Talk:BitTorrent
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Tit for Tat/Reform?
"Downloading torrents and sharing files" section makes a reference to a "tit for tat scheme" Bittorrent clients following the specification do not operate via tit for tat whatsoever, and I believe this should be removed. If you read the spec, you'll find that the actual behavior is something else. This is from memory and very informal- A given torrent will have a number of upload slots. These upload slots are given to the peers which are giving you the most upload speed. There is no other shaping done. I think this article needs to be completely reformed as it includes very large amount of relatively specific and slightly wrong statements. It's also has very mixed information. I'm too lazy to take up any reform effort, but I will complain =p. It should be noted that bittorrent is commonly misunderstood and even so-called reliable sources may be incorrect. (12.148.227.250 (talk)) —Preceding undated comment added 21:49, 1 June 2011 (UTC).
"These upload slots are given to the peers which are giving you the most upload speed." Sounds exactly like a tit for tat scheme. 115.64.19.205 (talk) 11:18, 6 June 2012 (UTC)
Article Name
There needs to be an article about the actual BitTorrent protocol which is different from the BitTorrent article, much the same as the WWW article is different from the HTTP article. This article BitTorrent_(protocol) should be renamed to simply BitTorrent, or possibly BitTorrent_network, so that a second article BitTorrent_Protocol can be created. Also, the use of the word "protocol" is inconsistent and ambiguous in the article. 38.96.160.226 (talk) 19:13, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
- BitTorrent (and the Bittorrent redirect) is the disambiguation page, which distinguishes protocol, company, and software clearly, in my opinion. Your point about clarity in this, the protocol article, may have merit. If you have specific suggestions, feel free to make them here. Because it's a highly technical subject, there are two conflicting goals: comprehensibility for general readers, and technical thoroughness. It can be difficult to harmonize these goals, since Wikipedia is WP:NOT a tutorial, nor is it a reference manual. --Lexein (talk) 02:06, 24 December 2010 (UTC)
- My point is that this article BitTorrent_(protocol) is not actually about a protocol. It's actually misnamed. This article is actually about the software and network. It never goes in to any detail about the actual protocol. look at the [[1]] which covers the architecture, network, and software. Then look at [[2]] which is about the protocol of the www. This article here is like the WWW page. There should be a second article about the protocol. This article here should hold the [[3]] then an actual protocol article at [[4]] should be created. 38.96.160.226 (talk) 18:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
- Well, this article actually does discuss the protocol in the context of the behavior of a generic bittorrent client, which I find meets Wikipedia's goal of being comprehensible to a general audience. More detail might be good, if reliably sourced, but a too-narrowly technical "pure protocol" article of the sort which satisfy programmers and academics would likely diverge from that goal, into reference manual land. There probably will never be any protocol article on Wikipedia which is complete enough to actually code any client, so it's probably best to let that go.
- Some time ago, the once-unified "BitTorrent" article was split. The divisions semi-settled on company, first client, and protocol/generic-client behavior/performance/adoption/cultural impact/etc. Renaming isn't much of an option, because a search for "BitTorrent" should land on the disambiguation page. I don't think splitting further is a good option, nor is re-merging, really, so maybe careful rewriting and re-organization is the best option. --Lexein (talk) 22:52, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with mister IP address—this is a BitTorrent overview, and is written in a very accessible, unassuming manner. This is not about the BitTorrent *protocol*. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.14.115.243 (talk) 21:04, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
Diagram
The GIF detailing how BitTorrent works is mindlessly fucking confusing, and this is for someone who knows how the protocol works. I can only imagine how bewildering it is for someone who doesn't understand BitTorrent at all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.180.105.198 (talk • contribs) 16:38, 5 July 2011
- Specific recommendations would be helpful. There was discussion about it as it was created and modified. In my opinion, a Javascript/HTML5 image player with a controllable timeline would be an improvement, but I don't know of one offhand. --Lexein (talk) 23:51, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
- Second that; Diagram really annoying. Speaking as someone who does not know the protocol its useless and annoying. 220.239.207.197 (talk) 07:39, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
- Uh, yeah, got it, you don't like it. Does that mean "stop the animation" or "delete the image" or "change the image" or "make it not repeat" or what? I vaguely recall asking for specific recommendations. --Lexein (talk) 08:40, 14 February 2013 (UTC)
- I completely disagree with the above, the current FildelningMedBitTorrent.png is much less useful than the previous Torrentcomp small.gif; I suggest a revert to the latter. Buhman (talk) 21:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
- I agree - I always found the animated GIF to be a good illustration. The present one misses just about everything. I think people thought there was going to be a test, and rather than just watching the flow and understanding the principle, some thought they had to understand and remember the exact order that each computer talked to which other, and what colour each arrow was. Or something. --Nigelj (talk) 22:44, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
- I completely disagree with the above, the current FildelningMedBitTorrent.png is much less useful than the previous Torrentcomp small.gif; I suggest a revert to the latter. Buhman (talk) 21:33, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
Piracy
Piracy at least deserves a mention. It's not a secret that BitTorrent's main use-case is movie piracy by college students and anime fan dubs. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.100.61.70 (talk) 23:31, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
- This is the article about the protocol which is (should be) a purely technical article, explaining how it works. Piracy is mentioned elsewhere, see "See also", and the topnote. --Lexein (talk) 23:40, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
If it were purely technical it wouldn't have an adoption section. Piracy should have it's own bullet point there, probably the first one. 76.100.61.70 (talk) 23:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
In fact, there isn't even a link to the Piracy article Fionakiwi (talk) 21:15, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
User accounts per IP
"At any given instant of time BitTorrent has, on average, more active users than YouTube and Facebook combined. (This refers to the number of active users at any instant and not to the total number of unique users.)[5][6][dubious – discuss]"
It would be nice to remove the "dubious" tag, obviously, but it is going to take a little work. It can be empirically observed that the statement is true, but it could be misleading. It has to be true, because there is no such thing as no IP address for a positive number of active user accounts, and it is so improbable as to be impossible that there are no IP addresses with more than one user account. On the other hand, is the ratio significant enough to mention? If BitTorrent has numbers for IP addresses, then someone should get them. Please. Anarchangel (talk) 23:26, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
Metaphysics
The way bittorrent works is analogous to the way big ideas are transmitted between people. Is there a science that looks at this in more detail? I think the world can learn a lot from computer science. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 196.215.118.227 (talk) 21:55, 25 June 2012 (UTC)
- I agree but the talk is too big. Firstly, what you really want to see should be written in p2p article, whereas bittorrent the protocol, no matter how common, doesn't change the fact that it is an implementation of the greater concept you describe, we have plenty p2p networks for different things, btw. I don't know how it is related to CompSci, the idea is highly trivial for CompSci-ists. My guess is that you are referring to sociology, what you feel so amazing, so powerful about p2p is that, if people have lower connectivity among each other, then people(the clients) have higher tendency to rely on certain clients(aka. centralized server). This happens everywhere before bittorrent, when it gets on news some brands it as illegal, we also have new words like piracy, not strictly relevant though.
- I am not sure how this kind of sociology can fit in, but you better find some reliable sources first. --Mylittleanon (talk) 07:07, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Distributed Trackers
The section on Distributed Trackers should be more thoroughly cited:
- Virtual torrents - little to no explanation of how this works by searching. Need a citation or explanation.
- Anatomic P2P -
Also, the section itself could possibly be restructured to better inform. Changes should be outlined regarding the difference between Kademlia and BitTorrent Mainline DHT.
Liamzebedee (talk) 11:51, 14 July 2012 (UTC)
Inaccessible language
I have done my best with general copyediting, but a more knowledgeable copyeditor will need to review the article for technical language.--Soulparadox (talk) 09:54, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
Briefly describe the outstanding advantage over centralization using big-O or graph?
It is tagged that the article is too technical. It bundles the encryption and DHT stuff, I think the article is also too long. What i would like to change is that the reader would say "aha!" immediately out of visualization of p2p network, a svg graph for example, to explain what bittorrent is, and its difference between centralized server. --Mylittleanon (talk) 06:46, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
Relevance of college to article
I reverted this twice and I would prefer to have other feedback before doing so again. I see no relevance to listing Cohen's college in this article at all. It is extremely rare for this to be done (outside of cases like Google where Page & Brin started the search engine at Stanford). Cohen didn't start BitTorrent at Buffalo, didn't receive any assistance/funding/etc. from Buffalo, and didn't even graduate from there. If I'm the only one who thinks this, I will leave it alone but I would like to see other editors opinions on this.Caidh (talk) 12:31, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
bitlove.org
Hey I am unsure if pages like http://bitlove.org/ should be listed in BitTorrent#Broadcasters. I am not sure what the policy is for a listing. bitlove.org functionas as a bittorrent webseed supported tracker for podcasts. --Sk!d (talk) 12:29, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
- My apologies - I inadvertently removed your comment on the talk page but I restored it. Sorry about that! Caidh (talk) 19:50, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
the BitTorrent entry is perfectly fine - please don't dumb it down !
it's a really good article - it's clear and precise !
"sequential downloading" section requested!
I am talking about certain torrent clients ability to download a small chunk of the file and making that available for consumption (viewing, listening, etc) while more chunks are downloaded, essentially allowing the client to act as if the content was streamed.
I browsed the article but could not find anything on this. I therefore propose that a knowledgeable editor adds a small new section discussing this capability that torrent clients can have. If you object "this isn't part of the torrent specification" then at the very least, add a mention and a link onwards to a dedicated article.
Please note: I am certainly no expert and I'm not even sure what to call this feature. Please improve mercilessly :)
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