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another tracker bans bitcomet...

robmcw

By robmcw
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splintax Advanced Member

splintax

Posted
Posted

Argh..

Another private site banning stuff for bad reasons...

BitComet does respect the private flag (if I recall correctly) - it just also supports an insecure method (private flag in the tracker URL rather than in the .torrent itself) as well as that. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'd imagine if that were true it would be banned from a lot more sites with admins who actually read through all the warnings they see to make sure they've understood it correctly.

Not that I'm a BitComet proponent, I'm not fond of it and recommend banning it for other reasons :)

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HoochieMamma Advanced Member

HoochieMamma

Posted
Posted
They did a lot of tests and found that BitComet turns DHT on if the tracker is unresponsive for a while (down, user banned, etc), EVEN IF THE PRIVATE FLAG IS PRESENT IN THE TORRENT.

That was the problem.

I noticed that when I used BitComet ages ago. DHT will be turned on even if I specifically tell it not to.

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Firon Advanced Member

Firon

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Yeah, it was creating torrents with the private flag outside of the infodict :rolleyes:

HoochieMamma: that's why it's getting banned at various sites. The ban on the tracker being mentioned here will take place sometime tonight. Other trackers are gonna follow suit next week.

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nightshifted Advanced Member

nightshifted

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Here's some more BitComet fun we're seeing on the tracker where I'm a moderator. We're members-only, and each user is served a copy of the .torrent file with his/her keycode in the announce URL.

In creating a .torrent file with BitComet, you're now encouraged to enter something into a field called "publisher URL." Many of our users think they're supposed to put the unpersonalized announce URL there. BitLord puts it outside the infodict, but BitComet puts it inside ... twice no less, because it's repeated in the "publisher URL-utf8" key.

So when a user gets the .torrent file, the personalization routine sees two more appearances of the announce URL in the .torrent file and also replaces them with the user's personally keycoded announce URL. No harm if BitLord created the .torrent file, but BitComet puts it inside the infodict, so every user gets a version with a different info_hash, and nobody can connect to the torrent (whose info_hash as known to the tracker is that with the unpersonalized announce URL in those two keys), not even the original uploader.

Our admin says he's not going change the personalization process (sometimes users will list our own [unpersonalized] announce URL twice and create an announce-list key, so both occurrences need to be personalized) and that it's wrong to have a URL in the infodict in the first place.

When a user complains to the moderator desk, "I'm trying to seed my torrent but BitComet is telling me `torrent not registered on this tracker,´" we know exactly how it happened.

And that's besides the hammering issue, this DHT news, and besides BitComet's and BitLord's fondness for including empty subdirectories in .torrent files, which upset other clients, especially Mainline. [µTorrent, by the way, when it gets a .torrent file where BitComet or BitLord left an empty subdirectory in the structure, creates a zero-size plain file, which is better than choking like Mainline.]

Friends don't let friends use BitComet.

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Redleer Advanced Member

Redleer

Posted
Posted
It's because people have "Add DHT Network as backup tracker" enabled. This feature exists so if a tracker permanetly goes down BitComet kicks in the DHT so users can continue downloading/uploading. On one hand I hate this feature because it can be abused by leechers, but on the other hand I understand why it exists and agree that it is a useful feature to have.

But to answer your question, no, as far as I know if the user has enabled that option there is no way for the tracker to stop DHT from enabling if the tracker becomes unresponsive. All BitComet is trying to do is help the users finish their transfer if the tracker goes offline, which is the right thing to do when you stop to consider that BitTorrent was not created to use a ratio system.

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BlackLion Advanced Member

BlackLion

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This private vs. public tracker thing has been beaten to death on other threads, there are advantages and caveats to both routes, just take the path that suits you best. There are issues with pub torrents just as there may be issues with private torrents and he does need to care about them, the good private trackers have rules that allow for a good amount of content, sometimes faster than pub trackers and good seeding. Pub trackers dont normally enforce ratios but there may be questionable content there as well. Also a lot of ppl on pubs throttle their ups so even on some well-seeded torrents speed is dog slow, even with DHT. It depends on how you survive in the bt world. Just like any other community, there is something for everyone. There is no this one is better than that one, its about what your needs are and how they are met by the trackers that you use. I use both pub and priv depending on what my needs are atm, and live with the pros and cons of both. I would not recommend one type over the other, you cut yourself out of a large part of the bt community if you do that.

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Anime Janai Advanced Member

Anime Janai

Posted
Posted

It's not necessarily about enforcement. It is about performance.

If you look at the peers connecting to you via DHT as compared to the ones that are given to you by the tracker, chances are that the set of DHT users has an overall worse upload rate than the ones from the tracker. At least that is what I've seen so far.

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Switeck Advanced Member

Switeck

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why would anyone want to make torrents private? isn't the whole vibe of the internet to share openly and freely?

Say I have a circle of REAL friends all over the world...10 in total number. Now let's say we want to swap some files...and for this instance, let's even assume what we're doing is LEGAL.

So we all get µTorrent, except for one of us who runs BitComet. Another of us (the one with the file) puts up a private torrent and PMs us his ip.

End result, we shouldn't have to waste our limited upload bandwidth uploading to just anyone. For many broadband connections, it takes over 7 hours to upload 1 GB of files.

But due to BitComet's implementation and even a short disconnect between the BitComet guy and the torrent tracker, it is possible that outside users can start trying to download our files if these files are also traded by any other BitComet users. And banning ips is only a partial solution when that starts happening.

The good news is, only the BitComet guy would have to spend upload bandwidth trying to leak these files. µTorrent would deny the outsiders access -- but even they would have to deal with potentially many attempts to connect by BitComet users.

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