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Adoption of webtorrent (bittorrent via webrtc) is almost non-existent. Unless uTorrent and libtorrent (used by Deluge, rtorrent, qbittorrent etc) will adopt thi

by lossolo 11y ago

Adoption of webtorrent (bittorrent via webrtc) is almost non-existent. Unless uTorrent and libtorrent (used by Deluge, rtorrent, qbittorrent etc) will adopt this, then webtorrent in browser will never start off. Unfortunately i predict that this desktop client will not resolve this issue.

feross 11y ago
That's not true. Vuze already supports WebTorrent! Check it out: https://wiki.vuze.com/w/WebTorrent https://wiki.vuze.com/w/WebTorrent There's also built-in support for WebTorrent (and IPFS for that matter) in the Playback video player: https://mafintosh.github.io/playback/ https://mafintosh.github.io/playback/
- lossolo 11y ago
  What i wrote is true. You know how much of market is Vuze comparing to utorrent and libtorrent? EDIT: Here you go, data from 2015 http://lifehacker.com/5813348/five-best-bittorrent-applications/1705622513 http://lifehacker.com/5813348/five-best-bittorrent-applicati... Azureus was something but 10 years ago. Things changed.
  - dcposch 11y ago
    uTorrent shows banner ads and recently shipped with bitcoin mining malware. It's also a lot more work--and requires a second program, like VLC--to do streaming. I'm optimistic about WebTorrent Desktop adoption. You're right that we need lots more hybrid client adoption to bridge the BitTorrent and WebTorrent networks and really make it work in the browser. I hope WebTorrent Desktop can be that client. Finally, libtorrent is open source. Here's the discussion about adding WebTorrent support: https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/223 https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/223
    - lossolo 11y ago
      It dosen't matter that they show banners. They are number 1 anyway. Telemetry didn't change windows adoption and ads didn't change utorrent adoption. I know about this issue from 14 october :) I am not so optimistic, this client has 15-30 times more ram usage and couple of times more CPU usage. You can just install qBittorrent set sequential downloading and watch the movie..
      - _antares 11y ago
        Yes it matters. Ads if downloaded from Internet at start time will definitely introduce anonimity/privacy issues and cut user base by large. utorrent is #1 only because older versions (no adds/malware) are easily accessible.
lucid00 11y ago
I feel this is a moot point. I'm pretty sure the install base of WebRTC data channels is far higher than BitTorrent (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and soon Edge and Safari), so existing Torrent clients providing support only helps out the existing torrents out there. Down the line I'm willing to bet that WebTorrent grows to be more widely used than BitTorrent, just off of the lack of friction to get started for both users and developers.
- lossolo 11y ago
  You know that you can't connect to normal bittorrent clients from webtorrent in browser right? Which means that you do not have almost any sources of seeders, which means that webrtc adoption dosen't matter.
  - lucid00 11y ago
    I know you can't connect to normal clients. My point is normal clients don't really matter. "Which means that you do not have almost any sources of seeders" All it takes for someone to seed a file is to open a web page. Think about it. At any point if I wanted to promote a song via WebTorrent, I could build WebTorrent into an audio player and encourage my user base to click a checkbox and seed the track (toss in IndexedDB support for storing it offline and it's even better). Complete serverless resharing with almost every benefit of BitTorrent to boot. The only thing WebTorrent needs the existing BitTorrent install base for is the existing torrents, which don't matter as much as you might think they do (most torrents are pirated content anyways). So yes, WebRTC adoption does matter.
    - lossolo 11y ago
      If this what you wrote was true then you would see big adoption of webtorrent which is not the case. As i said before and i am saying for almost 2 years now. I love webtorrent but it NEEDS support from libtorrent and utorrent. Look at biggest bittorrent sites and on private trackers, i have seen private data on clients usage and i can tell you that adoption is almost non-existent comparing to big 5, which still means that webrtc dosen't matter in this case..
zanny 11y ago
I looked into the complexity of implementing webtorrent (which is just websocket signaling and webrtc data channel connections to peers rather than the traditional http signaling with udp to peers) in libtorrent and it is kind of a giant mess of C++ :p The problem is more that every desktop client, for some reason, has also reimplemented bittorrent. Specifically, Transmission, Deluge, and KTorrent all use their own bittorrent protocol implementations, and none of them are particularly or easily extensible enough to provide webtorrent support easily. But let it be known eyes are on the prize and have at least looked into it, it is just a hard problem, exacerbated by implementation fragmentation.

by lossolo 11y ago

feross 11y ago

That's not true. Vuze already supports WebTorrent! Check it out: https://wiki.vuze.com/w/WebTorrent https://wiki.vuze.com/w/WebTorrent There's also built-in support for WebTorrent (and IPFS for that matter) in the Playback video player: https://mafintosh.github.io/playback/ https://mafintosh.github.io/playback/

lossolo 11y ago
What i wrote is true. You know how much of market is Vuze comparing to utorrent and libtorrent? EDIT: Here you go, data from 2015 http://lifehacker.com/5813348/five-best-bittorrent-applications/1705622513 http://lifehacker.com/5813348/five-best-bittorrent-applicati... Azureus was something but 10 years ago. Things changed.
- dcposch 11y ago
  uTorrent shows banner ads and recently shipped with bitcoin mining malware. It's also a lot more work--and requires a second program, like VLC--to do streaming. I'm optimistic about WebTorrent Desktop adoption. You're right that we need lots more hybrid client adoption to bridge the BitTorrent and WebTorrent networks and really make it work in the browser. I hope WebTorrent Desktop can be that client. Finally, libtorrent is open source. Here's the discussion about adding WebTorrent support: https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/223 https://github.com/arvidn/libtorrent/issues/223
  - lossolo 11y ago
    It dosen't matter that they show banners. They are number 1 anyway. Telemetry didn't change windows adoption and ads didn't change utorrent adoption. I know about this issue from 14 october :) I am not so optimistic, this client has 15-30 times more ram usage and couple of times more CPU usage. You can just install qBittorrent set sequential downloading and watch the movie..
    - _antares 11y ago
      Yes it matters. Ads if downloaded from Internet at start time will definitely introduce anonimity/privacy issues and cut user base by large. utorrent is #1 only because older versions (no adds/malware) are easily accessible.

lucid00 11y ago

I feel this is a moot point. I'm pretty sure the install base of WebRTC data channels is far higher than BitTorrent (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and soon Edge and Safari), so existing Torrent clients providing support only helps out the existing torrents out there. Down the line I'm willing to bet that WebTorrent grows to be more widely used than BitTorrent, just off of the lack of friction to get started for both users and developers.

lossolo 11y ago
You know that you can't connect to normal bittorrent clients from webtorrent in browser right? Which means that you do not have almost any sources of seeders, which means that webrtc adoption dosen't matter.
- lucid00 11y ago
  I know you can't connect to normal clients. My point is normal clients don't really matter. "Which means that you do not have almost any sources of seeders" All it takes for someone to seed a file is to open a web page. Think about it. At any point if I wanted to promote a song via WebTorrent, I could build WebTorrent into an audio player and encourage my user base to click a checkbox and seed the track (toss in IndexedDB support for storing it offline and it's even better). Complete serverless resharing with almost every benefit of BitTorrent to boot. The only thing WebTorrent needs the existing BitTorrent install base for is the existing torrents, which don't matter as much as you might think they do (most torrents are pirated content anyways). So yes, WebRTC adoption does matter.
  - lossolo 11y ago
    If this what you wrote was true then you would see big adoption of webtorrent which is not the case. As i said before and i am saying for almost 2 years now. I love webtorrent but it NEEDS support from libtorrent and utorrent. Look at biggest bittorrent sites and on private trackers, i have seen private data on clients usage and i can tell you that adoption is almost non-existent comparing to big 5, which still means that webrtc dosen't matter in this case..

zanny 11y ago

I looked into the complexity of implementing webtorrent (which is just websocket signaling and webrtc data channel connections to peers rather than the traditional http signaling with udp to peers) in libtorrent and it is kind of a giant mess of C++ :p The problem is more that every desktop client, for some reason, has also reimplemented bittorrent. Specifically, Transmission, Deluge, and KTorrent all use their own bittorrent protocol implementations, and none of them are particularly or easily extensible enough to provide webtorrent support easily. But let it be known eyes are on the prize and have at least looked into it, it is just a hard problem, exacerbated by implementation fragmentation.