

Researchers To Release an Anonymous BitTorrent Client - ajain11
http://torrentfreak.com/researchers-anonymous-bittorrent-client-120601/

======
nddrylliog
(Full disclosure: movies.io admin here)

Right now, it's hard to tell. I like that their current protocol is published
as an IETF draft [1], but it doesn't include anything about their 'proxy
layer' which is touted in the TF article.

From the details in this article, it seems to work a bit like Tor, which
raises a few questions: who is going to run the ProxyNodes: is that their
business model: making people pay a subscription to access their vast network
of ProxyNodes? (Will they claim innocence because "they don't inspect the
content passing through", even though it'll be mostly pirate content).

PPSP (the IETF version) looks like a more modern and lightweight BitTorrent
that runs on UDP. I like that, but as every network, we'll have to see the
adoption rate. People stay on BitTorrent the same reason they stay on
Facebook: everybody's there.

The Tribler guys are not the only one to want to do P2P on top of UDP though:
uTorrent came out much sooner (and with reasonably good adoption) with μTP
[2].

[1] [https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ppsp-peer-
protoc...](https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-ppsp-peer-
protocol/?include_text=1)

[2] [http://blog.bittorrent.com/2009/10/05/changing-the-game-
with...](http://blog.bittorrent.com/2009/10/05/changing-the-game-
with-%CE%BCtp/)

~~~
evoxed
> People stay on BitTorrent the same reason they stay on Facebook: everybody's
> there.

This is true in general, but there are some major players who could just as
easily move people to adopt. i.e. if one day TPB decides that magnet links
doesn't solve as many problems as this, people would certainly follow. If
anything, at the beginning people probably wouldn't mind having a different
protocol or client just to run TPB seeds.

~~~
nddrylliog
I think you underestimate the cost there is to switch. Suddenly you have to 1)
install new software (unless an uTorrent update supports the new protocol), 2)
lose all the content TPB had so far.

I could be wrong, but that seems like a big showstopper.

~~~
evoxed
I don't mean to say that it's an easy task to turn over all the content, but
places like TPB have muscles to flex and as far as I can see, if they did it
then others would follow. It wouldn't surprise me at all if uTorrent or other
clients scrambled to push an update for it in that event...

------
cskau
This was already posted 16 hours earlier:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4056325>

It's beginning to annoy me how HN rejects double postings in general, but
includes the fragment identifier again allowing unlimited reposting.

~~~
jamesbritt
Any URL can be reposted by adding a unique fragment ID. On the brigth side it
means people can repost links that never got proper attention.

------
aw3c2
You can use torrents anonymously in I2P today. And I think this is the much
better solution. I2P lets you do much more than just torrenting. And every
user benefits from eachother's actions/traffic since the more traffic there
is, the more peers there are, the more anonymous it gets.

You can also use E2DK or Gnutella in I2P. Or plain HTTP. Or mails. Or IRC.
Much nicer than being limited to just Bittorrent.

As for speed, if you get a nice swarm and your I2P peer is well integrated,
100Kilobytes/s are possible.

~~~
ralphc
It's my understanding that you can only torrent within the I2P network and
can't reach out to the "outside" internet, is that true?

~~~
aw3c2
Yes.

There are some "outproxies" but only 2-3 and they are slow. I2P is not meant
to intermingle with the normal internet.

------
tommi
EU actually funds the project:
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7259339.stm> and
[http://www.tribler.org/trac/wiki/whatIsTribler#Moreinformati...](http://www.tribler.org/trac/wiki/whatIsTribler#Moreinformation)

------
Mizza
I was part of a team who have attempted to solve this problem before:
<http://anomos.info>

It is a very, very hard challenge, and I wish them luck.

