ask alan: bittorrent
I’m not sure exactly why Mr Reasonable thought I could give advice on this… but I’ll try. Especially as there’s some free caffeine involved.
Bittorrent is a way to efficiently distribute large files in a way that lessens the chance of choking the bandwidth on the file’s host. It does this by chunking the file up, and allowing people to download the chunks from each other. So if Martha and I are both trying to get hold of the latest out of copyright Kiddie Records file and I already have chunk 5 downloaded, and Martha needs it, then she downloads it off me rather than looking in a possibly overloaded central place for it. In this way, you end up with a “swarm” of downloaders all obtaining chunks of the file off each other at quite high speed.
As I understand it, this is very efficient, and also takes advantage of the fact that most people never use their 128kbps upload capability with their broadband connections. In most cases users should end up uploading to others almost as fast as they are downloading.
This is all much better explained here and more technically here.
Anyway, Mr Reasonable’s problem does sound like a firewall problem. He’ll need to dig around in his PC’s firewall and open ports 6881 through 6889 to incoming connections so that people on the network can request stuff back off him.
Also, I would recommend him trying Azureus instead, a Java based client that has quite a nice wizard-based setup that is aimed at beginners and experts. Works good for me.
So Mr Reasonable: see how you go with that. If it’s still not working right then you may have to do some configuration of your ADSL router. Hopefully not though: Azureus supports a protocol called UPnP which talks nicely to many newer ADSL routers. (I ended up having to upgrade the firmware of the router – not for the fainthearted – to get UPnP to work seamlessly. I’m sure there was an easier way, but I’m not savvy enough to know.)
All good fun though. Now, is this sufficient for coffee?
Mr Reasonable
3 November 2005, 07:37 #
Thank you indeed. I dug around inside the firewall and yup, the ports are now open and stuff appears to be torrenting….all I have to do now is get off this skinny Telecom plan and get me a juicy fat 20Gb allowance. Not that I’d be downloading anything and breaching any international copyright laws you understand…...
Mr Reasonable
3 November 2005, 07:39 #
Oh, and coffee will be delivered to your desk for 2ish today, shaken not stirred.
Martha
3 November 2005, 13:26 #
Brilliant. You should write a book on computer basics (aimed at myself and Mr Reasonable. Everyone else seems to understand).
Your Kiddies link has set me off on a crazy new goose chase. In the 50s or 60s my grandfather was a DJ, and recorded “Kenny and the Magic Musicbox” which National Radio replayed a few years ago. Now they have the snazzy new website, I thought I might be able to find it. It isn’t there, but I’ve emailed them.
In short, I have finally got around to doing something I’ve been meaning to do for ages.
ben.run
3 November 2005, 15:31 #
It is not required to have incomming links for Bittorrent, but it does increase the number of connections you are likely to get. Obviously two clients who can only make outgoing connections can never talk to each other. However you will find that you can get away withut allowing incomming in many situations. Of course if you have the ability to allow incomming then all the better.
David
12 July 2010, 18:05 #
Hi – I’ve been searching high and low for a copy of “Kenny and the Magic Musicbox” which I remember from New Zealand radio in the 1960s. Not sure if is Kenny or Kenney and Musicbox or Music Box. But it was a great story, always hooked me in so far each time I heard it that I forgot how it ended everytime and was always pleasantly relieved at the ending. Did Martha manage to track down a copy?