# FreeBSD bitorrent downloading



## French Fries (Aug 14, 2017)

Dear friends,

I usually keep bitorrent transmission-remote running on a server to help distribution of Debian.

I usually limit upload speed to 2Mb/s upload to limit bandwidth on my fiber line.
This is only an average speed, uploads can peek faster. This is not a tracker, only the client giving additional bandwidth.

I tried to do the same with FreeBSD using:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/Torrents

After a few days of inactivity, FreeBSD torrent files were stuck, to approximatively rate of 10% to 20% uploads.

As a result, downloads are slow, because people like me willing to help are scattered.

To compare with Debian, some of their ISO have 500 peers and you can download at high speed. I can remind from 10 to 20 Mb/s.
Is there any technical or ethical reason why no bitorrent tracker is available for FreeBSD?

Kind regards,


----------



## tobiam (Aug 14, 2017)

I think it is really like stated in the Wiki article. DHT is pretty much all that is required. It's likely that there just isn't enough people using bittorrent to download it, as it's also not as prominent of a download option on FreeBSD's download page. Many people probably aren't even aware of it.

As for the tracker. If you want to use a tracker there is always the option to use your bittorrent client to add one of the open trackers.

Again it's really just guessing, but judging from the article there is just not many people seeing the need for a tracker. DHT overall works really well. Many former bittorrent trackers switched to really just list magnet links nowadays. I also never had problems with that, even for very unpopular torrents. However I usually download FreeBSD releases from a local mirror, so I have no experience with FreeBSD releases from torrents.

Maybe it would make sense to make the bittorrent option more visible in order to have more peers/seeds. I think that this would fix the problem you are experiencing in a more solid way.

Also it would likely have people simply providing their downloads to support the project.

EDIT: By the way. Which file are you downloading? If it's something more rare (ie. not a recent release, and an amd64 ISO) you probably simply experience a lack of seeders, rather than people just not being found.


----------



## French Fries (Aug 14, 2017)

OK, i understand. It is only that bitorrent is not advocated enough on FreeBSD website.

Did not catch my eye immediately, but these are FreeBSD-11.0 torrents and the current FreeBSD release is 11.1, so people are not downloading them !


----------



## tobiam (Aug 14, 2017)

French Fries said:


> If there was a central server, I guess there would be at least 20 to 50 peers for each image/ISO.


I doubt that, if it still was kind of hidden in the wiki. DHT tends to work really well. If you don't see peers it's really likely that there simply are none, which wouldn't be solved by a tracker keeping the same info as the DHT.

EDIT: Ah, cool that you found out. So out of curiosity. How many peers do you see there?


----------



## French Fries (Aug 14, 2017)

This is the issue here:
I saw ZERO peer, probably because it is FreeBSD 11.0 and not 11.1.

Besides, in the last days I have downloaded 11.0, without noticing that it was one release behind.




FreeBSD 11.1 is not available from many bitorrent trackers, only one:
http://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=ea625c00353e8282ef250d538a158bafa16101ce

Try this link:
https://torrentproject.se/?s=freebsd

But it sometimes provides ISO images, sometimes iso.xy, this is a mess.
Downloading speed is pathetic. There are around 10 seeds and only me downloading.

FreeBSD needs an official bitorrent tracker.
I thought that FreeBSD had full control over their downloading server.
Presently, they are not controlling anything based on Torrent.

is it open to initiative?


----------



## French Fries (Aug 14, 2017)

Maybe I should explain more why Torrent is so much exciting!

If you sitting behind a fiber/fast DSL line, Bitorrent allows you to reach incredible downloading speeds. For example, you may download Debian CD from 100 peers with a speed of 5 Mb/s (10 Mb/s peak). This is not possible on a traditional web server, where downloading speed is limited for obvious reasons. You click on a DVD torrent and you can download it completely in a matter of seconds.

The idea that the community makes the software and then distributes it is also interesting.
I wonder if DHT can provide good downloading speed. For me, it is just a fallback mechanism and a way to get more peers. If you don't run a tracker, downloading from Bitorrent can become painful.


----------



## ronaldlees (Aug 14, 2017)

French Fries said:


> Maybe I should explain more why Torrent is so much exciting!
> 
> If you sitting behind a fiber/fast DSL line, Bitorrent allows you to reach incredible downloading speeds. For example, you may download Debian CD from 100 peers with a speed of 5 Mb/s (10 Mb/s peak). This is not possible on a traditional web server, where downloading speed is limited for obvious reasons. You click on a DVD torrent and you can download it completely in a matter of seconds.
> 
> ...



Legal torrents are wonderful, but the entire genre has long been tainted by illegal downloads, causing many people to shy away from them.  It seems that a torrent that was configured to be exclusive to some purpose (_like downloading FreeBSD ISO images_) - would be a great community thing.  Like you wrote, in such a case "the community makes and distributes" the software.  If all the members of this forum donated a little bandwidth, I could get those BSD ISO images more quickly.  

All the links in the  _https://www.freebsd.org/where.html_ page seem to be `FTP`, which can be darn slow.  Other operating systems do use torrents for distribution, so I see what you're saying about the obvious lack of it's being used for FreeBSD.   It's just considered tainted by some, and some ISPs have blocked it in the past.

OTOH, I just start the ftp client, and go have a coffee.  Hasn't been that big a deal.


----------



## French Fries (Aug 15, 2017)

Agree.

There are some good papers around about Bitorrent:
http://web.cs.ucla.edu/classes/cs217/05BitTorrent.pdf

Possible DooS attacks:
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/woot15/woot15-paper-adamsky.pdf

When the bitorrent tracker is blacklisted, you can rely on DHT to download from peers.
FreeBSD: "We don't need a tracker as DHT does it all" is not true and leads to anarchy.

The situation is going to be totally out of control in the next months 
and people are going to download rubish if no centralized tracker is set-up.


----------



## PacketMan (Sep 28, 2018)

ronaldlees said:


> Legal torrents are wonderful, .......It seems that a torrent that was configured to be exclusive to some purpose (_like downloading FreeBSD ISO images_) - would be a great community thing.  Like you wrote, in such a case "the community makes and distributes" the software.  If all the members of this forum donated a little bandwidth, I could get those BSD ISO images more quickly.



In this day and age I really struggle to understand why freebsd.org can't host FreeBSD software via bittorrent.  And by "host" I mean hosting a tracker (for example tracker.freebsd.org), a web site to get the .torrent file (say torrent.freebsd.org), and a few gigs of disk space to hold the software.

I for one would commit to leaving genuine FreeBSD software on my torrent client for an incrediably long time. I have no issue giving back many multiple times over.


----------



## leebrown66 (Sep 29, 2018)

ronaldlees said:


> Legal torrents are wonderful, but the entire genre has long been tainted by illegal downloads


That's precisely why I blocked any p2p here.  We started getting notices about movies being downloaded and that threatens our shared service.



PacketMan said:


> I for one would commit to leaving genuine FreeBSD software on my torrent client for an incrediably long time. I have no issue giving back many multiple times over.


I would advocate for that here.  As our outbound is roughly 10% of the inbound, we have plenty of capacity to spare in that direction.  And disk is cheap. Heck I think I've got a spare 60GB SSD buried on my desk somewhere.


----------



## NewGuy (Sep 30, 2018)

I didn't know FreeBSD had torrents of their own, that information is pretty hard to find. I had used the gotBSD website (http://gotbsd.net/) in the past as they have torrents/trackers for us. They are sometimes a little behind releases, but offer a wide range of coverage for different download sizes/architectures. DistroWatch also maintains torrents for the latest FreeBSD release for a while  (https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=bittorrent).


----------



## mikalux (Nov 20, 2020)

try this 


			https://linuxtracker.org/index.php?page=downloadcheck&id=29f24495fda146ddcaa9aa87edde72aa35d15591


----------

