Read this first - Falcon introduction

Firon · 2009-09-11 18:41:18

Please login at https://web.utorrent.com now.

Falcon is one of a number of ongoing projects to improve on μTorrent, but because we're stepping beyond the client we're (for now) giving it a special name.

The objectives of Falcon are to provide a secure and simple web service to allow users to manage their torrent clients from anywhere on the internet.

To start with we've been working on making the μTorrent web UI both more complete and easier to get started with.

We're interested in features that stay true to our distributed computing architecture, maintain our "μ" design values, and drive ease-of-use, security and integration with the web-top, so websites can make more seamless use of BitTorrent technology.

We're also interested in driving more viral adoption of μTorrent. This is an early alpha, so there will be problems and many features are still missing or incomplete.

Any and all feedback and suggestions are much appreciated.

Full changelog and direct download link is available in the 3.0 announcement thread. Please leave feedback not specific to Falcon in the 3.0 announcement thread.

Last edited by Firon (2010-07-13 16:04:17)

Kate66 · 2009-09-11 21:23:50

Checking it out... Made me a bit sad with the instant failure... Though I know that'll only be for a short time.

alcaholjunkie · 2009-09-13 06:29:30

The get file(s) doesn't seem to do anything in both firefox 3.5.3 and IE8.

I can see that it tries to do something though as the progress bar at the bottom shows breifly, just doesn't start a download of any sort. ^_^

The scheduler seems to be working ok for me though. ^_^

EDIT: After a while this build of utorrent will stop trying to connect to any peers, and will recieve none (might be an issue with tracker stuff, but has happened the other day with 3 different trackers at once). Don't have time to look into it myself more, got work. ^_^

Last edited by alcaholjunkie (2009-09-16 12:14:06)

Firon · 2009-09-16 14:11:43

Get file is fixed in the latest build.

alcaholjunkie · 2009-09-17 14:18:35

Again today after adding torrents to utorrent 2.1, nothing really happens.

Trackers are working ok, but I noticed that in Help > show statistics it says I have 301 connections when there are none (max connections is set to 120 anyway).

I raised the max number of connection limit to 600, started the torrents and it worked, went upto 456 connections. I then stopped the torrents and it has gone back down to around 301 connections. DHT is not running, only connections that should be there is the one to falcon and any incoming which would be disconnected right off the bat since there are no torrents running.

I can only guess that with certain connections when they are dropped, the counter isn't taking them away or something, like connections to the falcon service? ^_^ (maybe when it was trying to reconnect to falcon when it was down earlier or something -_-)

Lord Alderaan · 2009-09-22 01:16:20

I see a new webui req for the scheduler but I see the file transfer proxying isn't going through the webui API. I was wondering... is the file transfer going to be available for the regular webui API too?

Ultima · 2009-09-23 04:17:40

http://trac.utorrent.com/trac/ticket/65
Even older than the Scheduler ticket.

Simon Morris · 2009-09-24 00:40:59

@Lord Alderaan - yes - all in good time...

Lord Alderaan · 2009-09-25 01:58:18

Good to know :-)

It wasn't about the download feature itself btw, my question was more like "Are all features implemented in Falcon also automatically available to the regular webui or did Falcon introduce a few request exclusively reserved to Falcon?"

But I realize it is the latter, at least for now

Anyways, enough about the regular webui, back to Falcon itself

I was wondering if we could get a bit more information about it's intended use? Is Falcon a special project with a specific customer base? Or is it intended as new feature for the whole µTorrent user base?

I imagine the bandwidth load for the Falcon server (even if one disregards the proxied file downloads) would be quite immense if a significant portion of the whole user base would start using Falcon so I'm kinda assuming it will have a specific audience.

So if it is designed for a specific customer base what kinda situations should we keep in mind while fooling around?

Ultima · 2009-09-25 14:09:02

Essentially, this is just a more centralized way for users to remotely access their WebUI (not so much centralized as it is just a well-known access point, I guess -- this is similar in nature to the idea behind Opera Unite). I couldn't imagine any particular audience other than users who wish to control µTorrent without having to get their own domain (anyone).

Simon Morris · 2009-09-28 16:15:09

@Lord Alderaan, Ultima, everyone...

Initially, we're aiming at 3 things with Falcon -

(1) a super-secure mechanism for connecting users with their uT clients wherever those clients are sitting; by super-secure, we're aiming for a web app that has essentially zero information held by the infra - there should be no issue of "trust" as the infra will not be party to anything private.

(2) a method to improve accessibility to your files - we're interested in the opera-unite stuff, but we envision something lighter weight and focused around accessibility to files rather than a web server and web app framework - also, we don't have to compete with alternate browsers to perform the functions.

(3) we're interested in finding a way to get more uT clients out there in the world - for example by enabling more seamless "sending" of files (aka publishing, sharing) which may bundle a "minified" version of the uT client as a helper app.

Ultima · 2009-09-28 17:07:39

Regarding (2), yeah, I didn't literally mean a copy of Opera Unite -- I'd meant that the service would essentially behave like Opera Unite in that the Falcon servers simply proxy the home connections actually hosting µTorrent

Simon Morris · 2009-09-28 17:10:48

one additional point - this IS intended as something ultimately for the entire uT base - obviously we don't want to pay YouTube-sized bandwidth bills, but we're pretty confident that the infrastructure-less (or at least infrastructure-lite) model will be effective both in terms of user experience and economics

Firon · 2009-09-28 22:20:20

The latest 2.1 build introduces RSS support in the WebUI and fixes all the connectivity problems, so please give it a try!

alcaholjunkie · 2009-09-29 08:36:43

I can't find the RSS stuff in it :-/ I've cleared my cache and tried both firefox and ie8... am I blind or something? lol

Firon · 2009-09-29 10:08:45

Yeah, I jumped the gun on that... It's in the webUI backend, but it still hasn't been completed in Falcon itself. Sorry about that.

Lord Alderaan · 2009-09-30 04:49:40

I see that the webui preferences in µTorrent itself allows me to specify download locations. But the add torrent box does not allow me to pick from those? Also not implemented in the interface yet I assume?

Last edited by Lord Alderaan (2009-09-30 04:49:53)

Snowknight26 · 2009-10-02 14:55:04

Couple things:

Canceling a file download part way through still shows uTorrent locally uploading (to myself via Falcon).. even minutes after I've stopped.

The Bittorrent icon shows up next to a random label.

Firon · 2009-11-04 16:18:59

New 2.1 out to fix Falcon support.

Firon · 2009-11-05 12:05:29

Okay, I've really released a new 2.1 now. Yesterday's build wasn't the right one. Changelog added too.

Lord Alderaan · 2009-11-09 07:19:02

Updated.

I used to get a lot of errors in my logger tab, something about streams. Never got around to reporting it (yes I can be a lazy bum sometimes ) but it's gone now.

Firon · 2009-11-20 15:40:04

For those subscribed to this thread, there's a new build out (17373).
The main improvement is that our new encryption method is now in place! We're using SRP for authentication and AES-128 for encryption. It is currently disabled if you use IE while we work out some problems with IE to make it work.

Ultima · 2009-11-20 15:52:24

♥ IE

Firon · 2009-11-21 01:59:16

If anyone downloaded 17373, please download 17383. There was a bug in 17373 that caused it to crash when you actually used Falcon.

emc · 2009-12-06 09:43:52

Maybe something wrong in code?
This was displayed after I put at http://falcon.utorrent.com/ my email address:

{
  "status": "\/status\/ok",
  "message": "The email address has been saved",
  "code": "\/talon\/collector\/ok",
  "response": {}
}

µTorrent Community Forums

#1 2009-09-11 18:41:18

Read this first - Falcon introduction

#2 2009-09-11 21:23:50

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#3 2009-09-13 06:29:30

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#4 2009-09-16 14:11:43

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#5 2009-09-17 14:18:35

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#6 2009-09-22 01:16:20

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#7 2009-09-23 04:17:40

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#8 2009-09-24 00:40:59

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#9 2009-09-25 01:58:18

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#10 2009-09-25 14:09:02

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#11 2009-09-28 16:15:09

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#12 2009-09-28 17:07:39

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#13 2009-09-28 17:10:48

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#14 2009-09-28 22:20:20

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#15 2009-09-29 08:36:43

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#16 2009-09-29 10:08:45

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#17 2009-09-30 04:49:40

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#18 2009-10-02 14:55:04

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#19 2009-11-04 16:18:59

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#20 2009-11-05 12:05:29

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#21 2009-11-09 07:19:02

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#22 2009-11-20 15:40:04

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#23 2009-11-20 15:52:24

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#24 2009-11-21 01:59:16

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

#25 2009-12-06 09:43:52

Re: Read this first - Falcon introduction

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