Tuesday, May 03, 2005
Distributed BitTorrent goes mainstream
Azureus, which seems to be the most common BitTorrent client found in any given swarm, has just gone distributed. The newest version supports a distributed database system which allows one to make trackerless torrents, to continue getting updates on torrents whose tracker is down, or even to get updates on torrents removed from trackers.
People have tried this before, but never caught on. However, since BitTorrent is the most popular P2P on the net, and Azureus is the most popular BitTorrent client, things bode well. Furthermore, these types of enhancements, if they work well, tend to be adopted by most other major BitTorrent clients as time goes on. If, for example, BitTornado, the second most popular client, were to add support for this feature, 80 to 90 percent of BitTorrent users would support this feature.
This can only be a good thing. On one hand it has the potential to greatly increase BitTorrent's efficiency and resiliancy, on the other hand it deals a huge blow to the MPAA/RIAA, if it works.
People have tried this before, but never caught on. However, since BitTorrent is the most popular P2P on the net, and Azureus is the most popular BitTorrent client, things bode well. Furthermore, these types of enhancements, if they work well, tend to be adopted by most other major BitTorrent clients as time goes on. If, for example, BitTornado, the second most popular client, were to add support for this feature, 80 to 90 percent of BitTorrent users would support this feature.
This can only be a good thing. On one hand it has the potential to greatly increase BitTorrent's efficiency and resiliancy, on the other hand it deals a huge blow to the MPAA/RIAA, if it works.
