Riding the Torrent

If you know me then you know I'm not at all a fan of BitTorrent. It seems like it has a bit too much underworld taint on it for my liking. You also know that I am a proponent of property rights — whether it’s musicians, writers, or whoever else does not matter: If you created a work, it’s yours. You, and only you (and of course, your “successors, heirs, and assigns,” but I digress) are the only one who has the right to dictate upon what terms your work may be shared.

So I don’t like BitTorrent for two reasons:

One, it seems its largest use is stealing other people’s work (music, software) with the benign label of “sharing” used instead of “stealing,” which is what is actually occurring ... but on the other hand, if I am to hold that position, I may need to check myself for consistency. Fail. BitTorrent is a tool. It can be used to distribute legitimate things to legitimate recipients, and it can be used for theft.

Two, while it is a good idea in theory, it does somewhat break down because the designers failed — in their existence in la-la-land of theory — to take into consideration the fact that upstream traffic on your broadband line, and especially unattended traffic, was not contemplated by Internet providers in setting their pricing for mass adoption. Couple this with the fact that a significant number of goobers are out there running this application without understanding its impact on the network, and hopefully you understand my beef... which is enhanced by the fact that running peer-to-peer software on a limited-topology network (such as 802.11-based wireless Internet access) can, at best, slow down the performance of your line, and, at worst, slow down the entire network for everyone. Some wireless-based ISPs simply and clearly forbid peer-to-peer.

But, I must transition now to Free and Open Source Software (“FOSS”). Yes, it does not cost money, but the word “free” means much more in this context. The software is freely-obtainable, freely modifiable, and freely redistributable. It’s all legit. Created by a combination of individuals who want better software than what is commercially available, and corporations who underwrite development with their own interests foremost (to which I have no objection at all — that is the only reason corporations exist: to serve their own good) but with a side-benefit to the rest of us.

I owe a debt to the FOSS community for making my life easier... and it is a debt that I have not successfully paid back with my occasional meager contributions. I came up with a way to do something that is helpful, and stroke my own ego at the same time.

One of the frustrations of the Internet is the time it takes to download things. Years ago, when a new piece of software was released, the wait for a download was almost unbearable. The main site was pretty much inaccessible, and the mirror sites were crowded, and no matter how fast your connection was (at the time, I had 2 T-1’s at my disposal — smokin’ fast for 1999) you were beholden to the load imposed on the connection at the other end.

So, what can I do, here... in the old days, a person with some available bandwidth could actually host a mirror site to contribute to the effort. Now, it’s actually much simpler. The answer lies in the evil BitTorrent.

A couple of packages I am extremely fond of are CentOS and Knoppix. I have approximately 200 Mbps of Internet access at my disposal — it’s idle “upstream” capacity that exists as a simple side-effect of the natural imbalance of download-to-upload on consumer broadband connections (a natural imbalance that BitTorrent capitalizes on, by the way).

So I’ve set up 3 instances of BitTorrent with upload restricted only by the 100 Mbps Ethernet cable, the router, and the CPU of the host machine.

Now, for ego-stroking purposes, here are live stats of just how much I’ve “given back.” Unfortunately, I had already done almost 300 Gigabytes before I thought to really track it, so those are not included. More later. Right now, it’s bedtime.







— 2009-05-18 07:00 ETA: Okay, fine... I’ve never been a fan of Debian, or by extension, Ubuntu — I don’t find it intuitive like I do Red Hat/CentOS... but on the other hand, they are bringing Linux to the masses, so I might as well help... so here we go, I’ve added Ubuntu Desktop to my magic server...

— 2009-05-19 07:00 ETA: I’ve added a spiffy little stats box at the top so show how busy my little “server” is. Clearly, it’s quite busy. I am going to up-prioritize Ubuntu for a bit to see if it’s just not needing much bandwidth, or whether it’s being choked by the other manifestations of my ample generosity... for now, it seems like demand may not be that high.

—2009-05-20 20:00 ETA: I suspended the CentOS DVD Torrent today and moved it to another, more cojone-fied machine... sorry, no stats, but I’ll report back here with more.

Also, check this out: