# BitTorrent Goes Trackerless

- Author: Joichi Ito
- Date: 2005-05-20T07:03:08Z


I'm sure everyone knows what BitTorrent is, but it is the most popular peer-to-peer file sharing protocol for sharing large files. Before you had to have a tracker to create "torrents" which coordinated this sharing, but now you don't. This should make it even easier for people to make BitTorrent enclosures in blog entries and otherwise use BitTorrent to share files. Having said that, there are value added trackers like Prodigem which I'm sure people will use to charge for and otherwise track their files.BitTorrentBitTorrent Goes Trackerless: Publishing with BitTorrent gets easier!

As part of our ongoing efforts to make publishing files on the Web painless and disruptively cheap, BitTorrent has released a 'trackerless' version of BitTorrent in a new release.

[...]

In prior versions of BitTorrent, publishing was a 3 step process. You would:

   1. Create a ".torrent" file -- a summary of your file which you can put on your blog or website
   2. Create a "tracker" for that file on your webserver so that your downloaders can find each other
   3. Create a "seed" copy of your download so that your first downloader has a place to download from

Many of you have blogs and websites, but dont have the resources to set up a tracker. In the new version, we've created an optional 'trackerless' method of publication. Anyone with a website and an Internet connection can host a BitTorrent download!

[...]

Although still in Beta release, the trackerless version of BitTorrent, and the latest production version are available at http://www.bittorrent.com/





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Network Technology, Software