of THE GIVEN FILE.
SETTING UP BITTORRENT:
-simply add a mimetype to apache.
-create a small metainfo file
-using a minimal http/BitTorrent server in python
(the BitTorrent tracker), begin serving to users
that have the client (also runs in platform independant python).
PERFORMANCE/PROTOCOL:
-current server in python can easily handle tens of thousands
of users. client will always stay python, but server could
be rewritten in C and usage should scale into the millions
before another bottleneck is reached.
-every piece of data that goes from ANY client is checked
for integerity
-Promotes that every client operates in a fair manner using an
innovative tit-for-tat algorithm.
SUPPORTING USERS DURING THIS PILOT DEPLOYMENT:
-All support to come from the BitTorrent community. Currently
there is a mailing list, and a well used chatroom
on irc.freeenode.net #bittorrent
Hopefully that answers all the questions u might have. Please DO give us
any further questions you have and simply reply-to-all in this email. Or
join us on irc at any time.
-Hunter.
----- End forwarded message -----
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