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Hurricane Electric Offers Bit Torrent Service

Posted by samzenpus on Mon Jan 24, 2005 09:00 PM
from the send-me-your-biggest-file dept.
The Internet News
heypete writes "Hurricane Electric is now offering BitTorrent tracker/seeder services on behalf of paying customers. One need only upload the file desired to a specified directory by FTP, and their system will automatically generate a torrent file, add it to a tracker for that customer, and act as a "seed" to ensure that the file is available to downloaders. This could prove to be extremely useful for distributors of large files (such as Linux distributions), as bandwidth for the tracker and seeding services does not count against the bandwidth quota for the account."
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  • What are they going to do (Score:5, Interesting)

    by odano (735445) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:02PM (#11463795)
    When somebody uploads illegal content?
    • Cancel thier account and charge a disconnect fee I suspect.

    • Re:What are they going to do (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chris_mahan (256577) <chris.mahan@gmail.com> on Monday January 24 2005, @09:04PM (#11463811) Homepage
      Paying customers. So, name, address, phone number, credit card info. They would be stupid to upload illegal stuff.
      • Not stupid, naive. It almost seems too much like a trap. Of course this is great for those trying to distribute huge things quickly, maybe lessening the load of a slashdotting, but past that..

        • Re:What are they going to do (Score:4, Insightful)

          by strider44 (650833) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:20PM (#11463930)
          why would it be a trap? You do know that there are files other than warez and tv shows that you want to distribute using bit torrent don't you?
          • sure, but most of anything we have to share these days is so laden in copyright, that it would be virtually impossible to be sure if you could *legally* distribute it. Things like pictures you've taken yourself (in RAW format, and a WHOLE lot of them..), or linux distros, or.. welp, im out of ideas.
                • no it wasn't designed for large files. It was designed purely to reduce server load, be it a large quantity of small files or a quantity of large files. In my example using the traditional server output, the Firefox servers crashed, and the only way to get it for a few hours was through bit torrent, so obviously servers can crash from only serving small files.

                  Bit torrent was designed only to reduce server load, nothing else.
                  • it was for *large amounts of data*

                    large being bigger than the .torrents themselfs, of course.

                    several mb is big anyways, but with ff the torrent acted likely as a secondary server of sorts.. that only very few of the total people hammering the firefox's site would actually use.

                    anyways.. service like this could be great for sharing *anything* between a group of(trusted) friends(just pgp whatever you're wishing to share..).
    • One trick is to tell them stories that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time...
      - Abe Simpson

    • Re:What are they going to do (Score:5, Interesting)

      by 1u3hr (530656) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:58PM (#11464141)
      Same as they do when anyone puts up illegal content on a website.

      The interesting point is that this could create a shining example of "good" P2P, for when they try to legislate all P2P out of existence as inherently evil.

    • Why are there so many mis-informed people on the internet that think P2P == a breeding ground for copyright infringement or illegal files? Bittorrent survives (currently) on a CENTRAL located server to act as a tracker. These people are just adding a central located seed to the mix to guarantee file availability (most tracker sites only keep a tracker and no seed).

      What are they going to do with someone uploads illegal files? By golly, they will do the same thing as if someone uploaded an illegal file to t

  • Legit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by StevenHenderson (806391) <stevehenderson@@@gmail...com> on Monday January 24 2005, @09:04PM (#11463810)
    This could prove to be extremely useful for distributors of large files (such as Linux distributions), as bandwidth for the tracker and seeding services does not count against the bandwidth quota for the account.

    You've got to love that everytime a new p2p program/service comes out, it is always explained as having legitimate uses.

    Everyone know that, sure, BT is great to share Linux distros, but in actuality, it will be used to share mp3s, divx rips, and pr0n.

    • Re:Legit (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ciroknight (601098) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:06PM (#11463831)
      It would be a great way to distribute any commonly accessed data if set up properly, and with an ISP/Hosting provider with an assload of bandwitdh, BT could be set up as a kind of web-mirroring system, like Coral, only with BT as a back end.

      Such a system would be fast, and a huge advantage to consumers. Maybe google should check on it ;)
    • The majority of its uses may be illegitimate, but I doubt such users would take advantage of such an aboveground service as this.
    • While some may say that not all the things I download with BT are on the good side of legal... it has been very useful to download legit stuff. I've downloaded several Linux distros much faster than I would have been able to do from a regular server, also has been good for downloading other free programs and small time videos that want to be distributed to as many people as possible.

      And if you're gunna use a service for non-legit stuff, why wouldn't you use exeem lite or something where you don't give a c
    • You argument may be valid for Kazaa and friends, but BitTorrent is used legally quite often. It provides a unique feature - bandwidth sharing - while classic P2P mostly helps you hide from accountability because your machine is only visible by a few peers.

      In addition, BT is inconvinient for illegal use, because URL of the tracker is exposed and you know exactly who shared the file and how to take it down.

    • Re:Legit (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Ajmuller (88594) *
      pornography isn't illegal.
      So why did you lump it in with those other illegal things?
      Do i sense some serious sexual repression on your part, yes I do.
    • I'm curious what you really mean by "in actuality"--isn't BitTorrent actually used to distribute copies of all sorts of data, illicitly and legally? Or are you focusing on the kind of data (MP3s, DiVX movie files, and pornographic movies in a encoded with a variety of codecs) and trying to get us to read something into that? Maybe I have a license to share that MP3 file (like the Creative Commons-licensed song files first distributed in Wired magazine late last year); maybe that DiVX file is a home movie
    • How about this, from kernel.org as I type this: Current bandwidth utilization 146.96 Mbit/s

      There are tons of legitimate sites with that level of traffic. The ibiblio archives come to mind, along with much stuff from archive.org. Don't pretend that there's not overwhelming legitimate usages for BT. That may be true for Napster, but I think you have a hard case to prove, if you're looking at BT.
      • Except for the fact that most of the MP3's traded via bittorrent are fulls cd's or full Artist Discographies I'd agree. As it now stands though a person could go out and in a couple of hours have the complete discography of a large number of artists.

        As far as pirate mp3's, for this reason alone, Bittorrent is far faster and offers better results if what is being searched for can be found.

  • What should I do? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by krazykong (568196) <spam@krazykong.com> on Monday January 24 2005, @09:05PM (#11463821) Homepage
    I use Hurricane Electric as my web host. What kind of torrent do you think I should host? Maybe a linux distro, or some other open source project? I want to use my new torrent privleges to bennifit mankind somehow, any suggestions?

  • COOL (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cyberfunk2 (656339)
    Now that is REALLY cool. That's the sort of services I wish MY provider (Comcast) would provide.

    Nobody really uses these internet portal sites with all that streaming video (read: comcast ads) stuff they show on TV.

    This is the kind of helpful feature people want ! Give us blogs, bittorrent trackers, etc !
  • Second time HE has come up on Slashdot today [slashdot.org]. Scary.

  • I know someone who could use it right now... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TexVex (669445) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:09PM (#11463854)
    Mandrakelinux [mandrake.org]. I paid for and got access to their premium content, and just got through downloading nearly 12 GB of Linux distributions and premium software from them through BitTorrent. Unfortunately, it took about five days (and I have broadband). I expect a huge chunk of my downloads came directly from their seed(s) and there weren't enough, considering my download:upload ratio for the entire transfer was about 3:1.

    Maybe if they had more seeds, scattered around the globe, it would have worked better. As it is, I feel cheated; if I'm going to subscribe to their service for a monthly fee, it would be nice if they would use some of that fee to give me some good bandwidth to download their product. Hell, I'd seed (limited to 1/2 my upstream bandwidth) for them if they gave me a discount or a free upgrade in subscription level.
    • Why would you download 12GB of Linux distro? I can't believe you're going to use it all. I have stacks of Mandrake CDRs going back over the years, all of them used just once (initial install), and none of them used 100% (packages I don't need, multiple packages that do the same thing, etc).

      Nearly 4.5 years ago I downloaded the boot floppies for Debian Sarge 2.2. The only Linux distro image I've downloaded since is the Debian Woody 3.0 net install CD (two versions: 10MB and 180MB) and Knoppix (I wanted t
      • I said "distros", plural. I got the x86 ver 10.1 DVD image, the x64 ver 10.1, and the "Power Pack" 10.1 which includes some premium software and nice little extras like the nVidia drivers. Sure, I'm not going to use it all. But I am going to run both installs -- one of them on three different machines -- and use things out of the power pack on multple machines as well. It's nice to be able to just burn three DVDs and have it all conveniently there.
    • is caused by not having ports 6969 and 6881-6999 forwarded by your router, and open on your firewall.

      If you don't have those ports open/forwarded, you're going to see really slow downloads. As long as you have those open, it will take no time to download. I am still a silver club member at mandrake, and I consistently get 400k/s downloads on the torrent downloads. The downloads of the 4 gig PowerPack dvd takes no time at all.

      I also seed as much as I download on those torrents. Many others do as well. U

  • One of the things that I've been wondering about for a while would be the effectiveness of something like this on the other end. That is, what if my ISP provided a BT proxy that, in the case of multiple clients getting the same file off BT, would only require it to be DLed once to the local network. I guess it'd do something like what, from my understanding, Akamai servers do.

  • Now only if they'll kick off their spammers... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by strredwolf (532) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:11PM (#11463872) Homepage Journal
    Looks like not only do they have multiple Spamhaus SBL listings [spamhaus.org] including a few repeat offenders, they're under a SPEWS Level 2 (monitor, don't block) [spews.org] advisory.

    • Re:Now only if they'll kick off their spammers... (Score:5, Informative)

      by fm6 (162816) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:29PM (#11463995) Homepage Journal
      I worked at HE for about 7 months. We didn't exactly part on friendly terms, but I have to say that their reputation as a Spam hoster is quite undeserved. I worked in tech support, and a big part of my job was making sure that complaints about spammers got dealt with. Management had its flaws, but they did take the spam problem very seriously.

      Their big problem is they don't do a very good job of communicating their policies to other network companies and to spam blacklist maintainers. The communication effort is badly coordinated, and there's a certain short-sighted self-righteousness by key people, who hate the thought of sucking up to blacklist maintainers.

      The sad thing is that sanctions against HE mostly hurt their email customers. It doesn't hurt HE, which seems to have all the business it can handle. And it certainly doesn't hurt the spammers, against whom HE is already doing all they can -- and who just move on to another provider when they do get busted.

    • couldnt agree more. Spammer Electric got firewalled on my mail server for massive non stop pink bullshit.
  • I've tried several mac clients and have found that Azureus by far works the best of the ones I've tried including the BitTorrent one. This seems mainly due to Azureus allowing me to set an upload limit - without that my home 802.11b network seems to get completely saturated with upload, leaving no room for download.

    Even after playing around with the specific limit set, the best download speeds I see perhaps rival the best regular download speeds I've seen from a direct ftp or http server. More typically I

    • Re:I confess - I don't really get torrents (Score:4, Informative)

      by Capt'n Hector (650760) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:51PM (#11464115)
      First, and I'm not sure about this, but I think Azureus trys to keep your ratio sane. That way, if you limit your UL to 1 kB/s, you can't download at 300 kB/s. After all, that's not very fair. Second, we're talking in kiloBYTES. I don't know of any dileup modem that can get 40 kB/s. Lastly, Unless you have a wicked net connection, I also don't think your wireless network is the bottleneck. You probably have an asynchronous connection, which means your ISP is giving you a shitty UP and fast DOWN. This configuration isn't optimal for BitTorrent, but it still should work. Your network should only slow down if its saturated, and even if you have "pathetic speeds", you may have already reached that point. I can only get about 25 kB/s of upload out of my pipe, and beyond that things start choking. Down AND up. This is on Comcast Cable, fyi.

  • Doesn't seem to be any access control (Score:3, Interesting)

    by antifoidulus (807088) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:34PM (#11464026) Homepage Journal
    I would like to use these things for uploading digital pictures I take(what can I say, I'm a resolution whore), but I would rather the whole world not see my friend wearing a wedding dress with a giant Bart Simpson mask on.
    It would be neat if you could put a user name/password on the torrents. Not incredibly secure, but still better than nothing.

    • Re:Doesn't seem to be any access control (Score:4, Informative)

      by Night Goat (18437) on Monday January 24 2005, @10:25PM (#11464368) Homepage Journal
      I would like to use these things for uploading digital pictures I take(what can I say, I'm a resolution whore), but I would rather the whole world not see my friend wearing a wedding dress with a giant Bart Simpson mask on.
      It would be neat if you could put a user name/password on the torrents. Not incredibly secure, but still better than nothing.

      Torrents work best if a lot of people are downloading/uploading. If you've got a picture that is only meant for a few people, it would make more sense to just upload the picture to the server rather than use Bit Torrent. That's probably why there isn't any access control. It wouldn't be any use to limit people when you want as many seeders as you can get.

  • HE has been good to me (Score:4, Informative)

    by Infonaut (96956) <infonaut@gmail.com> on Monday January 24 2005, @09:46PM (#11464086) Homepage Journal
    I've tried several hosts over the last few years, and have stuck with HE. Their help desk is on the ball, responds quickly, and knows their stuff. Their pricing is excellent, and they pretty much let you do what you want to on shared accounts. No wizards or extraneous b.s.. If you know what you're doing, HE doesn't get in your way.

    We've got something like ten accounts with them, and have never had any down time or other problems.

    No, I don't work for HE or have any affiliation with them. I am glad to spread the word about them because I've had several other accounts with hosting outfits that just didn't grok good service the way HE does.

    • Except for the fact that Hollywood donates twice as much to democrats [opensecrets.org], you pegged that one pretty well.

      There are asswipes from both sides of the aisle, at least those of us on the right recognize that fact.
      • That could be because they need to pay twice as much to keep them in check. (That was a joke, I'm an Australian, I have no idea.)

        I think he might have just been saying republicans because republicans are in power (and/or) republicans have a history of complaining about this sort of thing, not directly because of his political beliefs. I may be wrong though.
    • "then the Republicans will start shouting again about how P2P is inheiriently evil, and that will be the end of that."

      Except the fact that the US is not the legal authority over Earth. They may whine, they may try to make it illegal in some way, and they may even succeed but it will never be the end so long as its legal elsewhere.
    • Just like people who buy commercial webhosting accidentally upload warez to their websites to distribute using p2p?
      • Of course, they could already be breaking the EULA; by having them set up a tracker, they can run a service to automatically check incoming data with WHOMEVER they want. Of course, all of this will be hidden in the EULA or somewhere where a user wouldn't expect it.

        Besides that, I agree with you. If they're going to use a tracker to distribute illegal data, they're going to use the webspace as well, the tracker just would *legally* let them search your webdirs.

    • No... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TheSHAD0W (258774) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:10PM (#11463862) Homepage
      BitTorrent does very well for legitimate content, and so long as they kick out clients who set up torrents for illegal content, there won't be any cause for lawsuits.

    • Re:Heh (Score:4, Informative)

      by digitalgimpus (468277) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:27PM (#11463976) Homepage
      Nobody ever argued the legality of the bittorrent protocol.

      It's used by quite a few software companies. Games for example, since they are large in size.

      A knife is a perfectly legal tool. It can cut us free when we are trouble, cut our food, or in the hands of a surgon can save lives.... it's when that knife is in the hands of a serial killer that it becomes illegal.

      No knives have ever been accused of murder. Only the person who intentionally uses it for the act.

      Same with bittorent. It never did anything wrong. It's users were the ones breaking copyright laws.

      Same for HTTP. Some use it for kiddy porn. But that doesn't mean Yahoo is illegal, or illegitimate.
    • Aha, you are so funny..not? Maybe, any content that is in the public domain, that is fair use, that you own the copyright for or that you have a license for distributing from the copyright holder.

    • Re:one solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chill (34294) on Monday January 24 2005, @09:41PM (#11464061) Homepage Journal
      a) encrypt/password-protect it, then
      b) upload it

      If you limit sharing to your friends, you're completely safe.

      You better have a lot of "friends". The whole idea behind Bittorrent was the more people using it, the faster it is.

      If you're just going to share encrypted warez with a dozen people, there isn't any benefit to doing it via BT than via FTP.

      -Charles

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