
OpenBitTorrent – An Open Tracker Project - antonkozlov
https://openbittorrent.com/
======
LeoPanthera
I use this convenient github repo that contains a regularly updated list of
open (and working) trackers:

[https://github.com/ngosang/trackerslist](https://github.com/ngosang/trackerslist)

trackers_best is usually sufficient.

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miketery
What’s your workflow to query these and find what you’re looking for?

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tdxcbkifxx
Uhh. Your torrent client will automatically handle querying them and finding
what you're looking for (peers).

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mlevental
op is very obviously asking how to find out which files are being shared
rather than finding peers

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wruza
Please let me ask a bit offtopic question.

Bittorrent is based on torrent files which describe a specific list of files.
Is it really required to maintain them as a single pack/folder? For years I
have an idea where one could just tell torrent client where their data storage
is (with a flexible granularity ofc), so it could index it and share without
any specific torrent file, simply by block hashes. I.e. if I have a file
somewhere deep in the tree, and someone wants to download a block that
corresponds to that file, or a part of it, it would be served without being a
part of some torrent on _my_ side. Why it is not a thing from the beginning?

For me the upside is that I could sort and categorize files (even install and
forget) without removing/doubling them off the “Torrents/“ folder. I believe
this could reduce maintenance burden, thus seeders will not give up on seeds
only because there is too much to handle. And also provide vast deduplication
and cross-torrent seeding. It’s like a distributed filesystem, where you
autoshare inodes instead of prepared folders.

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Avamander
There's one more obstacle in the way of adopting any such system - the private
torrent DRM garbage. Torrent creators stupidly mark their torrents private or
not, changing that flag changes the infohash and you might not be able to
access the files with the new hash, it's incredibly hypocritical.

~~~
lossolo
> the private torrent DRM garbage. Torrent creators stupidly mark their
> torrents private or not, changing that flag changes the infohash and you
> might not be able to access the files with the new hash, it's incredibly
> hypocritical.

Private is not used for _DRM_ , it's used for security on every private
tracker.

~~~
Avamander
The private flag also annoyingly exists on many public torrents with no good
way to override. It is DRM.

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dewey
This is a very old project, and has been online for a long time. It started
getting popular when TPB ran into trouble and they started to add OBT as a
secondary tracker to uploaded torrents. They also got sued by Hollywood
studios but it didn't go anywhere apparently.

\- [https://torrentfreak.com/publicbt-tracker-set-to-patch-
bitto...](https://torrentfreak.com/publicbt-tracker-set-to-patch-bittorrents-
achilles-heel-090712/)

\- [https://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-appeals-decision-not-
to-s...](https://torrentfreak.com/hollywood-appeals-decision-not-to-shutdown-
openbittorrent-100106/)

\- [https://torrentfreak.com/court-refuses-to-order-shutdown-
of-...](https://torrentfreak.com/court-refuses-to-order-shutdown-of-
openbittorrent-091202/)

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vortico
What makes it "open"? What makes it different than other trackers that don't
require registration?

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daneel_w
That you don't need to upload a torrent file somewhere in order for it to be
made available by the tracker. That is, it's not running in the typical
"whitelist mode", but instead, by simply announcing yourself and a torrent
hash, that torrent is made available in the swarm for anyone to get in on.

This mode of operation is one of the fundamental modes of opentracker -
[http://erdgeist.org/arts/software/opentracker/](http://erdgeist.org/arts/software/opentracker/)
\- which is the software pretty much all of the many open BitTorrent trackers
run.

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runn1ng
What makes this “open” is - I presume - other trackers used to be tied to a
forum with a registration, while this is supposedly not tied to a forum or a
torrent search website.

However, from what I read some time ago, it’s actually connected to Pirate
Bay, and when Pirate Bay used to be down, OpenBitTorrent was also down.

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black_puppydog
I'm not sure what problem this is solving, and the info on the website is
sparse to say the least. Anyone care to explain?

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rhizome
Far as I can tell it's just a regular tracker.

~~~
daneel_w
The irregular (open) bit is that it does not require uploading torrents for
them to be accepted by the tracker. You can freely announce a hash, no pre-
requisites, and the torrent will exist in the swarm.

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maltalex
I'm curious - what makes people _operate_ a BT tracker?

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dewey
The same reason people run forums, Mastodon nodes, FTP servers. It's fun and a
technical challenge.

~~~
maltalex
Part of the fun of operating something like a forum or an IRC server is the
interaction with your users. In BT there's none of that.

Also, FTP servers? Are there public FTP server people operate? Why?

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squarefoot
"is the interaction with your users. In BT there's none"

This is by design, but I agree: it would be nice to have at least a way to
point users at a place where a common standard and open protocol would allow
communications related to the torrent. An IRC channel named after the file
hash maybe? In the old days of Napster and later the OpenNap network (anyone
here used the Lopster client?) I discovered a lot about unknown rock bands
just by looking at files shared by other people and asking them for more
information. Those were the early days of multiuser downloads, when
downloading a not so famous movie could take like two months (it happened to
me) so pestering the poor user on the other side with continuous downloads
wasn't an option. Being able to chat also gave the users the opportunity to
help each other to solve networking problems or other technical issues. Having
some way of communicating without altering the protocol (that is, external
server) with the torrent containing just a field in a structure identifying a
channel, could be an interesting improvement.

~~~
crtasm
It's not torrents, but Soulseek was still running last I checked. Browsing
peers' collections, chatrooms, etc.

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Jnr
This is at least 10 years old. What is it doing here now?

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r1ch
I'm rather curious why the UDP tracker protocol still exists (and is default
on this tracker). Back in the day when the only viable web server was a
prefork Apache, the small TCP connections from torrent clients would easily
overwhelm servers. Nowadays with event based multi threaded servers, it seems
this is no longer an issue but I still see the UDP protocol used very
frequently, despite its serious design flaws that allow UDP DoS amplification
attacks.

~~~
crtasm
I'm not aware of any way to cause a UDP amplification attack with a torrent
tracker - announcing to it doesn't cause it to connect back to you.

~~~
lossolo
> I'm not aware of any way to cause a UDP amplification attack with a torrent
> tracker

You are getting peers from tracker in the response and it's more data than in
announce, which means amplification attack is possible.

> announcing to it doesn't cause it to connect back to you.

UDP is connectionless protocol, which means it doesn't connect to anything, it
just sends data.

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word-reader
Countdown to the domain being seized. You'd think there would be some
alternative to DNS by now for the pirate crowd.

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ohithereyou
BitTorrent does not require trackers. You can make trackerless torrents that
use DHT for peers.

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windoze
DHT does have a few DNS based bootstrap servers.

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zaarn
They can be operated by anyone, most Torrent software lets you set the
bootstrap servers, rtorrent only requires connecting to a node that knows a
bootstrap server.

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bernardlunn
Another off topic? Does this have anything to do with the TRON acquisition of
BitTorrent?

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Diniya
Why all this old post are published here?

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anacrolix
.com

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snvzz
What's your point?

~~~
fjcp
I think he is implying that a .com domain would be more easy to seize by the
US authorities.

