Mass seeding with BitTorrent: another solution.


We’ve now more than 400 torrents to seed on jamendo. That’s about 100Go. We currently use btlaunchmany.py but I don’t think that’s sustainable. So before it’s too late, I think I have to reconsider a new solution to this problem.

As we also operate the tracker, I think there’s really some cooperation needed between both sides, the tracker and our permaseeds. Here are a few of my ideas:

  • We don’t need to seed files that are already seeded by many users. Let’s find a lower limit, like 5 seeds.
  • But we have to make sure they really seed! So we need to make some control on the uploaded/downloaded statistics of the client. Are they reliable?
  • Maybe some clients will send the IPs of our servers to the other bittorrent clients, or even use Azureus’ DHT. So we have to really stop seeding these files.
  • As the seeds are permanent, it should be easy to store their IPs in the tracker, and turn off announce on the seeds.
  • Use that ultraseeding feature?
  • Would it help to turn off the seeds when there’s no client downloading?

Just some thoughts… TBC