Let's talk about Trackers
#1
Has anyone ever connected to tracker.ccc.de? This is in every torrent file on piratebay. I have seen this tracker more times than I care to mention, but never connected. It always times out.

Istole.it will occasionally time out, or so I've been told (wink wink), but nothing like ccc.de.

Other trackers load virtually instantaneously.

Just curious if others have noticed this.
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#2
No idea. I haven't paid the trackers any mind, as they are not really important.
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#3
I think ccc.de has been defunct for quite a while (like, a year or so) and I wouldn't be surprised about istole.it being out of action either but I also don't pay attention.

In fact I actually block all trackers in my torrent client (Tixati) and only ever use DHT.
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#4
(Jan 25, 2014, 22:12 pm)notuboo Wrote: Istole.it will occasionally time out, or so I've been told (wink wink)

I don't get it?
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#5
TPB has made trackers & torrent files redundant.
Instead, they advocate DHT and magnet links! Idea
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#6
Newbie question: What exactly are trackers, and what are they for?

Their name makes them sound like something I don't want, so I've removed them from every torrent so far.

Thanks
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#7
They are something you used to not only want, but need.

But they're pretty much obsolete now (which is why you've been able to block them without any problems). They're still harmless, just no longer necessary.

Basically, back in the day, you downloaded a .torrent file from a website then loaded it into your torrent client. The .torrent file contained two things--a set of "fingerprints" of a set of files, and the address of a "tracker". Your torrent client then reached out to the tracker and said "Here is my IP address. Please send me the IP addresses of everyone who is sharing file 'x'. The tracker would then send you the list of IP addresses, and add you to the list of "people sharing file 'x'" that it would send to the next person who asked. Your client would then contact the addresses on the list and ask for pieces of the file from them. Once it received the pieces it would compare them to the fingerprints stored in the .torrent file to confirm that they were what was expected.

Later, someone came up with the idea of DHT. It's a clever idea which is hard to explain in simple terms but, basically, it does away with the need for a central tracker by sharing the job of tracking out between all the peers downloading.

Later still, someone came up with the idea of magnet links. It's also a clever idea, a bit easier to explain this time. Instead of relying on your web browser to download the .torrent file, from a central website, and then passing it to your torrent client. It simply passes to your torrent client the information it needs to go out to either a tracker or DHT to find the IP addresses of the people sharing file "x" and your client then first downloads the .torrent file from those people and then downloads the files described within the torrent file.
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#8
(Jan 30, 2014, 09:51 am)gnv64 Wrote: TPB has made trackers & torrent files redundant.
Instead, they advocate DHT and magnet links! Idea

Technically, it hasn't made torrent files redundant, it has made the centralised storage of torrent files redundant.

The .torrent files still exist, it's simply that instead of being downloaded from TPB by your web browser, they're downloaded from peers by your torrent client.

[If you look in your torrent clients temporary storage location you will find all the .torrent files you've clicked on magnet links to obtain. Your client has saved them there automatically without bothering you with the details.]
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#9
(Feb 25, 2014, 17:36 pm)NIK Wrote: They are something you used to not only want, but need.
...

Thanks for the quick and useful reply.
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#10
This may not be in scope of your thread, but I see DHT peers and some tracker peers but I never see the peers in utorrent connecting and downloading. I see little DL activity in the utorrent browser. But I see a large number of Peers constant. Are these valid Peers and is something configured incorrectly to use DHT? Thx in advance. Hope you don't mind the question.
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