Our team want’s to host our animation on the web, but our service provider dosn’t have enough space for us to upload onto the server. So, I got the idea to host our animation, and other large files, using BitTorrent.
Yesterday, I looked up on SourceForge any web-based trackers, but the software I found was to hard to setup on my local PC, so I have no idea how hard it would be to install on a webserver.
I was wondering if any FIRST teams use BitTorrent for their downloads, and if anyone can help me setup a tracker on our server.
We have a windows server with PHP, ASP, ASP.Net, etc. We can have unlimited Access databases, and one MSSQL db. I do have an offsite MySQL database, but I can’t use phpMySQL on it.
i use bit-torrent for downloading live music shows. i would suggest using a public tracker. there are many out there without having to install the software on your own server.
but here is the best FAQ i can find about installing it on your server http://www.dessent.net/btfaq/#tracker
i did some checking and the client ABC available here http://easynews.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/pingpong-abc/ABC-win32-v2.6.5.exe
has a nice feture to create torrents and it lets you use a tracker from any previous torrent so all you would have to do is download and install this client make a torrent out of your animation and use a tracker from any public torrent online. beware because alot of the trackers deal with illegal files and inaproprate material so besure to check before you use a random one.
Not exactly what you are looking for: But couldn’t you just turn your animatino into a 10 MB WMV file? If your host doesn’t have room for that, I am sure another team with more room could host it for you (if you asked really nicely)!
Ok, I have setup a tracker on one of my home PCs.
I think I have this setup correctly.
I have attached the torrent file. If someone can test this for me, I would be most pleased. (It’s working over my lan.)
Just remove the “.txt” from the end of the file, and load it in your favorite BitTorrent client.
R1467_AVA2004.MOV.web.torrent.txt (13.4 KB)
R1467_AVA2004.MOV.web.torrent.txt (13.4 KB)
are you seeding it? cause it is not connecting to peers
Yes, I am. Oh, make shure you can connect to computers with the same IP.
EDIT
Ok, this dosn’t seem to be working anymore.
I have attached the information the tracker is outputting.
I am confused. It says there’s one leech and two seeds. I am seeding it twice, but I am not leeching. Both of the clients say that they have no connections. 
The thing with bittorrent is that it requires somebody, somewhere to have the file and to be running the client for other people to download it. With things like Red Hat ISOs and other popular items, this isn’t a problem, since there’s almost always a few hundred people downloading it from somewhere. With a FIRST animation, the likelihood of 2 people downloading it at the same time is relatively low, so the chances are that your seed will end up doing most of the uploading, thus using just as much bandwidth as if you simply hosted the file directly.
Now, if you could convice everyone on your team to seed it from the home computers 24/7, you could be on to something…
-Rob
What would be really neat would be to have someone compile a DVD of all the animations at the end of the season and make a torrent out of it. That would be awesome.
Does FIRST not do that anymore?
just for competitions, not public.
Then why doesn’t someone just torrent the DVD? (or is there more to this that I am not getting?)
Huh. I never even knew there was a DVD of the animations. I know there have ben VHS ones in the past, I thought… but freely distributing a DVD image over the internet would be awesome. Or competition footage… That would be a good way to spread the word.
I just saw it @ regionals, played on the big screen. For all I know, it was shipped with the field. **
i have a copy of the dvd from 2002 and it is a professionally done disk…i would assume that there is one that exists for this year.
Last year, they (autodesk I believe) mailed the DVD to the main contact. So, I would think that this will happen again this year. It was right about this time also!
Still, we would need a tracker to torrent the dvd.
Does anyone know of a free tracker without bad content for us to post stuff onto, or can sombody with more experience setup one on their server? I just can’t figure it out.
I do like the idea of torrenting the animations dvd.
I can probably get one set up. I doubt it’ll be very fancy or anything like that, but it should work. I’ll see if I can’t get it up and running by the end of the day.
Boy am I quick!
gefingerpoken.jpg.torrent
It appears to be working… but I can’t really test it outside of my LAN. If anyone has problems with it, let me know. If you want to put something on that tracker, it’s located at: http://www.mehh.net:6969/announce Personally, I used Azureus to create that torrent, but anything should work provided you use that tracker. It’s just the basic tracker that comes with Bittorrent so there’s no super-special functionality to it. If it appears that it’s being used for something illegal, (ie: absurd amounts of hits, weird foreign addresses, or I find it as the tracker in a torrent site), it’s going down until I feel like finding/writing password protection and all that fun stuff.
[edit] It appears my server doesn’t like file.jpg.ext … it thought it was a jpeg. pseudo-fixed.
[edit2] Oh. The tracker tries to send out my local IP if I try and seed something from within the LAN. All seeding will have to be done externally. If someone wants to test the tracker, please, be my guest 
Thank you!!! 
I have our team’s animation seeding now.
http://www.davidrinaldi.com/hsro/anim-mov.torrent.txt
Go ahead and try it! Just remove the “.txt” from the file once you have downloaded it.
