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Web-Based Seeding


Nirvana

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Hi, sorry if I missed the post that asked for this, but I did try search for "web based seeding" and "web seed" and didn't find any results. I was just wondering if uTorrent plans to add support for web-based seeding. BitTornado has had this for a while, and I must say, this feature is truly revolutionary, and would help dead torrents or torrents just starting out a hell of a lot, because an HTTP host could contribute to missing data. The problem is not too many people know of this (and for pirating-purposes, this is out-of-the-question because the RIAA would track them down), but if uTorrent starts supporting it, then maybe it will get more widespread and be a (dare I say it) standard in the BitTorrent protocol.

Also, I know your going to say something like, "Yeah, that's what HTTP downloads are for", or, "Mixing the two is stupid", but think of the webhosts bandwidth, if the webhost has other people sharing even half the data, that's still a 50% decrease in their bandwidth consumption.

edit: didn't make the 1.2.1 release, but it has 58 yes votes in the utorrent feature request list.

Also note: THE MAKER OF THE TORRENT WILL HAVE TO ADD THE WEB SEED FIELD. You can't just expect it to search the whole web, although, if it were intertwined with filemirrors.com...then we can see something good happening, but that would require further revision of Shad0ws specs

Vote for Web Based Seeding

Edit two: The server tools (to host the seed) are right here (zipped archive): http://e.scarywater.net/bt/download/webseed-0.9a.zip .

HOW IT WORKS:

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If a torrent has ZERO seeds (or very few) and many leechers, then the HTTP seeding would kick in. So:

A) Bandwidth is NOT wasted uneccessarily

B) Everyone can complete their download

C) The Company distributing the torrent does not have to pay for the pipes of running a "pure" http download.

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Ooh... I was wondering this wondering this, too, a while ago, but forgot to request it myself... I'd always thought of web seeding as a very cool idea (after all, servers almost are always up, so there will almost always be a seed).

Yes, that's what I was trying to find the words to say, you said it perfectly

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That's for the trackers hosting illegal stuff, but what about... say... Linux distributions? You can host the distribution at one FTP/HTTP server, and use a torrent with web-seeding to fall back to that server. Is that tracker/server going to be shut down?

People are always thinking only of the illegal uses of BT...

@Firon: You used to talk about my speed at posting, but you're quicker than me now ;P

@Firon (2): Hey, my message was longer xP

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Like you said it would be easy to track and then shut down..

Yes, if it were used to distribute illegal files. In that case, the people that make the torrents just won't have to specify an HTTP seed. But for legit downloads, say like Kubuntu Linux, or OpenOffice.org an HTTP seed could be used. Specifying an HTTP seed could be an optional field to put in when making a torrent.

edit: beaten by 3 minutes, damn I'm a slow typist...

another edit: Speaking of Kubuntu Linux, why is it that I'm a better seed when using uTorrent over BitTornado? uTorrent seems to allow me to upload more, and I'm still able to browse the internet with no degrading speed, it's weird, especially since I'm on a 128K connection, and my upload is 72K...

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There's non-client based web seeders. Like PHP scripts and whatnot.

Yeah, that's part of the web-based seeding spec. There's a script that you put on the server, and it seeds for you. There's no client involved (well, except the client who is downloading...)

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The server scripts only consist of half of the webseeding idea. The client needs to be able to make torrents that contain the 'httpseeds' field, and actually read and connect to those httpseeds. Also, there are some other guidelines for clients to follow that Shad0w outlined in his specs =\

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Yeah, I read that web-seeding was going to be added to MakeTorrent, but then was stopped. Hopefully if it becomes popular enough, it will be added to the next version.

Also, I posted a request on The Kubuntu Forums, feel free to reply to that stating it's a good idea, or to post on other websites (OpenOffice.org maybe?) to spread the word.

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Wow, I wanted something like this in BT, never new it actually existed :o Does this mean that you can add a known HTTP source as a peer in the client and it will download from that source or does it have to be specified in the tracker etc? Either way a big +1 from me

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Does this mean that you can add a known HTTP source as a peer in the client and it will download from that source or does it have to be specified in the tracker etc?

Wow. If this web seeding does what Xilon is saying it does, that would be totally awesome. (As long as the server was configured to only allow leeching from a torrent client UA, because if people just started leeching from the HTTP/FTP with their browser that wouldn't be cool...)

I thought that the OP was just asking for something like TorrentFlux, which I think is a stupid idea for µT to 'implement' - since it would be a totally different program! But if it works like Xilon suggested, I'm definitely all for it :D

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Aww, it didn't make the 1.2.1 release, but it has a lot of yes's in that list!

Also note: THE MAKER OF THE TORRENT WILL HAVE TO ADD THE WEB SEED FIELD. You can't just expect it to search the whole web, although, if it were intertwined with filemirrors.com...then we can see something good happening, but that would require further revision of Shad0ws specs

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