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I'm curious - what makes people operate a BT tracker?

by maltalex 7y ago

dewey 7y ago
The same reason people run forums, Mastodon nodes, FTP servers. It's fun and a technical challenge.
- maltalex 7y ago
  Part of the fun of operating something like a forum or an IRC server is the interaction with your users. In BT there's none of that. Also, FTP servers? Are there public FTP server people operate? Why?
  - Fnoord 7y ago
    > Part of the fun of operating something like a forum or an IRC server is the interaction with your users. And responsibility, a requirement to keep the software up to date, and an increased attack surface. > In BT there's none of that. Not anymore I suppose because it used to be mandatory to stay on good terms with channel and server ops. > Also, FTP servers? Are there public FTP server people operate? Why? To save costs. You'd think an ISP in for example The Netherlands who host a mirror of (legal) .iso or .deb is doing this for fun but in reality they're saving themselves costs because customers don't have to download from further away (where they got less bandwidth and less good peering agreements than their local server).
    - pard68 7y ago
      Also, don't know if this applies to others but we (uni I work for) maintain public ftp servers because we are obligated to do so by rhel. I think beinga uni we get a cheaper rate this way. We also host some of the foss software we use on these servers too.
  - squarefoot 7y ago
    "is the interaction with your users. In BT there's none" This is by design, but I agree: it would be nice to have at least a way to point users at a place where a common standard and open protocol would allow communications related to the torrent. An IRC channel named after the file hash maybe? In the old days of Napster and later the OpenNap network (anyone here used the Lopster client?) I discovered a lot about unknown rock bands just by looking at files shared by other people and asking them for more information. Those were the early days of multiuser downloads, when downloading a not so famous movie could take like two months (it happened to me) so pestering the poor user on the other side with continuous downloads wasn't an option. Being able to chat also gave the users the opportunity to help each other to solve networking problems or other technical issues. Having some way of communicating without altering the protocol (that is, external server) with the torrent containing just a field in a structure identifying a channel, could be an interesting improvement.
    - crtasm 7y ago
      It's not torrents, but Soulseek was still running last I checked. Browsing peers' collections, chatrooms, etc.
sprash 7y ago
Data acquisition! You know who is downloading and what is being downloaded.
Barrin92 7y ago
just some good old fashioned community service, why would anyone need a better reason? P2P networks often rely on volunteers.

I'm curious - what makes people operate a BT tracker?

dewey 7y ago

The same reason people run forums, Mastodon nodes, FTP servers. It's fun and a technical challenge.

maltalex 7y ago
Part of the fun of operating something like a forum or an IRC server is the interaction with your users. In BT there's none of that. Also, FTP servers? Are there public FTP server people operate? Why?
- Fnoord 7y ago
  > Part of the fun of operating something like a forum or an IRC server is the interaction with your users. And responsibility, a requirement to keep the software up to date, and an increased attack surface. > In BT there's none of that. Not anymore I suppose because it used to be mandatory to stay on good terms with channel and server ops. > Also, FTP servers? Are there public FTP server people operate? Why? To save costs. You'd think an ISP in for example The Netherlands who host a mirror of (legal) .iso or .deb is doing this for fun but in reality they're saving themselves costs because customers don't have to download from further away (where they got less bandwidth and less good peering agreements than their local server).
  - pard68 7y ago
    Also, don't know if this applies to others but we (uni I work for) maintain public ftp servers because we are obligated to do so by rhel. I think beinga uni we get a cheaper rate this way. We also host some of the foss software we use on these servers too.
- squarefoot 7y ago
  "is the interaction with your users. In BT there's none" This is by design, but I agree: it would be nice to have at least a way to point users at a place where a common standard and open protocol would allow communications related to the torrent. An IRC channel named after the file hash maybe? In the old days of Napster and later the OpenNap network (anyone here used the Lopster client?) I discovered a lot about unknown rock bands just by looking at files shared by other people and asking them for more information. Those were the early days of multiuser downloads, when downloading a not so famous movie could take like two months (it happened to me) so pestering the poor user on the other side with continuous downloads wasn't an option. Being able to chat also gave the users the opportunity to help each other to solve networking problems or other technical issues. Having some way of communicating without altering the protocol (that is, external server) with the torrent containing just a field in a structure identifying a channel, could be an interesting improvement.
  - crtasm 7y ago
    It's not torrents, but Soulseek was still running last I checked. Browsing peers' collections, chatrooms, etc.

sprash 7y ago

Data acquisition! You know who is downloading and what is being downloaded.

Barrin92 7y ago

just some good old fashioned community service, why would anyone need a better reason? P2P networks often rely on volunteers.