BITTORRENT TECHNOLOGY

Anthony Pervetich

HISTORY Bram Cohen

Designed the BitTorrent protocol in April 2001 Released July 2, 2001

Concept Late 90’s dot com MojoNation Same general concept as BitTorrent

TECHNOLOGY P2P Protocol

Large amounts of data Data transferred in “chunks” Multiple connected peers

Key Terms Client Torrent Peer Seed Swarm Tracker

TECHNOLOGY Client

Manages downloads and uploads using BitTorrent Protocol

Clients are numerous because BitTorrent is open source

Torrent Small metadata file Contains info about the file and tracker Not the files data but a map of where to get it

Peer A computer that does not have the full file Actively sharing its portions of the file as well as

downloading missing portions to complete the file

TECHNOLOGY Seed

A computer that has a complete copy of the file Actively sharing the file

Swarm Group of machines connected to a particular file Includes peers and seeds

Tracker Server that coordinates clients Opening a torrent contacts the tracker Tracker gives client a list of peers to connect to Tracker sites list torrents

BITTORRENT PROCESS

Peer creates torrent file with a client Usually uploaded to a tracker site

Peer downloads torrent file File opened by client and sends a request to the

tracker for info Usually same site that torrent was found at

Client manages the download Downloads occur in a random or “rarest first”

order Small requests made over different TCP sockets

BITTORRENT ANIMATION

ADVANTAGES Only small amounts of data from each peer

Not as taxing on the peers machine as other file sharing protocols

Redundancy Small “chunks” from many users make

downloading more reliable If tracker server goes down new connections

cannot be made but existing connections still open

Speed Very fast for large files

DISADVANTAGES Speed

Popularity of the file (i.e. how many people sharing) directly affects speed and availability

May be slow at first until enough connections are made

Streaming Randomly downloading “chunks” of a file does

not allow streaming Selfishness

Peers can set limitations on their sharing

WHERE TO GET TORRENT FILES

Index Sites Provides torrent names and description Links to a tracker site

Tracker Sites Usually an Index site also Many sites both private and public Public

Anyone can use the site Private

A user is required to register an account with the site

THE PIRATE BAY

DEMONOID

MININOVA

BITTORRENT CLIENTS

Clients Numerous due to BitTorrent being open source

Vuze (formerly Azeureus) Popular client Supported by ads HD Network

Search through different channels for content Stressing HD format

Integrated Search tools Search different sites from the client

New video streaming capabilities Fully downloaded file Converted and streamed to different media

VUZE

VUZE

VUZE

QUESTIONS?

SOURCES http://www.vuze.com/app http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bram_Cohen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

BitTorrent_(protocol) http://www.dessent.net/btfaq/