
Tribler Makes BitTorrent Impossible to Shut Down - Garbage
http://torrentfreak.com/tribler-makes-bittorrent-impossible-to-shut-down-120208/
======
rb2k_
For people interested in the more "anonymous" parts of filesharing, I wrote my
Bachelor's thesis on the subject: [http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2008/07/23/the-
current-state-of-a...](http://blog.marc-seeger.de/2008/07/23/the-current-
state-of-anonymous-file-sharing/)

It's a bit dated at this point, but still give an ok overview of networks like
Gnutella, EDonkey and Bittorrent and also goes into the more exotic ones.

As far as I see it, the currently 'usable' clients that use darknets and
turtle-hopping are Oneswarm (<http://oneswarm.cs.washington.edu>) and
AllianceP2P (<http://code.google.com/p/alliancep2pbeta/>)

p.s. Sorry about the language, it was my first bigger paper written in
English, so I'm a bit heavy on the passive forms and runaway sentences.

~~~
aw3c2
Sadly no mention of I2P even though it was working quite well even back then.
<http://www.i2p2.de/>

You can use Bittorrent in it, there is a emule port, gnutella etc. Works quite
well. I often have download speeds of ~50Kilobytes/s in Bittorrent. It is a
self-contained net with some trackers.

~~~
rb2k_
True, if I had more time I would have added I2P too. Since the thesis was only
12 out of 30 credits in that semester, I opted for looking at the anonymizing
properties of 'regular' file-sharing software and software with anonymity as a
main focus rather than looking at generic overlay networks too. This would
have been the next step though :)

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grzaks
Very nice. But the concept is not new. Don't you remember Kad/Kademlia network
which was introduced together with eDonkey/eMule and invented back in 2002?

It didn't get any traction then but it was completely decentralized (based on
distributed hash tables).

~~~
dissident
Kademlia _did_ get traction; it is the protocol for BitTorrent's use of magnet
links, trackerless torrents and other features.

It was not designed to act as a gossip-like overlay network for indexing
content (similar to eDonkey/eMule), it was designed to act as an overlay
network for identifying metadata of known keys stored in DHT.

The BitTorrent checklist is as follows:

1\. [X] peer to peer file transfer

2\. [X] Kademlia/magnet links for decentralized metadata

3\. [X] Kademlia/peer exchange for decentralized tracking

4\. [X] Gossip protocol for indexing magnet links

5\. [X] integrated data proxying for anonymity/plausible deniability

Tribler solved step 4, OneSwarm and some others are trying to solve step 5.

We're indeed on the cusp of an impenetrable file sharing network.

~~~
JonnieCache
_> impenetrable_

Until they just block the protocol with deep packet inspection. (Encryption
won't work, you can analyse packet size/timing to fingerprint protocols pretty
accurately.)

~~~
Refringe
Rogers already does this (cripples download and limits upload to ~80KBps).
They've forced me to switch to Usenet as even popular Torrents slow to a crawl
on their Ultimate plan (50 down/2 up).

~~~
EwanG
Curious why you would move to Usenet unless you are using a free service? The
remaining DDL services (such as DepositFiles and RapidShare) are cheaper and
tend to have faster DL times. Something I'm missing?

~~~
Refringe
I pay less than $7/month for my Usenet connection, which is relatively cheap
if you use it frequently. The connection is over SSL so it's completely secure
end-to-end. My average download speed is 9 MB/s (saturating my line) which
means I can download a 720p HD movie in just under 13 minutes. There's also
(like with torrents) the ability to set-up TV show RSS feeds, so my shows
automatically download to a folder, ready to watch, as they're released. It
comes down to ease of use.

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StavrosK
I don't see how this is any different (practically, not technically) from
eDonkey/KaZaA/all the other file sharing networks of old. It sounds like it
will suffer from the same problem of low SNR as the others did.

Basically, when anyone can add any file they want (for example, eMule etc
scanned directories and added whatever it could find), noise is invariably
much higher. Torrent trackers act as curators, ensuring there's high quality
of uploads (especially for private trackers), thus increasing SNR.

I'd love it if someone could prove me wrong, though. Does anyone have any
insight on this?

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brown9-2
Doesn't Skype have a similar "superpeer" architecture? They showed with their
outage last year that it is still possible for a decentralized network to go
down.

~~~
pyre
It's less likely that someone will be able to take out all (or most)
superpeers at the same time... at least not as effectively as the core
software malfunctioning.

~~~
brown9-2
Less likely for sure, but it doesn't mean that a network relying on superpeers
is invulnerable. The risk of a centralized dependency is spread out among
many, many nodes, but the risk still exists (I'm just annoyed at articles like
this that make the decentralized approach sound bulletproof, it's hyperbole).

~~~
pyre
The network itself is still resilient.

Skype's issue was getting the P2P network back up and running ASAP because 1)
people pay them for a service that was down and 2) (voice|video|text) chat
generally has a higher priority than file sharing. People wouldn't be as
ticked off if the P2P filesharing network went down for a few days (or a week)
before rebuilding itself.

What happens when all superpeers go offline at once is that the 'normal' peers
then start DDOS'ing any remaining superpeers (or the few superpeers that are
able to get back up and running quickly). As people settled down with trying
to reconnect to the superpeers, eventually the network would rebuilt itself
(possibly with completely different superpeers). Once you knock out all
superpeers at once, the network becomes quite a bit less distributed.

That said, once all superpeers are down, it could be easy to continue manually
DDOS superpeers as their appeared on the network for a targeted attack. If
someone was being malicious, they could keep up the DDOS even as regular users
are letting up on their inadvertent DDOS due to the sudden change in network
makeup.

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joejohnson
Every time I start the application, it creates a "TriblerDonwloads" folder on
my desktop (I'm on a mac). I've even changed the default downloads folder to
~/Downloads/TriblerDownloads... it's still creates the desktop folder at
launch.

Also, is there a way to force outgoing encryption (you can do this in
uTorrent)?

~~~
Zirro
I remember testing Tribler a few months ago, and I while I think the idea is
brilliant, I didn't keep it for long for the reason you mention above. One of
the reasons I switched to OS X in the first place is the high quality of the
applications. I would love to try Tribler again if they create a native
version for each platform, or at least a version which looks and behaves
according to the standards of each platform.

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eridius
Something I've always wondered (but been too lazy to research on my own) with
this sort of thing is, in the absence of any centralized point, how do new
users even find the swarm? My assumption is that all of these networks have at
least one (or a handful of) centralized server that acts as a stepping stone
to find the swarm. Is there something obvious I'm missing?

~~~
SpikeGronim
That's the typical approach. Either the client ships with a list of IPs /
hostnames for seed servers, or you update a single well known DNS name with a
bunch of A records. For maximum resilience you can put a whole series of DNS
names in the client under different national registrars. This is often how
botnets receive command and control messages - lookup RANDOM_HEX.ch and
download a signed script to run.

~~~
eridius
I figured that's what existing p2p solutions did. Does Tribler do that too?
Because it can't really claim to not rely on central servers at all if it
still needs them as a stepping stone.

~~~
majmun
from article: "One thing that could theoretically cause issues, is the
capability for starting users to find new peers. To be on the safe side the
Tribler team is still looking for people who want to act as so called
bootstraptribler peers. These users will act as superpeers, who distribute
lists of active downloaders.

“Together with software bugs and a code cleanup, that is now our last known
weakness,” says Pouwelse.

"

I guess to solve that problem the distribution must be decentralized and
supernode adress delivered with client (as stated in above comment)

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politician
Does Tribler contain countermeasures for the Sybil attack?

~~~
synctext
Sybil attack, insightful question.. Yes we protect against it:
[http://www.asci.tudelft.nl/media/proceedings_asci_conference...](http://www.asci.tudelft.nl/media/proceedings_asci_conference_2010/asci2010_submission_14.pdf)
-tribler founder

~~~
politician
"The BarterCast mechanism was designed by Meulpolderet al. to distinguish
free-riders and cooperative peers in ﬁle-sharing environments. After the ﬁrst
release, Seuken et al. [?] proposed an improvement to make it more resilient
against misreporting attacks. Their solution is based on ignoring some of the
feedback reports. Also, this solution could cut down the severity of the
attack, but on the other hand it increases the feedback sparsity."

Do you have the cite handy for the paper referred to in section 2? I'm curious
about the problem of network degradation due to pollution by an adversary
whose clones attempt to maximize their reputation so as to isolate non-clones
before initiating the attack.

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mikehuffman
I wonder why people seem to avoid the fact that the laws already know it is
impossible to shut down file sharing. It is a power play. Just like it is
impossible to stop marijuana usage, but that has no affect on the
repercussions of the laws and the results for certain corporations and those
accused.

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nixle
Honest question here: I always thought that Kazaa and eMule worked
decentralized. How was that set up?

~~~
roel_v
They were, the problem were that the protocol wasn't very good, and that they
were closed source so there was a single point at which to cut them off - at
the point of distribution. It seems to me that the same reasoning that was
used in the lawsuits against Kazaa (which ultimately caused Kazaa's demise)
could be applied to this product. Time will tell I guess, when it gets big
enough to target - for now the centralized torrent trackers are a lot easier
to use and more widely known. Tribler being open source might make it harder
to suppress with legal tools. I think the logical step (if it would become
mainstream) would be to sue uploaders individually.

~~~
jamii
Tribler might be helped by its veneer of respectability - its funded by P2P
Next (<http://www.p2p-next.org/>) as part of an EU wide program to create P2P
distribution channels.

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nextparadigms
Alternative links for PC and Mac:

[http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/File-
Sharing/Tribler.s...](http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/File-
Sharing/Tribler.shtml)

<http://download.cnet.com/Tribler/3000-2196_4-75329551.html>

~~~
synctext
Sorry for that, our central servers are flooded. We're bringing a few more
online now for dedicated .EXE downloading. Should be running fairly quickly.

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Void_
Tribler.org is down, is there an alternative link?

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mydnite
Not everyone wants to seed all the time so splitting up the program into a BT
core and BT file manager might be an idea.

The BT core program looks after the online user and search data, sharing this
with other clients. This could be always on.

While the BT file manager looks after seeding / leeching through the BT core
program. This allows you to participate in the group acting as a super peer
and having up to date search data while not having to have a full blown BT
client running.

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falala
Coral Cache for Tribler Downloads:
<http://dl.tribler.org.nyud.net/download.html>

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savramescu
This sounds to me a lot like DC++, but using p2p. Anyone remember that DC
client that had multiple peers?

~~~
JonnieCache
StrongDC++ was the one I used to use. There are many with swarming enabled.

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hmans
If this mattered, people would be using Gnutella.

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greyish_water
What do people do with this?

