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BitTorrent v2

blog.libtorrent.org

551–560 of 576 posts

Re: BitTorrent v2

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For multiple reasons. QUIC or HTTP/3 is going to be the next web standard widely deployed. Getting mandatory encrypted UDP traffic that looks like web is a big benefit. TFO recommendation primarily because torrenting is big, the feature is not super well-known, it would be a chance to increase its adoption, need for its support and that would benefit the web in general.

Bittorrent wouldn't benefit much from TFO because that would require a cookie from a previous connection to that remote client, which is unlikely to happen among random peers. Plus connection setup is not really a limiting factor for current use-cases. Some low-latency applications of bittorrent might benefit, but that requires specialized clients tuned for low latency throughout the stack, a single change won't do i…

> which is unlikely to happen among random peers.

Yes, it'd be a minor suggestion at best. The biggest benefit would be to the internet as whole, motivating middle box makers into not breaking it and so on.

The low-latency idea seems interesting, I suspect WebTorrent people would appreciate it. But live streams over P2P sound too fancy for now.

> but bittorrent-over-TLS would work equally well (not standardized, but libtorrent supports it).

Which is where the suggestion to use QUIC would have the biggest effect and getting the swarms more encrypted.

> Bulk transfers à la bittorrent benefit only marginally if you have a modern TCP stack and use it properly.

Unfortunately very little software actually goes into the effort at figuring each such detail out and the end result, defaults are often rather poor.

I guess this more of a questions of "what are the defaults" not "what's possible."

Re: BitTorrent v2

#552

Since we're on this topic, what's your torrent client of choice HN? I plainly use BitTorrent nowadays

- Picotorrent mostly, because of the simplicity

- BiglyBT sometimes, because of Swarm Merging

Re: BitTorrent v2

#553
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're allowed to have an opinion on the quality of things that you're not involved in the production of. You should hear me talk about movies.

I see your point, but... Movies are (largely) by definition well-funded with people who make union wages whether they do a bad job. Parent seemed a little flippant to me considering that the work discussed is a labor of love used by millions, but remunerated by (maybe) thousands

I'm sure parent would be first in line to contribute if a random investor showed up and said "Hey I'll pay you more than your current boss to stop making apps focused on children gambling via microtransactions and do literally anything else."

Re: BitTorrent v2

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argentina is literally in that situation now. The government charges a surplus 30% tax on any foreign currency purchase (cash, Netflix, anything outside the country), and only allows you to buy 200 usd a month legally. The inflation rate is over 50% there, Bitcoin is more stable than the Argentinian peso. Basically, the government has made it illegal for you to legally save money on a different currency than the Arge…

and yet, bitcoin use is still negligible.

How would you even know that? Most of the value in terms of pesos would be from a small number of wealthy people who have a very strong interest in secrecy, and are likely using VPNs and other means to shield their activities. My guess is that, for wealthy people who are somewhat tech savvy or know someone who is who they can trust, it's a very good option. Certainly better than sending relatives on a plane with $9k in USD cash to get it to a relative abroad for safe keeping.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#555
post #290
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You pay for peace of mind that little Johnny doesn't download some crazy amount by accident. Now you don't have to monitor family usage so that makes things easier as well.

i had per gb pricing in new zealand. the key feature to address your issue was that i could set an upper limit, so, say start throttling the connection once i reach $50. that's the same that other ISPs would do anyways once i reached a certain amount of usage, but with this ISP i decided the limit and i could change it at any time. the price was competitive too. other ISPs charged $70 per month, and had a limit of 50…

It's unfortunate that cellular providers don't offer this. I get around it by setting my data connection to prefer 3g. It helps with a 500mb limit (data is expensive on cheap plans), but it'd be nice to be able to throttle apps individually (no, I do not want video ads to be downloaded, but internet connectivity is required for the app to work online. A HN client with webview, for example)

Re: BitTorrent v2

#556
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows has some sort of P2P update distribution system, although (1) I don't know that it is bittorrent and (2) it seems to be massively slower than just using MSFT's servers directly, so I'd suggest disabling it. On the order of 100x slower.

I've never managed to see it working on personal PCs. Unfortunate. Still waiting for the day such a feature arrives on Linux, it'd be an instant hit everywhere where uplink is slow and expensive, especially in developing countries.

Wasn't there an `apt-transport-torrent`package a while back? It shouldn't be that hard to get going, just include a magnet link in the metadata for the package.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#557
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attacks only get better with time. Also, this seems quite bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_attack#Chosen-prefix...

That attack isn't relevant to bittorrent swarms. What you want is a preimage attack on SHA1.

[deleted]

Re: BitTorrent v2

#558
post #215

> not only uses a hash tree, but it forms a hash tree for every file in the torrent [...] > Files that are identical can also more easily be identified across different swarms, since their root hash only depends on the content of the file. Wait, content addressed blobs across swarms... does that mean torrents made by completely different people at different times that happen to contain one or more identical files can…

I haven't looked at it for a while, but wasn't that the big feature of ipfs?

Yep. But the difference is that everyone uses BitTorrent and no one uses IPFS.

Re: BitTorrent v2

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using wxWidgets, so it's the Win32 API at the lowest layer. For accessibility I want to make it support the NVDA screen reader which I think would make it support other readers as well :)

wxWidgets is a decent choice. Not all of its controls are accessible though. Most infamously, the wxHTML control (wx's own HTML engine) isn't accessible, but the web view control (using the OS's web browsing engine) is accessible if you futz around at the native layer to force the keyboard focus into the right place. Also, on Windows, the list view control is accessible but the data view control is not. Frustratingly…

That's really valuable, thank you!

Re: BitTorrent v2

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair. I don't know much about this world. But, like, the classic "society could collapse" fear-and-doubt, doom-and-gloom, grab-the-gold-and-the-burner-laptop-and-the-ammo argument can be used for just about anything. Heck, even when society actually is collapsing, the argument isn't actually that great an argument! I'm not even arguing that cryptocurrency couldn't have value in the scenario you describe. Just that ge…

Well, I haven’t really talked about collapse of society here. I guess it’s difficult to even define what it means precisely. I could imagine that Sarajevo siege and few years around 1991 in former USSR could qualify. Then again people who I talked to in 2014, were still a bit in denial till the start of school year and only then left the area directly affected by war. My point is simple — you take the ability to acce…

For sure. And that makes sense.

I guess I was more pointing out that right now it seems highly scenario-specific whether or not cryptocurrency can help in the way you described.

Doesn't it depend on the amount of money you're dealing with, what you may or may not need to do with said money in the near-future, your own technical competence/facility, and perhaps even the current state of cryptocurrency itself?

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