[SSL Observatory] Tracker for data files

Martin Guy martinwguy at gmail.com
Sun Nov 29 08:09:53 PST 2015


On 29/11/2015, Peter Eckersley <pde at eff.org> wrote:
> does anyone know if we can switch to magnet links that don't need a
> tracker?

I think bittorrent clients should find others with the same files
through DHT anyway.
If I understand correctly, you should just be able to publish magnet
links instead of torrent files, with the hash as the body of the URL.
Or as well as.

>> I'm still (trying) to seed those files, but that obviously doesn't
>> work to well if the tracker is down.

It might be worth putting one up at that address anyway, so that
existing clients with the files will announce their presence, just to
make things work better as they are. It shouldn't be that hard and I
don't mind putting in the work to install and maintain it.

>>  It seems that there are
>> however still at least 5 people seeding it, there might be more if
>> the tracker was actually still working.

Like I said, they should find each other through DHT and PEX but yes,
startup would be faster for new clients. I like the fact that a
torrent contains the file names, whereas with a magnet link it has to
download that info; having them in the torrent allows users to select
files to download before the torrent starts, otherwise they have to
wait for the info to download when it finds the first other client and
the user has to sit poised, ready to spring into action to the select
the files at that point. Eck.

   M


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