GUIDED BY: PREPARED BY:

MR.BHAVESH PARMAR AJAY K. SURTI

MR. BHAVIN SOPARIWALA

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SARVAJANIK COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
Dr. R.K.DESAI ROAD, ATHWALINES,
SURAT-395001

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING

CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Mr. Surti Ajay K. student of B.E.IV (CO), Semester VII,
Rollno.58 has successfully conducted his/her seminar on BITTORRENT in
accordance with technical and theoretical specifications under the guidance of
Bhavesh Parmar for the year 2006-2007.

Signature of Signature of Signature of

Guide Co-Guide DIC
(Computer Engg.
Deptt.)

______________ ______________ _____________

Signature of Jury members:

____________ ____________ _____________ _______________

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 Acknowledgement.

Endurance, Hard Work , Gradual Progress and Final-Year. That’s how I

reached this level and now as I stand at threshold of aside world. I have taken a look over
three years I have spent in this college. My performance with their great devotion has
module me into confident aspiring engineer all through three years. The Final year is the
vital of more to the seminar work.

I am immensely grateful to Mr. Bhavesh Parmar for his help in this seminar.
His numerous thorough reviews of the entire manuscript and his gentle prodding for
better prose hopefully show in the final result.

I will be always thankful to Mr. Bhavesh Parmar for that he has done for me.

Ajay K Surti

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 Abstract.

BitTorrent is the name of a client application for the torrent peer-to-peer file distribution
Protocol, created by programmer Bram Cohen Bit Torrent is designed to widely
distribute large amounts of data without incurring the corresponding consumption in
server and bandwidth resources.
The name "Bit Torrent" refers to the distribution protocol, the original client application,
and the .torrent file type.
The original Bit Torrent application is written in Python and its source code has been
released under the Bit Torrent Open Source License , as of version 4.0.
The bit torrent protocol breaks the file(s) down into smaller fragments, typically a quarter
of a megabyte (256 KB) in size. Peers download missing fragments from each other and
upload those that they already have to peers that request them.
A growing number of individuals and organizations are using BitTorrent to distribute
their own material. Many adopters report that only by using BitTorrent technology, with
its dramatically reduced demands on networking hardware and bandwidth, could they
afford to distribute their files..BitTorrent clients are programs which implement the
BitTorrent protocol. Each BitTorrent client is capable of preparing, requesting, and
transmitting any type of computer file over a network using the BitTorrent protocol. This
includes text, audio, video, encrypted content, and all other types of digital information.

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 Index.

Topics Page no.

1. Introduction. 4
2. How does BitTorrent work. 8
3. Sharing files with BitTorrent. 10
4. BitTorrent terminology. 12
5. Compare with other file-sharing systems. 15
6. BitTorrent legal isues. 17
7. BitTorrent –etiquette. 19
8. New developments. 21
9. Limitation 24
10. related application. 25
11. Conclusion. 27
12. Reference. 28
.

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1: INTRODUCTION:

BitTorrent is the name of a peer-to-peer(P2P)file distribution protocol.The protocol was

originally designed and created by programmer BramCohen and is now maintained by
BitTorrent Inc. BitTorrent is designed to distribute large amounts of data widely without
incurring the corresponding consumption in costly server and bandwidth resources.
CacheLogic suggests that BitTorrent traffic accounts for ~35% of all traffic on the
Internet.

The original BitTorrent client was written in Python. Its source code, as of version 4.0,
has been released under the BitTorrent Open Source License, which is a modified version
of the Jabber Open Source License. There are numerous compatible clients, written in a
variety of programming languages, and running on a variety of computing platforms.

BitTorrent clients are programs which implement the BitTorrent protocol. Each
BitTorrent client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of
computer file over a network using the BitTorrent protocol. This includes text, audio,
video, encrypted content, and all other types of digital information

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Creating and publishing torrents

To share a file or group of files through BitTorrent, clients first create a “torrent”. This is
a small file which contains meta information about the files to be shared, and about the
host computer that coordinates the file distribution.

The exact information contained in the tracker file depends on the version of the
BitTorrent protocol. However, a torrent file always has the extension .torrent.
Torrent files contain an “announce” section, which specifies the URL of the tracker, and
an “info” section which contains names for the files, their lengths, the piece length used,
and a SHA-1 hash code for each piece, which clients should use to verify the integrity of
the data they receive. Clients who have finished downloading the file may also choose to
act as seeders, providing a complete copy of the file. After the torrent file is created, a
link to it is placed on a website or elsewhere, and it is registered with a tracker.
BitTorrent trackers maintain lists of the clients currently participating in the torrent.The
computer with the initial copy of the file is referred to as the initial seeder

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2:How does BitTorrent work:
SHAPE \* MERGEFORMAT

The bit torrent protocol breaks the file(s) down into smaller fragments, typically a quarter
of a megabyte (256 KB) in size. Peers download missing fragments from each other and
upload those that they already have to peers that request them. The protocol is 'smart'
enough to choose the peer with the best network connections for the fragments that it'
requesting. To increase the overall efficiency of the swarm (the ad-hoc P2P network
temporarily created to distribute a particular file), the bit torrent clients request from their
peers the fragments that are most rare; in other words, the fragments that are available on

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the least number of peers, making most fragments available widely across many
machines and avoiding bottlenecks.

The file fragments are not usually downloaded in sequential order and need to be
reassembled by the receiving machine. It is important to note that clients start uploading
fragments to their peers before the entire file is downloaded.
Sharing by each peer therefore begins when the first complete segment is downloaded
and can begin to be uploaded if another peer requests it. This scheme is particularly
useful for trading large files such as videos and operating systems. This is contrasted with
conventional file serving where high demand can lead to saturation of the host's resources
as the consumption of bandwidth to transfer the file to many requesting downloader
surges.

With Bit Torrent, high demand can actually increase throughput as more bandwidth and
additional “seeds” of the file become available to the group. Cohen claims that for very
popular files, Bit Torrent can support about a thousand times as many download as
HTTP.

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3:Sharing files with BitTorrent:

To share a file using Bit Torrent, a user creates a .torrent file, a small "pointer" file that
Contains:-

• the filename, size, and the hash of each block in the file (which allows users to
make sure they are downloading the real thing)
• the address of a "tracker" server (which is discussed below)
• And some other data (like client instructions).

The torrent file is then distributed to users, often via email or placed on a website. The
Bit Torrent client is started as a "seed node", allowing other users to connect and begin
downloading. When other users finish downloading the entire file, they can optionally
"reseed" it--becoming an additional source for the file.

One outcome of this approach is that if all seeds are taken offline, the file may no longer
be available for download, even if a client has a copy of the torrent file. However,
everyone can eventually get the complete file as long as there is at least one distributed
copy of the file, even if there are no seeds.

Downloading with Bit Torrent is straightforward. Each person who wants to download
the file first downloads the torrent and opens it in the Bit Torrent client software. The
torrent file tells the client the address of the tracker, which, in turn, maintains a log of
which users are downloading the file and where the file and its fragments reside.

For each available source, the client considers which blocks of the file are available and
then requests the rarest block it does not yet have. This makes it more likely that peers
will have blocks to exchange. As soon as the client finishes importing a block, it hashes it
to make sure that the block matches what the torrent file said it should be. Then it begins
looking for someone to upload the block to.

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Bit Torrent gives the best download performance to the people who upload the most, a
property known as "leech resistance", since it discourages "leechers" from trying to
download the file without uploading it to anyone.

Though Bit Torrent is a good protocol for a broadband user, it is less effective for dial up
connections, where disconnections are common. On the other hand, many HTTP servers
drop connections over several hours, while many torrents exist long enough to complete a
multi-day download.

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4:BitTorrent terminology:

*torrent

A torrent can mean either a .torrent metadata file or all files described by it, depending on
context. The torrent file contains metadata about all the files it makes downloadable,
including their names and sizes and checksums of all pieces in the torrent. It also
contains the address of a tracker that coordinates communication between the peers in the
swarm.
*swarm

Together, all users sharing a torrent are called a swarm. Six peers and two seeds make a
swarm of eight.

*peer
A peer is one instance of a Bit Torrent client running on a computer on the Internet that
you connect to and transfer data. Usually a peer does not have the complete file, but only
parts of it, however, 'peer' can be used to refer to any participant in the swarm (in this
case, also known as a 'client').

*seed

A seed is a peer that has a complete copy of the torrent and still offers it for upload. The
more seeds there are, the better the chances are for completion of the file.

*leech

A leech is usually a peer who has a negative effect on the swarm by having a very poor
share ratio - in other words, downloading much more than they upload. Most leeches are
users on asynchronous internet connections who do not leave their Bit Torrent client open
to seed the file after their download has completed. However, some leeches intentionally

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hurt the swarm to avoid uploading by using modified clients or excessively limiting their
upload speed.
The term leech is also incorrectly used to refer to what should properly be called a peer, a
member of the swarm who has not yet downloaded the complete file.

*tracker
A tracker is a server that keeps track of which seeds and peers are in the swarm. Clients
report information to the tracker periodically and in exchange receive information about
other clients that they can connect to. The tracker is not directly involved in the data
transfer and does not have a copy of the file.
*availability

The number of full copies of the file available to the client .Each seed adds 1.0 to this
number, as they have one complete copy of the file. A connected peer with a fraction of
the file available adds that fraction to the availability.

*interested
Describes a downloader who wishes to obtain pieces of a file the client has. For example,
the uploading client would flag a downloading client as 'interested' if that client did not
possess a piece that it did, and wished to obtain it.

*choked
Describes an up loader to whom the client does not wish to upload. An uploading client
'chokes' another client in several situations:

The second client is a seed, in which case it does not want any pieces (ie. it is completely
uninterested)

• The uploading client is already uploading at its full capacity

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 *Snubbed

An uploading client is flagged as snubbed if the downloading client has not received any
data from it in over 60 seconds.

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5:Compare with other file-sharing systems:

BitTorrent 4.0.4 running under Windows XP

The method used by Bit Torrent to distribute files parallels to a large extent the one used
by the eDonkey2000 network, but nodes in eDonkey's file sharing network usually share
and download a much larger number of files, making the bandwidth available to each
transfer much smaller. Bit Torrent transfers are typically very fast, because all nodes in a
group concentrate on transferring a single file or collection of files. While the original
eDonkey2000 client provided little "leech resistance", most new clients have some sort of
system to encourage ploaders. eMule, for example, has a credits system whereby a client
rewards other clients that upload to it by increasing their priority in its queue. However,
the nature of the eDonkey2000 concept means download speeds tend to be much more
variable, although the number of available files is far greater.

A similar method to Bit Torrent was the Participation Level introduced in KaZaA in
2002. The Participation Level would increase when you upload and decrease when you
download. Then when you upload a file to someone else the person with the highest
Participation Level gets it first, then they upload it on to the person with the next highest
Participation Level, and so on.

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This can be visualised as a pyramid, with the people who have the most upload
bandwidth available at the top and people with less bandwidth on progressively lower
levels. This is the most efficient way to distribute a file to a large number of users: it is
probable that even the people at the bottom of the pyramid will get the file faster than if
the file was served by a non-P2P method.

Unfortunately, the system adopted by KaZaA is considered by some to be flawed as it

relies on the client accurately reporting their Participation Level and therefore it is easy to
cheat with the many "unofficial" clients.

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6:Torrent legal isues:

Bit Torrent, like any other file transfer protocol, can be used to distribute files without the
permission of the copyright holder. Bit Torrent has become famous for its ability to also
share copyrighted files.

Legal defenses

There are two major differences between Bit Torrent and many other peer-to-peer file-
trading systems, which advocates suggest make it less useful to copyright violators. First,
Bit Torrent does not offer a search facility to find files by name. A user must find the
initial torrent file by other means, such as a Web search. Second, Bit Torrent makes no
attempt to conceal the host ultimately responsible for a given file's availability: a person
who wishes to make a file available must run a tracker on a specific host or hosts and
distribute the tracker address in the .torrent file. While it is possible to simply operate a
tracker on a server that is located where the copyright holder cannot take legal action, this
feature of the protocol does imply some degree of accountability that other protocols lack.
It is far easier to request that the server's internet service provider shut the site down than
it is to find and identify every user sharing a file on a traditional peer-to-peer network.

To use Bit Torrent legally

Bit Torrent can be used by software developers who want to ease the bandwidth strain on
their servers. If a developer offers a large file for download, the bandwidth limit of their
server may be exceeded if a large number of people download the file. By offering the
file via Bit Torrent, they transfer much of the bandwidth burden to downloader of the file.

For example, the demo of the flight sim X-Plane is offered via Bit Torrent, as well as the
World of Warcraft ingame patches. Another such example is PlaneShift, a free open-
source MMORPG, which uses Bit Torrent for its primary method of distribution. The

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fan-film Star Wars: Revelations is distributing two DVD images as well as the film by
itself via Bit Torrent, and Star Wreck. In the Pirkinning, a feature-length film, was
provided for download via the network besides a centralized server. In 2005, the rock
group Harvey Danger began distributing their third full-length album, Little by Little...,
using Bit Torrent. Also, various operating systems have used Bit Torrent as an alternative
way of distributing ISO images of their releases, including FreeBSD, NetBSD version
1.6.2 and later, and most major Linux distributions.

Peter Jackson's production diaries for King Kong have been posted for download using
Bit Torrent technology. Democracy Now, a progressive news organisation, now
distributes its daily television and radio broadcast using Bit Torrent technology as well as
by podcasting in addition to its traditional cable and satellite distribution. Several Anime
companies have also used Bit Torrent technology to release teaser episodes and trailers
online for promotional purposes, as a sign of embracing technology that is often seen as a
direct competitor.

Following the success of the Bit Torrent protocol, Bram Cohen, its creator, was hired in
2004 by Valve Software to develop a means of distributing patches and other content for
online video games, proving that there are some less controversial reasons for the
development of this technology. While many legal files, including Linux distributions,
are available on other networks such as eDonkey2000 and Gnutella, these are placed
there by users and not generally part of the official distribution mechanism. So far, Bit-
torrent seems to be the most popular P2P protocol adopted officially for legal uses.

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7:Torrent –etiquette:

Because of Bit Torrent relies on the upstream bandwidth of its users and the more users.
The more aggregate bandwidth is available for sharing the files. It is considered good-
etiquette to leave one's Bit Torrent client open after downloading has completed so that,
The others may continue to gain from the file that has been distributed.
It is not clear, however, how long one should leave their client open after downloading
has been finished. Many clients report the byte traffic upstream as well as down, so the
user can see how much they have contributed back to the network. Some clients also
report the "share ratio", a number relating the amount of data uploaded to the amount
downloaded .It is generally considered good form to at least share back the equivalent
amount of traffic as the original file size.
It is worth noting that the requirement of a "1.00" share ratio is rather hotly contested
given its relative impossibility to achieve for every person. On any given torrent, the best
possible outcome is the original seeder with an infinite ratio. A number of peers with 1.00
ratios, and two users with a 0.50 ratio . This is highly unlikely to be achieved due to the
very small chance of the last two peers downloading completely opposite halves and
finishing just as the last seeder logged off and the fact that not all people will upload the
same amount of data they downloaded as some will upload less and others will upload
more. Ultimately, a perfect torrent would leave two end users with only a .50 ratio for the
torrent, which means every user would have to provide new content at least equal to the
portion of data they did not get to upload in the last torrent to maintain an overall ratio of
1.00.
While it's highly unlikely that all users who download a given torrent will achieve a 1.0
ratio on it, it is more of a guideline to encourage the average upstream of a given
network. Some networks, for example, prevent access to new torrents for the first 24-48
hours that the torrent is active to people with overall ratios of less than 1.0 and a certain
amount of data uploaded.
The amount of time the client is left open may be more important than the amount of
traffic contributed, since new users attempting to download a file will first need to find
peers hosting the file.

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Many advanced trackers now track statistics such as how many seeders and downloader
were on a torrent at the time of a user's disconnect as many consider this information
more important than just the user's ratio of downloaded/uploaded.

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8: New developments:

The Bit Torrent protocol is still under development and therefore may still acquire new
features and other enhancements such as improved efficiency.
In May 2005, on the same day the tracker website elitetorrents.org was shut down, Bram
Cohen released a new beta version of Bit Torrent that eliminated the need for Web site
hosting of centralized servers known as "trackers".

It is now possible to have a torrent up in minutes, with a file, a website, and no

understanding of how it works. In addition, Cohen launched a new service on Bit
Torrent's website, which helps you find files - both legal and illegal.
Cohen explained that the tracker removal feature is part of his ongoing effort to make
publishing files online "painless and disruptively cheap." The move is only one of several
designed to remove Bit Torrent's dependence on centralized trackers.
This change is said to cause some trouble in the legal efforts to shut down illegal file
sharing. However, Tarun Sawney, BSA Asia antipiracy director, said Bit Torrent files
could still be identified, since with or without the tracker sites, someone still hosts the
infringing files

Alternative approaches

The Bit Torrent protocol provides no way to index torrent files. As a result, a
comparatively small number of websites have hosted the large majority of copyright
infringing torrents, rendering those sites especially vulnerable to lawsuits. In response,
some developers have sought ways to make publishing of files more anonymous while
still retaining Bit Torrent's speed advantage. The Shareaza client, for example, provides
three alternatives to Bit Torrent: eDonkey2000, Gnutella, and Shareaza's native network,
Gnutella2. If the tracker is down, it can finish the file over the other protocols, and/or find
new peers over G2. Bit Torrent also inspired the privately held company Inmate Media
Group: eXeem. It is backed by Andrej Preston, the administrator of the now defunct
Suprnova Bit Torrent website.

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eXeem is supposed to decentralize Bit Torrent and eliminate the need for web-based
trackers. Unlike Bit Torrent, eXeem is closed-source and owned by a corporation.
Distributed trackers are also one of the goals for Azureus 2.3.0.2 and Bit Torrent 4.1.2.
Another interesting idea that has surfaced recently in Azureus is virtual torrent. This idea
is based on the distributed tracker approach and is used to describe some web resource.
Right now, it is used for instant messaging. It is implemented using a special messaging
protocol and requires an appropriate plugin. Anatomic P2P is another approach, which
uses a decentralized network of nodes that route traffic to dynamic trackers.

Bit Torrent search / Tracker less:

Bram Cohen released his own Bit Torrent search engine, which searches popular Bit
Torrent trackers for torrents, although it does not host or track torrents itself. A new beta
"tracker less" client was also released.

A DHT implementation that allows the client to download torrents that have been
created without using a Bit Torrent tracker

Web seeding an unofficial feature

One recently implemented feature of Bit Torrent is web seeding. The advantage of this
feature is that a site may distribute a torrent for a particular file or batch of files and make
those files available for download from that same web server application; this can
simplify seeding and load balancing greatly once support for this feature is implemented
in the various Bit Torrent clients. In theory, this would make using Bit Torrent almost as
easy for a web publisher as simply creating a direct download while allowing some of the
upload bandwidth demands to be placed upon the downloader. This feature is an
unofficial one, created by TheSHAD0W, who created BitTornado.

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Broad catching

Another proposed feature combines RSS and Bit Torrent to create a content delivery
system dubbed broad catching. Since a Steve Gillmor column for Ziff-Davis in December
2003, the discussion has spread quickly among many bloggers. In an interview, Scott
-Raymond explained:

"I want RSS feeds of Bit Torrent files. A script would periodically check the feed for new
items, and use them to start the download. Then, I could find a trusted publisher of an
Alias RSS feed, and 'subscribe' to all new episodes of the show, which would then start
downloading automatically — like the 'season pass' feature of the TiVo."

While potential illegal uses abound as is the case with any new distribution method, this
idea lends itself to a great number of ideas that could turn traditional distribution models
on their heads, giving smaller operations a new opportunity for content distribution.
Similar to Linspire, the system leans on the cost-saving benefit of Bit Torrent, where
expenses are virtually non-existent; each downloader of a file participates in a portion of
the distribution.
RSS feeds layered on top keep track of the content, and because Bit Torrent does
cryptographic hashing of all data, subscribers to the feed can be sure they're getting what
they think they're getting, whether that winds up being the latest Sopranos episode, or the
latest Sveasoft firmware upgrade.

API

The Bit Torrent web-service Prodigem has made available ability to any web application
capable of parsing XML through its standard Representational State Transfer (REST)
based interface. Alongside this release is a first application built using the API called PEP
which, in 400 lines of PHP, will parse any Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) feed and
automatically create and seed a torrent for each enclosure found in that feed.

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9:Limitations and security vulnerabilities

BitTorrent does not offer its users anonymity. It is possible to obtain the IP addresses of
all current, and possibly previous, participants in a swarm from the tracker. This may
expose users with insecure systems to attacks.

Another drawback is that BitTorrent file sharers compared to users of client/server

technology often have little incentive to become seeders after they finish downloading.
The result of this is that torrent swarms gradually die out, meaning a lower possibility of
obtaining older torrents. Some BitTorrent websites have attempted to address this by
recording each user's download and upload ratio for all or just the user to see, as well as
the provision of access to older torrent files to people with better ratios. Also, Users who
have low upload ratios may see slower download speeds until they upload more. This
prevents users from "just leeching" since after a while, they won't be able to download
much faster than 1-10K a second on a high speed connection. Some trackers exempt
Dial-up users from this ratio for the fact they can't upload faster than 1-5K a second
anyway.

BitTorrent is typically best suited in continuously connected broadband environments.

Dial-up users find it less efficient due to frequent disconnects and slow download rates.

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10:BitTorrent-related applications:

Anime fansub communities often use BitTorrent for their releases, and the most
popular announce sites like Animesuki and downloadanime.org have RSS feeds.

Anime:

• anime begins at the start of the 20th century, when japanese filmmaker
sexperimented with the animation techniques that were being explored in France,
Germany, United States and Russia.

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Fansub:

• A fansub (short for fan-subtitled) is a copy of a foreign movie or television show

which has been subtitled by fans in their native language. It is most commonly
used to refer to fan-translated anime videos that are shared amongst other fans

• Blog Torrent offers a simplified BitTorrent tracker to enable bloggers and non-
technical users to run a tracker off their site with the added functionality of letting
visitors download a file even if they do not have a BitTorrent client installed by
automatically installing a client and the desired file.
• Various sites on internet offers autherised game via bit torrent.
• Many open source software projects incourage bit torrent as well as conventional
downloads of their products to increase avilability and reduce load on their own
server.
o For example open office.org
• Blizzard Entertainment uses a version of BitTorrent in World of Warcraft to
distribute patches.

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 • Popular Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu and Fedora, offer BitTorrent as one
of the download methods for installation CDs
• Podcasting is starting to integrate BitTorrent to help podcasters deal with the
download demands of their MP3 "radio" programs. Specifically, Juice supports
BitTorrent for the RSS 2.0 enclosures that power podcasting.

11: Conclusion:
According to this we can conclude that,
• BITTORRENT is typically best suited in continues connected broad band
environment.
• It allows use multiple tracks per file, so if one track is fails other can continue.
• Bit torrent transfers are typically fast.

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12: References:
• Bit Torrent Economics Paper", Bram Cohen
• "Bit Torrent protocol specification" , Bram Cohen

www.Bittorrent.com
www.wikipedia\bittorrent.com
www.torrentguied.net

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