Cinefi relation?

[transitive-bullshit]

Is anyone aware of how Cinefi was performing plugin-less torrent streaming before they shut down? It seems they may already have a proprietary version of webtorrent working, and their email is webtorrent@inboxalias.com.

[feross]

There is no relation between this project and Cinefi.

I have no idea how their product worked, though I suspect it was server-side torrenting streamed to the browser via xhr or a websocket.

[ivantodorovich]

Server side torrent-stream is expensive. Specially for something that is free.

[transitive-bullshit]

On a related note, would it be possible to have a lightweight server that just handled peer discovery via dht/tracker, communicating that to a heavier client via xhr or websocket, and then having the client manage the swarm and storage over WebRTC?

I know this doesn't get you 100% of the way there because it's not serverless, but if this sounds reasonable, then maybe it's what Cinefi was doing?

[feross]

Sounds feasible though I bet they just used server-side torrenting. Reports seem to indicate that it didn't work or was extremely slow for most people who tried it.

[feross]

And I don't expect we'll learn anything from them as they claim their torrent technology is "patent pending".