

Introducing BitTorrent Torque - Empro
http://blog.bittorrent.com/2012/07/06/introducing-bittorrent-torque/

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nostromo
> Simply put, it allows anyone to utilize our powerful technology to create
> completely fresh and new experiences for users with just a couple lines of
> code.

Worst use of "simply put" I've seen in a while. This page actually puts it
simply: <http://torque.bittorrent.com/labs/>

> Turns all torrents links into regular downloads. No torrents to manage. Just
> content.

~~~
AnIrishDuck
That's just one possible use of the extension. This apparently creates an API
that javascript can use to manage bittorrent downloads.

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CodeCube
I don't know why, but I had a visceral reaction to the browser prompt to
install the extension in the paddleover demo. This is despite the fact that
I'm a developer, and I'm well familiar with bittorrent. Maybe it has something
to do with the fact that I feel like I have to be keenly aware of what my BT
client is doing at any given moment. The thought of letting a BT client run
unchecked in my browser is disconcerting ... am I completely off base here?

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nostromo
After downloading the demo (which was super cool!) the biggest unanswered
question I have is:

Am I seeding? If so, how do I stop?

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e40
Out of all the comments here, only your question on seeding and no answers.
It's the only reason I came to the comments!

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runn1ng
Can you translate to me what this is about?

Is it a javascript bittorrent client? Access to local bittorrent client?
Access to remote bittorrent client?

I don't want to sound ignorant, I am just confused :(

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sp332
It has two parts. It installs a torrent client in your browser as an
extension. Then it lets web sites control what gets uploaded and downloaded
via BT. <http://documentup.com/bittorrenttorque/btapp>

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sltkr
> OneClick: Turn your torrent downloads into normal in-browser downloads.

This has been possible in Opera out-of-the-box for half a decade.

Apparently with Torque I have to manually install a third-party plug-in, and
that plugin only works on Windows. Great progress there. It's like replacing
HTML5 with Adobe Flash: from native browser support back to a proprietary
plug-in.

~~~
jaredsohn
>This has been possible in Opera out-of-the-box for half a decade.

But it hasn't been in other browsers and Opera has a very small percentage of
marketshare. If you're BitTorrent and you want people using their client in
the browser, this project makes a lot of sense.

>plugin only works on Windows

I haven't played with it yet, but it ran an installer on my Mac. You might
have been confused since it detects your operating system and just installs
the right version, not letting you see which systems are supported.

>have to manually install a third-party plug-in

It is mostly automatic, but does ask you since plug-ins run native code and
present a significant security risk.

I am guessing it might be necessary to use a plug-in because it requires more
access to the system than Flash provides (at least in the security model that
it gets run in within the browser) and also perhaps because it allows reusing
existing code.

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ernesth
>>This has been possible in Opera out-of-the-box for half a decade.

>But it hasn't been in other browsers and Opera has a very small percentage of
marketshare. If you're BitTorrent and you want people using their client in
the browser, this project makes a lot of sense.

Since contrary to most other opera innovations it was not copied as an
extension for firefox, this is probably not something people really want or
need.

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btown
Pretty awesome. I can see this technology displacing CDNs in the future...
everybody is a edge node!

The plugin downloader is still a large barrier to entry, though.What I'd
really like to see is a parallel protocol to BitTorrent that's basically
BitTorrent over WebSockets. Consider an update to Vuze, uTorrent,
Transmission, and all the other clients, that added a simple WebSocket server.
Now, Alice's web browser will never be able to connect to Bob's web browser
directly (at least in the foreseeable future), but they could conceivably both
connect to Charlie's full client if Charlie was running this server. And the
trackers would need to be updated to serve Charlie's address to Alice and Bob
(or HTTP proxies to the trackers would need to be developed), but then Alice
and Bob could start building the DHT in their LocalStorages. I'm sure I'm
missing a lot of technical challenges, but I think this might be feasible.

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vessenes
This is crazy, crazy good. And, it would be nice if it were javascript only;
you could then get people to upgrade for better features. I wonder if
packaging it for site admins rather than browser users is the right plan?

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maxko87
This is a great move to make BT more mainstream and remove the boilerplate
cost of installing a client, etc.

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k33n
Looks like it requires a plugin. That's a shame.

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leishulang
WebRTC will have peer to peer API by the end of next year.

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astro1138
But it's not going to be BitTorrent-compatible.

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drivebyacct2
I hope/wonder when WebRTC gets adopted more that we will see more things like
(I'm sorry I can't remember the name) [the variant of SIP that desktop clients
can implement to allow WebRTC -> SIP connections] but basically modified UDP
protocols that will initiate inside of a connected WebRTC session allowing one
to connect to desktop clients via WebRTC clients.

So if uTorrent/BitTorrent implemented TorrentRTC protocol, browser based
clients could initiate a WebRTC PeerConnection and then communicate using the
normal DHT/BitTorrent UDP protocols.

Very exciting.

~~~
wmf
Yes, it's kind of sad but I expect protocols of the future will be built on
top of WebSocket or WebRTC (if they can't run over HTTP) so that they can work
both native and in browsers.

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themgt
As soon as WebRTC hits, it will be possible to do pure-JS bittorrent clients
(and there's already some projects on github)

I'm not sure why they spent the time on a plugin

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wmf
As already discussed in this thread, you can create a BitTorrent-like protocol
over WebRTC, but not actually BitTorrent.

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alainbryden
I don't like that I can't see how paddleover would work without installing the
plugin. I bet you're losing a lot of visitors on that page.

~~~
pwmckenna
you might be right. its technically feasible to allow a browse before you
install, and it might be something we look into. Given that its a demo of the
api though, the simpler the better. If someone looks at it and thinks "I'll
make a better version", then we're pretty happy about that as well :)

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StavrosK
Hmm, so I can create a web app that runs without a server... I can just post a
link to a simple JS page that will start downloading the app and execute it in
the background.

I don't see a use for this, though. It's not much different from just
downloading the code and running it, although it'll be much simpler to
install.

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mickael1787
This is great! Does Torque support uTP for doing NAT traversal through STUN?

