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This is a very cool project but it is not compatible with current bittorrent clients. It uses webrtc for the transport instead of UDP. In order for it to be com

This is a very cool project but it is not compatible with current bittorrent clients. It uses webrtc for the transport instead of UDP. In order for it to be compatible with traditional bittorrent clients, those clients would have to implement communication with webtorrent clients, which hopefully shouldn't be too hard, still as of now it won't work with current clients. Still very cool though and I hope traditional clients will implement webtorrent. The other way to make it work would for browsers to implement UDP which some do such as chrome but only as chrome apps.

rakoo 12y ago
Nitpick: traditional bittorrent sits on top of TCP. utp, the protocol to make torrents run smoother, does run on UDP, but it's not the official way to do it (although most clients should do it)
- api 12y ago
  uTP isn't really to make torrents run smoother. It's to allow NAT traversal.
  - fulafel 12y ago
    uTP was developed to work around bufferbloat-challenged DSL/DOCSIS CPEs, smoother is a reasonable characterization for it. It has since gotten some NAT traversal abilities as a bonus.
  - rakoo 12y ago
    Actually (again, nitpicking because I love Bittorrent) the reason it was created is to allow smooth day-to-day operations of a computer with a long-running bittorrent client and several other shorter-terms network applications, such as web browsers, chat applications, VoIP softwares, multiplayer games... The goal is to make sure that bittorrent automatically takes full control of the interface when nobody else is using it, yet quickly gives control to whoever needs it when needed, without manual intervention from the user (the notorious "set speeds to 10% to not slow down your web browsing"). That said, uTP being based on UDP gives the nice side effect that NAT traversal is effectively possible. http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html
    - vr000m 12y ago
      Yes, this is a typical feature of delay-based congestion control. Especially, when cross-traffic increases the delay because the change in observed queue size. uTP also implements LEDBAT, which is a scavenger class of congestion control. See CC implementation details: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
jacquesm 12y ago
Could you make a 'bridge' somehow between the two (browser extension?)
- icebraining 12y ago
  For Firefox, probably. I don't think Chrome extensions allow you to use sockets. EDIT: confirmed: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152875 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152875
- MzHN 12y ago
  > WebTorrent is designed to match the BitTorrent protocol as closely as possible, so when the time comes, existing BitTorrent clients can easily add WebRTC support and swarm with web-based torrent clients, "bridging" the web and non-web worlds. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280436
Kurtz79 12y ago
So it should work with Chrome and Firefox, correct ? But I though webrtc still needed dedicated servers to punch through NAT ? http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure...
ante_annum 12y ago
Feross actually gave a talk about this where a lot of these questions got answered.

rakoo 12y ago

Nitpick: traditional bittorrent sits on top of TCP. utp, the protocol to make torrents run smoother, does run on UDP, but it's not the official way to do it (although most clients should do it)

api 12y ago
uTP isn't really to make torrents run smoother. It's to allow NAT traversal.
- fulafel 12y ago
  uTP was developed to work around bufferbloat-challenged DSL/DOCSIS CPEs, smoother is a reasonable characterization for it. It has since gotten some NAT traversal abilities as a bonus.
- rakoo 12y ago
  Actually (again, nitpicking because I love Bittorrent) the reason it was created is to allow smooth day-to-day operations of a computer with a long-running bittorrent client and several other shorter-terms network applications, such as web browsers, chat applications, VoIP softwares, multiplayer games... The goal is to make sure that bittorrent automatically takes full control of the interface when nobody else is using it, yet quickly gives control to whoever needs it when needed, without manual intervention from the user (the notorious "set speeds to 10% to not slow down your web browsing"). That said, uTP being based on UDP gives the nice side effect that NAT traversal is effectively possible. http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html
  - vr000m 12y ago
    Yes, this is a typical feature of delay-based congestion control. Especially, when cross-traffic increases the delay because the change in observed queue size. uTP also implements LEDBAT, which is a scavenger class of congestion control. See CC implementation details: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817 https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6817
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]

jacquesm 12y ago

Could you make a 'bridge' somehow between the two (browser extension?)

icebraining 12y ago
For Firefox, probably. I don't think Chrome extensions allow you to use sockets. EDIT: confirmed: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152875 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=152875
MzHN 12y ago
> WebTorrent is designed to match the BitTorrent protocol as closely as possible, so when the time comes, existing BitTorrent clients can easily add WebRTC support and swarm with web-based torrent clients, "bridging" the web and non-web worlds. [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280436 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8280436

Kurtz79 12y ago

So it should work with Chrome and Firefox, correct ? But I though webrtc still needed dedicated servers to punch through NAT ? http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure/ http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/webrtc/infrastructure...

ante_annum 12y ago

Feross actually gave a talk about this where a lot of these questions got answered.