On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 8:17 AM, Stephen Carpenter
<thecarp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Well how exactly would you accomplish that? You could put the tracker
on a location hidden service, that eliminates one exit node, however,
to connect with other hosts in the swarm, you need to be able to
connect to them... which means now, you have to have every bittorrent
client in the swarm ALSO running a location hidden service, lest you
need exit nodes to contact them.
Correct. All users and trackers would have to have a .onion address.
I highly doubt any bittorrent client yet supports operating in this
manner.
I have both a torrent tracker and client setup to do this. I wrote a UPNP client to help setup end-user's as routers for the network too. I even bought a domain name just for this. It's been tested and works quite well.
So why haven't I released this? Well, I was asked nicely by one of the Tor author's NOT to do this due to fears that the Tor network would not be able to handle the amount of traffic torrent users would bring. Out of respect, I did what was asked of me and did not release these to the public.
This is a hot topic, with good arguments on both sides. However, I feel that until someone launches such a service, we will not know which way it would go. Perhaps we need to branch off a new Tor network that is used more exclusively for hidden services, in hopes of encouraging people to run a router (non-exits only) without the risk of getting harassed because of "abuse" complaints.