Create trackerless (DHT) torrent

[splintax]

Hi everyone,

Thanks first of all to the µT team for this brilliant app And thanks especially for adding DHT, that's what got me off of Azureus. (I think that the combined number of DHT users is much bigger than Azureus users, as well. )

I just tried to create a torrent today, and was disappointed to note that it doesn't support DHT torrents. That is, µT only downloads DHT, it won't create them.

This is my main feature request. At least I don't have to reinstall Azureus though - I'll just keep using maketorrent until you guys implement it.

[Animorc]

Is there a need for trackerless torrents? Since µTorrent has an internal tracker, can't you use your own IP as the tracker? (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:<portnumber>)

[DomZ]

I'm not sure if theres a way to create "DHT torrents" secifically.

But the latest beta of uTorrent allows you to create a torrent without a tracker (which DHT enabled clients will then just use DHT as the source).

[splintax]

Animorc: Never thought of that.. good idea

DomZ: Okay, I'll check out the beta then..

edit: Couldn't find the beta on the site.. is this a private thing?

[chaosblade]

Yes, It is.

I dont get it though - How is a torrent without any trackers listed in it different ?

[NiteShdw]

A torrent that is created as a DHT torrent can only get peers from the DHT. In other words, the DHT acts as the tracker. IMHO, this really should be the way that future torrents are created, once there is a unified DHT across all clients.

[Klaus_1250]

If there is not central tracker, how does it protect swarms from leechers (leechers being people who won't upload to a ratio of 1 or higher)?

[Firon]

It doesn't. Neither do public trackers for that matter. Even some private ones don't do it, and many that do don't do a very good job.

The BT protocol takes care of it to an extent.

[Xilon]

Trackers don't protect it from anything like that, private torrent sites take care of the ratio thing by removing the leechers.

I don't think that Torrents should always be created as DHT torrents because then private sites will also have DHT enabled which means that anyone can join in on the leeching heh...

Making of DHT torrents would be nice though and of course magnet uri support would be great

[Firon]

It's on by default for all clients, because private trackers aren't the majority. The ones on private sites are the ones with special needs, hence they should change it themselves. I'll say it again, if they care about it, they can make the tracker check for the flag, or even make the tracker add it. They shouldn't force everyone else to do things another way by default 'cause they can't be arsed to even check for a private flag.

And you can already make DHT torrents, just use a bogus tracker URL I think the beta version lets you make a torrent without a tracker, but I'd have to check.

edit2: Yep, it does.

[Arbor]

For a test i made a trackerless torrent over a file i uploaded several days before. (The torrent was still active).

It worked at a glance over DHT without ANY tracker.

But a problem with trackerless torrents are: you aren't able to upload them to dumpsites. NewNova/TorrentSpy/Mininova are not accepting torrents without tracker-announces.

I even tried a torrent with a fake tracker (dummytracker.org:9666/announce) but the upload failed again (message: tracker not responding).

But i still believe trackerless torrents are the way to go.

Any thoughts?

[Ultima]

Only seems logical to me... tracker sites need to scrape the torrent to know how many seeds/peers to display on their sites. They don't connect to DHT (or I presume they don't), so they can't know how many peers are available through that network.

[chaosblade]

Some sites dont want empty torrents, nothing you can do about that. Some might also check if the trackers are responding (in order to show scrape info and such).

[soulstace]

Hi,

Sorry to bring up such an old thread. But I had a couple questions on DHT and I figured this is as good a place as any.

Say somebody creates a torrent with no tracker, but enables DHT instead. How does the first client find the seeder? Is his IP in the torrent?

Second, does utorrent proxy DHT connections if you configure a proxy in the connections dialog?

TIA

~ss

[Ultima]

He announces it onto the DHT network. So then other people know he's got the torrent and is looking for peers. Then, when someone else gets a hold of the torrent, starts it, and is connected to DHT, he too announces it on DHT. When the messages propogate, and one peer finds the other (or both find each other), they (hopefully) connect to each other.

[soulstace]

Thanks for the explanation Ultima.

So what this means is DHT is independent of torrent correct? In other words, people downloading two totally different torrents which have DHT enabled would still be on the same DHT network?

[Ultima]

Only if the clients are using compatible implementations of DHT. Currently, there are two major implementations of DHT: mainline (compatible with BitComet and µTorrent), and Azureus (you guessed it -- only compatible with Azureus). Both implementations are not compatible with each other, and there are no known clients that use both implementations, so there is no bridge for both networks. As such, Azureus DHT users won't be able to find µTorrent DHT users (for example).

[Game90]

i still hope that utorrent will be the first client to bridge the 2 networks

[Dark Shroud]

I was using the official BitTorrent client to make trackerless .torrents since it gives you that option. I believe the last version (4.9.2) added the option to use port "65536" instead of their usual "6889" for DHT. I think this is a nice change, through I still won't use the client for download.

The more things I can use µTorrent for the happier I'll be.

And use I can't wait for µTorrent to get Azureus DHT. Especially since Azureus meta links comes with that.

[Ultima]

Er... µTorrent can create trackerless torrents... just leave the trackers field blank. And um... port 65536 is an invalid port ;o