Questions about Torrent/Peer Discovery

[ArtskydJ]

I have a few questions on how peer discovery works in instant.io and webtorrent:

• If DHT working in webtorrent, why did you use a tracker server instead? (index.js, line 43.)
• If DHT is enabled on a torrent, can it be found by just its infoHash?
• Is it ok to use wss://tracker.webtorrent.io for applications using webtorrent?
  • If not, do you have any tips on creating a tracker server?

Thanks in advance!

[feross]

Is DHT working in webtorrent?

• If you use WebTorrent in in node.js (on command line, or as a module), the DHT will be used. In the browser, the DHT has not been implemented yet (see WebRTC DHT support webtorrent#2). For now, a tracker server must be used in the browser.

If DHT is enabled on a torrent, can it be found by just its infoHash?

• Yes, if even one torrent client that supports DHT is seeding a torrent, then you should be able to download the torrent with only an info-hash. You can find peers via the DHT, then get the torrent metadata (.torrent file) and the actual file from the peers.

Is it ok to use wss://tracker.webtorrent.io for applications using webtorrent?

• It's totally fine to use wss://tracker.webtorrent.io for webtorrent applications. In fact, the create-torrent module adds wss://tracker.webtorrent.io to all .torrent files it creates by default. I'm going to scale the tracker server as the need arises, but I obviously can't guarantee 100% uptime (although I will try).

Do you have any tips on creating a tracker server?

• If you want to run your own tracker server, it's available as webtorrent-tracker on npm. There are no docs, but it's quite easy to use. You can see how to use it here: https://github.com/feross/webtorrent-website/blob/master/server/tracker.js (this is the code that runs tracker.webtorrent.io).

[ArtskydJ]

😃👍 Thanks!