Re: Bittorrent

[Scott Bennett <bennett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

     On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 08:40:23 +0000 sigi <tornode@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 09:21:30AM +0100, Marco Bonetti wrote:
>> On Mon, February 16, 2009 22:17, Ted Smith wrote:
>> > Yes, I believe the proper way to do so is to use Tor as the tracker
>> > proxy, but conduct actual data transfer "in the clear". Or at least,
>> > that's what I've seen on this list in the past. Would anyone like to
>> > correct me?
>> 
>> it's also possible to run an "all-torified" bittorrent swarm (both peers
>> and tracker) and more, see the instructions on the azureus site:
>> http://azureus.sourceforge.net/doc/AnonBT/Tor/howto_0.5.htm
> 
>You definitely shouldn't do that, since the tor-network is not capable 
>of such a huge traffic-amount through P2P with bittorrent these days. 
>
>By downloading with bittorrent via Tor, you take away the bandwidth 
>from the people who really need it for browsing the web safely.  
>
     Really?  I know that seems to be in accord with the received wisdom
on this list, but I, for one, no longer make that assumption.  For one thing,
my node spends most of the time handling somewhere between 15% and 50% of its
proven data rate capacity.  Occasionally it may sustain on the order of 70%
or 75% for up to a few minutes at a time.  Also, the torstatus page now
frequently shows many more nodes that have peaked at over 5,000 KB/s (14 the
last time I checked, which was a few hours ago), over 80 that have peaked
at over 1,000 KB/s, and over 120 that have peaked at over 512 KB/s.  Those
amounted to slightly over 10% of the total population of nodes on the torstatus
page at the time.  I'd happily wager that the majority of notes active at any
given time are underworked like mine typically is.  And the capacity of the
existing nodes seems to be increasing month by month, even if the total count
of active nodes seems now to hover mostly in a limited range of 900 - 1200
or so.
     I'm not encouraging people to make a habit of transferring lots of large
files through tor frequently yet, but if someone needs/wants to do so once in
a while, I think we can accommodate them.  Remember, too, that such transfers
provide quite a bit of cover traffic for those who need the cover.


                                  Scott Bennett, Comm. ASMELG, CFIAG
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