From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 5 15:36:28 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6B19316A4CE for ; Tue, 5 Oct 2004 15:36:28 +0000 (GMT) Received: from heineken.flexi-surf.co.uk (heineken.flexi-surf.co.uk [62.41.128.20]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 28B7043D2F for ; Tue, 5 Oct 2004 15:36:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nbco@screaming.net) Received: from [192.168.1.14] ([217.51.147.177])i95EKDT00652; Tue, 5 Oct 2004 15:20:14 +0100 From: nbco To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 5 Oct 2004 16:35:56 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.7 References: <956dc51a0410050606ac45514@mail.gmail.com> <20041005150834.GB5326@orion.daedalusnetworks.priv> In-Reply-To: <20041005150834.GB5326@orion.daedalusnetworks.priv> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200410051635.56828.nbco@screaming.net> cc: Giorgos Keramidas cc: Troy Mills Subject: Re: Downloading FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: nbco@screaming.net List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 05 Oct 2004 15:36:28 -0000 On Tuesday 05 October 2004 17:08, Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > On 2004-10-05 10:04, Troy Mills wrote: > > On Tue, 5 Oct 2004 16:52:06 +0300, Giorgos Keramidas > > > > wrote: > > > On 2004-10-05 21:06, Marcus Meng wrote: > > > > Has anyone ever considered setting up a bittorrent tracker for > > > > FreeBSD distributions? > > > > > > The usual methods (FTP, CVS, CVSup) work fine so far. What would that > > > gain for the end-user who's sitting on a slow dialup link somewhere? > > > > The "gain" for dialup users would be indirect but ultimately everyone > > would benefit. Those who chose to do CVSup and download ISOs from the > > FTP server may see an indirect gain in speed as the bandwidth load > I'm asking because I don't know: > > a) What a bittorrent tracker is. > b) What it takes to install and set up one. > c) Why would I prefer it over FTP/CVSup? > > Your reply to c) seems to be "to save bandwidth". The next logical > question is "how is bandwidth saved and who is it saved from"? snip > I've seen BitTorrent being mentioned quite a few times in > the past. I'm asking what it is, why one would use it, how it would be > set up in order to learn more about BitTorrent. Bittorrent is a type of p2p protocol: http://bittorrent.com/introduction.html Bittorrent would take the pressure off the servers as those who use it would effectively be getting the isos from those that already have them on their own boxes, in short it cuts the servers out of the picture therefore reducing congestion. It's in ports. I use: /usr/ports/net/py-bittornado home page: http://bittornado.com/ When you seed a torrent, you make your file, whether it is an iso, text etc available to the bittorrent community. Most bittorrent clients will do this for you. If you do not seed a torrent. it will not be available to the bittorrent comunity even though the isos are on your machine. Other p2p networks don't require this tagging and so any files that you wish to share are available to the p2p users. The reduction in pressure on the servers would hold true for any of the p2p networks I have the 5.2.1. isos on my box, and accessible to the peer networks, but as yet have never noticed anyone downloading them. Once I move to 5.3 I could seed it and we can see whether it is picked up. I don't think there is any real reason to seed 5.2.1. .nbco