opentracker

For the open source versions of BeOS' desktop management tools, see OpenTracker.
opentracker
Developer(s) Dirk Engling (“erdgeist”)
Written in C
Operating system Unix-like (Linux, BSD, ...)
Size ~40 KiB
Type BitTorrent tracker
License Beerware
Website erdgeist.org/arts/software/opentracker/

opentracker is a free (licensed as beerware) BitTorrent peer tracker software (a special kind of HTTP or UDP server software) that is designed to be fast and to have a low consumption of system resources.

Features

OpenTracker runs several times faster than older tracker implementations and requires less memory . (For example, it runs fine with the limited resources of many embedded systems.) Several instances of the software may be run in a cluster, with all of them synchronizing with each other. Besides the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) opentracker may also be connected to via User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which creates less than half of the tracker traffic HTTP creates.[1] It supports IPv6, gzip compression of full scrapes, and blacklists of torrents. Because there have already been cases of people being accused of copyright violation by the fact that their IP address was listed on a BitTorrent tracker,[2] opentracker may mix in random IP address numbers for the purpose of plausible deniability.

Technology

It runs completely in RAM, accounting for much of its speed advantage over other tracker software. It is written in C and based on the library libowfat that manages network connections. For some new functionality like the UDP support with IPv6[3] or the syncing of several instances of BitTorrent tracker software, new extensions to the BitTorrent protocol were made.

Usage

The world's largest tracker at The Pirate Bay switched from their selfmade software Hypercube to opentracker in the end of 2007.[4]

The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation uses it[5] to distribute their own TV shows.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "UDP tracker protocol". XBT Tracker. 2006-03-19.
  2. ↑ Ben Maurer (2007-02-07). "Big Media DMCA Notices: Guilty until proven innocent".
  3. ↑ Dirk Engling (“erdgeist”) (2007-12-28). "The IPv6 situation".
  4. ↑ Ernesto Van Der Sar (2007-12-08). "The Pirate Bay Now Running on Opentracker". TorrentFreak.
  5. ↑ Eirik Solheim (2009-03-08). "Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation sets up its own bittorrent tracker".
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