Opentracker is a
free (licensed as
beerware
Beerware is a tongue-in-cheek term for software released under a very relaxed license (beerware licensed software). It provides the end user with the right to use a particular program (or do anything else with the source code).
Description
Sh ...
)
BitTorrent peer
tracker software (a special kind of HTTP or UDP server software) that is designed to be fast and to have a low consumption of system resources.
Features
Several instances of opentracker may be run in a cluster, with all of them synchronizing with each other. Besides the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
(HTTP) opentracker may also be connected to via
User Datagram Protocol
In computer networking, the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is one of the core communication protocols of the Internet protocol suite used to send messages (transported as datagrams in packets) to other hosts on an Internet Protocol (IP) network ...
(UDP), which creates less than half of the tracker traffic HTTP creates. It supports
IPv6
Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) is the most recent version of the Internet Protocol (IP), the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the Internet. IPv ...
,
gzip
gzip is a file format and a software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and i ...
compression of full scrapes, and
blacklist
Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, ...
s of torrents. Because there have already been cases of people being accused of copyright violation by the fact that their IP address was listed on a BitTorrent tracker, opentracker may mix in random IP address numbers
for the purpose of
plausible deniability.
Technology
It runs completely in RAM, accounting for much of its speed advantage over other tracker software. It is written in
C and based on the
library
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...
''libowfat'' that manages network connections.
For some new functionality like the UDP support with IPv6 or the syncing of several instances of BitTorrent tracker software, new extensions to the BitTorrent protocol were made.
Adoption
The world's largest tracker at
The Pirate Bay
The Pirate Bay (sometimes abbreviated as TPB) is an online index of digital content of entertainment media and software. Founded in 2003 by Swedish think tank Piratbyrån, The Pirate Bay allows visitors to search, download, and contribute ma ...
switched from their selfmade software ''Hypercube'' to opentracker in the end of 2007.
The
Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation uses it to distribute their own TV shows.
Popular public torrent trackers opentrackr
and coppersurfer
are known to use opentracker.
See also
*
Comparison of BitTorrent tracker software
The following is a list of notable software for running a BitTorrent tracker
A BitTorrent tracker is a special type of server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol.
In peer-to-peer file sharing, a soft ...
References
Further reading
*
External links
*
Stories from an Opentracker(blog)
Git repository– lecture of the software author at the 24th
Chaos Communication Congress
The Chaos Communication Congress is an annual conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club. The congress features a variety of lectures and workshops on technical and political issues related to security, cryptography, privacy and online ...
{{BitTorrent
BitTorrent tracker for Linux
Free network-related software