whats happening in the peersphere
I am talking here about the case where you start a download with no existing data, in other words, from scratch. Torrents are divided into units called pieces. The torrent meta data contains the SHA-1 checksums for each piece, so that we can hash each piece once we have downloaded it, for verification purposes. Pieces [...]
Downloads in BitTorrent take place according to a number of strategies, which map to stages. Initiating a torrent download has one strategy, normal operation has another strategy, and finally pulling down the last remaining pieces has yet another strategy.
The End Game is the name for the final download strategy - there is a tendency for [...]
One of the more interesting extensions to the BitTorrent protocol has been the introduction of a distributed hash table implementation. As mentioned in my previous article on the basics of the BitTorrent protocol, traditionally BitTorrent relies upon a centralized “tracker” application - which runs over standard HTTP - in order to facilitate contacting peers and [...]