Hello everyone,

I recently came across an article on TorrentFreak about the BitTorrent protocol and found myself wondering if it has remained relevant in today’s digital landscape. Given the rapid advancements in technology, I was curious to know if BitTorrent has been surpassed by a more efficient protocol, or if it continues to hold its ground (like I2P?).

Thank you for your insights!

  • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
    63·
    5 days ago

    I2P is not an alternative to bittorrent, but to IP networks. Essentially I2P is an overlay over the IP-based Internet.

    bittorrent can work through I2P just like it can over IP or Tor.

      • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.orgEnglish
        10·
        5 days ago

        wow, this has blown up!

        some additional clarification:

        I2P is not universally supported by any bittorrent clients, because a bittorrent client needs specific knowledge about how to connect to the I2P network through an I2P router (by using the “SAM” protocol).
        the java based biglybt bittortent client has pretty good support as I hear, it supports I2P-specific DHT and Peer Exchange. DHT is used for peer discovery without a tracker, Peer Exchange is another tech that helps with finding more peers.

        qbittorrent (and a few others that use the libtorrent programming library) has got support for I2P around a year ago, but its experimental so far I think, or at least it hasn’t been tested that much.
        these bt clients don’t (yet) support DHT and PeX for I2P torrents. the functionality is missing from libtorrent and its single dev is very busy already.

        if you are interested about the technical aspects, here are some more words about using bittorrent with I2P from a developer perspective: https://geti2p.net/en/docs/applications/bittorrent