5 ms·

Tribler – Search and stream torrents

93 points by subbz 12y ago

mathieuh 12y ago
I thought it was frowned upon to use Tor for BitTorrent due to the increased load reducing performance for other users.
- devicenull 12y ago
  It is, https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-go... but hey.. anything to get free movies!
- javto 12y ago
  It's not using the Tor network, it is using a Tor-like protocol. And this one is fully decentralized unlike Tor :).
mu_killnine 12y ago
Sounds promising on paper (can't view at work) but I can't imagine this would be very fast method of getting data. Just my $0.02, but BT is terrific for things too large for conventional download links. However, my experience with Tor has been that it's only performance for bite-sized data. At Tor's current adoption rate, BT and Tor seem somewhat mutually exclusive.
- thefreeman 12y ago
  It is not using the actual Tor network. They developed a Fork of Tor utilizing UDP and trading speed for some of Tor's anonymity guarantees.
frandroid 12y ago
Geez, VPNs are so expensive.
- probably_wrong 12y ago
  Just to nitpick: a VPN gives you privacy, ie, no one can know what you are downloading without a search warrant to your VPN provider. TOR gives you anonymity, ie, no one knows who you are, ever. Practicality and common sense aside, if you are downloading illegal stuff and you know it, then TOR is the right tool, not a VPN.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
synctext 12y ago
The key new feature of this release is Tor-like anonymous Bittorrent downloading. This is not using 'the' Tor network. This software has build-in support for a fork of the Tor protocol. That network is tuned for Bittorrent. It uses UDP with integrated UDP puncturing. Full technical specification: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Anonymous-Downloading-and-Streaming-specifications https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Anonymous-Downloadin...
bowlofpetunias 12y ago
I'm surprised Tribler is still alive. Years ago it kicked up a storm of publicity when it was published as a research project by the Delft University.
baumbart 12y ago
First reaction: Jeez. Not this shit again. Second reaction: Whatever works. There are too many ideas for one problem to find and establish "the best". This is definitely not elegant, but let's see what it gets.
denzil_correa 12y ago
It's interesting to read their Wiki page. They have a timeline for Tribler [0] 2012: Tribler Mobile live streaming from a phone camera to potentially thousands 2011: Libswift accepted as an upcoming IETF Internet Standard 2010: Wikipedia.org uses our technology for live trial 2009: Large HD streaming trial with BBC 2008: Social network without servers and "easy" invites 2007: Our reputation system launched in the wild 2006: Tribler 1st released 2005: First Tribler code = social Bittorrent 2004: Slashdot for first time with largest Bittorrent study They also have a 1h+ talk at the Stanford University [1] on 4th generation P2P technology. [0] https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQiLaKdzD0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQiLaKdzD0E
akavel 12y ago
From what I see on the download page, "no general anonymous downloads yet, trial-only" ? http://www.tribler.org/download.html http://www.tribler.org/download.html
u124556 12y ago
The nicest feature to me is the serverless search. This week several torrent websites have been DDoSed and people doesn't know where to get their torrents from.
hundsim 12y ago
Does anything similar exists for music?
kaoD 12y ago
Warning: under settings, "Tribler Profile" has a default nickname setting matching your hostname. Not great for anonymous streaming. My networks status is shown as OK but the anonymity test is not downloading yet. Getting Kubuntu fron the "Linux ISOs" channel worked, though it's labelled as not anonymous.
zackmorris 12y ago
Netflix and other high bandwidth content delivery services should have used Bittorrent from the very beginning, and now are hitting a lot of resistance from ISPs because of their stubbornness to use CDNs instead. I predict that companies will not be quick to embrace technologies like these, because they are stuck with the legacy of the DMCA (and region coding) so the loss of net neutrality is inevitable. I’m hopeful though that the tech community will anticipate this and come up with a metric for broadband that only measures p2p traffic. That way when Comcast and others claim to provide a certain connection speed, it can be trivially verified and consumers can steer clear of false advertising. Also the public needs to be made aware that the primary cost of internet traffic is still long distance, basically anything that has to travel out over the backbone. The connection from your home to the ISP is a one-time cost. So p2p traffic like Bittorrent actually lowers overall costs for everyone by sending data over the backbone just once and then distributing it from the local caches on everyone’s hard drive in the same city. Eventually that cost will be so low as to approach free, which is why I think self-organizing meshnets and darknets are also inevitable.
- CPLX 12y ago
  Worth noting that spotify did in fact do exactly this, and as far as I know recently discontinued the P2P element of its streaming service.
- p2pisntlocal 12y ago
  There are no guarantees that p2p traffic will be local. As such it does not matter if the non-local traffic is originated from a CDN or a p2p peer. It's still going to cost the ISP same and run into the same interconnection choke points. The connection from your home to the ISP is anything but a one-time cost. Maintaining the outside plant costs money, equipment consume electricity, fees and taxes, etc. In fact the last mile to your home is the most expensive part of your Internet connection. The very last part is only paid by you and the next mile is only paid for and share by your neighbourhood. The long haul part is paid for and shared by all the ISP customers and thus cheap, as is the IP transit needed to connect to other networks.
  - 12y ago
unethical_ban 12y ago
Is this similar to the Anomos program that died 6 years ago? https://anomos.info/ https://anomos.info/ Anomos would have required a tracker, like torrent, but had onion routing for downloads, I believe.

93 points by subbz 12y ago

mathieuh 12y ago

I thought it was frowned upon to use Tor for BitTorrent due to the increased load reducing performance for other users.

devicenull 12y ago
It is, https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-go... but hey.. anything to get free movies!
javto 12y ago
It's not using the Tor network, it is using a Tor-like protocol. And this one is fully decentralized unlike Tor :).

mu_killnine 12y ago

Sounds promising on paper (can't view at work) but I can't imagine this would be very fast method of getting data. Just my $0.02, but BT is terrific for things too large for conventional download links. However, my experience with Tor has been that it's only performance for bite-sized data. At Tor's current adoption rate, BT and Tor seem somewhat mutually exclusive.

thefreeman 12y ago
It is not using the actual Tor network. They developed a Fork of Tor utilizing UDP and trading speed for some of Tor's anonymity guarantees.

frandroid 12y ago

Geez, VPNs are so expensive.

probably_wrong 12y ago
Just to nitpick: a VPN gives you privacy, ie, no one can know what you are downloading without a search warrant to your VPN provider. TOR gives you anonymity, ie, no one knows who you are, ever. Practicality and common sense aside, if you are downloading illegal stuff and you know it, then TOR is the right tool, not a VPN.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

synctext 12y ago

The key new feature of this release is Tor-like anonymous Bittorrent downloading. This is not using 'the' Tor network. This software has build-in support for a fork of the Tor protocol. That network is tuned for Bittorrent. It uses UDP with integrated UDP puncturing. Full technical specification: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Anonymous-Downloading-and-Streaming-specifications https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Anonymous-Downloadin...

bowlofpetunias 12y ago

I'm surprised Tribler is still alive. Years ago it kicked up a storm of publicity when it was published as a research project by the Delft University.

baumbart 12y ago

First reaction: Jeez. Not this shit again. Second reaction: Whatever works. There are too many ideas for one problem to find and establish "the best". This is definitely not elegant, but let's see what it gets.

denzil_correa 12y ago

It's interesting to read their Wiki page. They have a timeline for Tribler [0] 2012: Tribler Mobile live streaming from a phone camera to potentially thousands 2011: Libswift accepted as an upcoming IETF Internet Standard 2010: Wikipedia.org uses our technology for live trial 2009: Large HD streaming trial with BBC 2008: Social network without servers and "easy" invites 2007: Our reputation system launched in the wild 2006: Tribler 1st released 2005: First Tribler code = social Bittorrent 2004: Slashdot for first time with largest Bittorrent study They also have a 1h+ talk at the Stanford University [1] on 4th generation P2P technology. [0] https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQiLaKdzD0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQiLaKdzD0E

akavel 12y ago

From what I see on the download page, "no general anonymous downloads yet, trial-only" ? http://www.tribler.org/download.html http://www.tribler.org/download.html

u124556 12y ago

The nicest feature to me is the serverless search. This week several torrent websites have been DDoSed and people doesn't know where to get their torrents from.

hundsim 12y ago

Does anything similar exists for music?

kaoD 12y ago

Warning: under settings, "Tribler Profile" has a default nickname setting matching your hostname. Not great for anonymous streaming. My networks status is shown as OK but the anonymity test is not downloading yet. Getting Kubuntu fron the "Linux ISOs" channel worked, though it's labelled as not anonymous.

zackmorris 12y ago

Netflix and other high bandwidth content delivery services should have used Bittorrent from the very beginning, and now are hitting a lot of resistance from ISPs because of their stubbornness to use CDNs instead. I predict that companies will not be quick to embrace technologies like these, because they are stuck with the legacy of the DMCA (and region coding) so the loss of net neutrality is inevitable. I’m hopeful though that the tech community will anticipate this and come up with a metric for broadband that only measures p2p traffic. That way when Comcast and others claim to provide a certain connection speed, it can be trivially verified and consumers can steer clear of false advertising. Also the public needs to be made aware that the primary cost of internet traffic is still long distance, basically anything that has to travel out over the backbone. The connection from your home to the ISP is a one-time cost. So p2p traffic like Bittorrent actually lowers overall costs for everyone by sending data over the backbone just once and then distributing it from the local caches on everyone’s hard drive in the same city. Eventually that cost will be so low as to approach free, which is why I think self-organizing meshnets and darknets are also inevitable.

CPLX 12y ago
Worth noting that spotify did in fact do exactly this, and as far as I know recently discontinued the P2P element of its streaming service.
p2pisntlocal 12y ago
There are no guarantees that p2p traffic will be local. As such it does not matter if the non-local traffic is originated from a CDN or a p2p peer. It's still going to cost the ISP same and run into the same interconnection choke points. The connection from your home to the ISP is anything but a one-time cost. Maintaining the outside plant costs money, equipment consume electricity, fees and taxes, etc. In fact the last mile to your home is the most expensive part of your Internet connection. The very last part is only paid by you and the next mile is only paid for and share by your neighbourhood. The long haul part is paid for and shared by all the ISP customers and thus cheap, as is the IP transit needed to connect to other networks.
- 12y ago

unethical_ban 12y ago

Is this similar to the Anomos program that died 6 years ago? https://anomos.info/ https://anomos.info/ Anomos would have required a tracker, like torrent, but had onion routing for downloads, I believe.