
Pirate Bay Power Usage Equivalent to a Vacuum Cleaner - chinmoy
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-power-usage-equivalent-to-a-vacuum-cleaner-121021/
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WimLeers
One part that really makes The Pirate Bay very efficient is their torrent
tracker software. Unlike Python and PHP implementations, theirs is written in
C, with very little dependencies. It's called OpenTracker —
<http://erdgeist.org/arts/software/opentracker/>. It's intended to run on a
WLAN router; it's _that_ efficient. Especially see the "Philosophy" section :)

Of course, other projects can also use this for very legal purposes. E.g. my
<http://driverpacks.net> project uses torrents for distributing (legal!)
downloads to avoid expensive server bills. The infrastructure is simple: a
central OpenTracker instance, plus a few seedboxes (±$15/month) that get new
files via rsync (to guarantee each file always has seeders), and voila:
terabytes per day of traffic at ±$1/day. Live stats at
<http://driverpacks.net/stats> — powered by
<http://drupal.org/project/opentracker>.

Hopefully this is useful for somebody :)

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jlgreco
I thought they no longer ran a tracker. Does this piece of software fulfill
other roles, or am I just mistaken?

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wlesieutre
Are you perhaps thinking of their change from .torrent files to magnet links?
My understanding is that the tracker is something of a necessity.

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jlgreco
I thought that they switched to only serving torrent files and having people
rely on other trackers, and then later moved to replace all the torrent files
with magnet links.

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tomku
My calculations might be wrong, but 2.5 kW * 24 hours * 31 days is 1860 kWh,
and the utility bill sitting on my desk says I'm paying about $0.10 per kWh.
That's $186 a month, which pays for an awful lot of vacuuming.

I'm sure that they're quite efficient compared to other high-traffic websites,
but this is a pretty silly way to show it.

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zitterbewegung
Why in the article they are comparing megaupload with TPB? Megaupload needed
those servers because they were hosting the files. TPB only has torrents to
download and they were using P2P to distribute the files.

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wmf
Perhaps a site called TorrentFreak believes that BitTorrent is more efficient
than cyberlockers.

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yen223
Technically you'd have to factor in all the computers which are part of the
BitTorrent network, wouldn't you?

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SoftwareMaven
And the power of all the PCs idling to be available to serve up chunks of
torrents? Seems like making a comparison to eg Megaupload and leaving that
part of the equation out is disingenuous at best.

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wmf
The original point of P2P was that those costs are both sunk and not your
problem.

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wlesieutre
The hardware cost is sunk, but the additional electricity you use by serving
things out over bittorrent instead of idling isn't.

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jlgreco
A large vacuum cleaner... running 24/7.

Impressive nevertheless.

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idupree
Not in the US it isn't -- a wall socket is typically only rated to provide
about 15 A * 120 V = 1800 W peak usage (* 80% = 1440 W long-term), which is
less than their 2.5 kW vacuum cleaner.
<http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/maxload.html>

15 A at 240 V could power it, though, if there's a vacuum cleaner that needs
that much power.

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jlgreco
I think you might find industrial vacuums that draw that much power. Those
floor buffer things do at least I think.

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pflats
Not if they plug into a traditional wall outlet. There are rules and laws
about these things.

If the outlet has a T-slot on one side, it can take 125V 20A plugs (125*20 =
2.5kW) as well as the traditional 125V 15A plugs. They're different plugs. You
can't pull 20A across 15A wires. That's how you get electrical fires (or,
ideally, blow fuses/trip circuit breakers).

See also: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEMA_connector>

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lostlogin
It's amazing what a wall socket will do under duress. I was drilling a hole in
an exterior wall and accidentally draped the power cord into a puddle at the
exact point where the drill cord met the extension. I got a big shock (I had
contact with the puddle) with some effort dropped the drill that I was sort of
force clenching, and ran/stumbled inside and turned off the mains. I couldn't
work out why the fuse didn't blow until I pulled it out. Someone had stuck a
paper clip across it, presumably after running out of fuse wire. The extension
lead had welded its contacts to the drill lead as well. A lucky/unlucky combo
that has taught me a lesson in electrical safety.

