Tribler is an

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

decentralized Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

BitTorrent

client Client(s) or The Client may refer to: * Client (business) * Client (computing), hardware or software that accesses a remote service on another computer * Customer or client, a recipient of goods or services in return for monetary or other valuable ...

which allows anonymous peer-to-peer by default. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an

overlay network An overlay network is a computer network that is layered on top of another network. Structure Nodes in the overlay network can be thought of as being connected by virtual or logical links, each of which corresponds to a path, perhaps through m ...

for content searching. Due to this overlay network, Tribler does not require an external website or

indexing service Indexing Service (originally called Index Server) was a Windows service that maintained an index of most of the files on a computer to improve searching performance on PCs and corporate computer networks. It updated indexes without user interven ...

to discover content. The user interface of Tribler is very basic and focused on ease of use instead of diversity of features. Tribler is available for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, and

OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

. Tribler has run trials for a video streamer known as SwarmPlayer.

History

The name Tribler stems from the word ''tribe'', referring to the usage of

social networks A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

in this P2P client. The first version of Tribler was an enhancement of ''ABC'' aka ''Yet Another BitTorrent Client''. In 2009, the development team behind Tribler stated that their efforts for the coming years were focused on the integration of Tribler with television hardware. In 2014, with the release of version 6.3.1, a custom built-in

onion routing Onion routing is a technique for anonymous communication over a computer network. In an onion network, messages are encapsulated in layers of encryption, analogous to layers of an onion. The encrypted data is transmitted through a series of net ...

network was introduced as part of Tribler. Users can load any clearnet torrent, and by leaving the box for anonymity ticked, the files will be routed through other Tribler. Because the custom onion network does not use Tor

exit node Exit(s) may refer to: Architecture and engineering * Door * Portal (architecture), an opening in the walls of a structure * Emergency exit * Overwing exit, a type of emergency exit on an airplane * Exit ramp, a feature of a road interchange ...

s, it is enhanced to make every Tribler user to function as a relay.

Features

Tribler adds keyword search ability to the BitTorrent file download protocol using a

gossip protocol A gossip protocol or epidemic protocol is a procedure or process of computer peer-to-peer communication that is based on the way epidemics spread. Some distributed systems use peer-to-peer gossip to ensure that data is disseminated to all members o ...

, somewhat similar to the

eXeem eXeem was a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing client using the BitTorrent protocol. eXeem was designed to replace the need for centralized trackers (servers which co-ordinate the transfer of metadata across a BitTorrent network). It largely failed ...

network which was shut down in 2005. The software includes the ability to recommend content. After a dozen downloads the Tribler software can roughly estimate the download taste of the user and recommends content. This feature is based on

collaborative filtering Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...

, also featured on websites such as

Last.fm Last.fm is a music website founded in the United Kingdom in 2002. Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of the tracks the user listens to, e ...

and

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

. Another feature of Tribler is a limited form of social networking and donation of upload capacity. Tribler borrows bandwidth capacity from connected nodes regarded as helpful to boost the download speed of files.

SwarmPlayer

The SwarmPlayer is a

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

-based BitTorrent Internet TV viewer. It allows one to watch BitTorrent-hosted peer-to-peer digital media distribution of

video on demand Video on demand (VOD) is a media distribution system that allows users to access videos without a traditional video playback device and the constraints of a typical static broadcasting schedule. In the 20th century, broadcasting in the form of o ...

and plays live Tribler

streaming media Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. ''Streaming'' refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content it ...

. It is based on the same core as the Tribler TV application. The core software is

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

based on the Tribler platform, licensed under the

LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

2.1.

Development

Tribler was created by university researchers at the

Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...

, who are trying to improve peer-to-peer technology. Tribler is designed to enhance BitTorrent by removing the need for central elements such as the websites for finding content, as well as being anonymous. The European Union's P2P-Next project to develop an Internet television distribution standard builds on Tribler technology.

Reception

After a news article on

TorrentFreak __NOTOC__ TorrentFreak (TF) is a blog dedicated to reporting the latest news and trends on the BitTorrent protocol and file sharing, as well as on copyright infringement and digital rights. The website was started in November 2005 by a Dutchman ...

in February 2012 mentioned Tribler's decentralization and the fact that its index is impossible to take down, the website became hugely popular, causing it to be reduced to just the download page to satisfy demand. A warning about Tribler security appeared on the tor-dev mailing list on Dec. 20, 2014 and was addressed shortly thereafter via GitHub.

References

External links

* {{Portal bar, Free and open-source software, Internet, Television * Free file sharing software Free BitTorrent clients Free software programmed in Python Streaming television BitTorrent clients for Linux File sharing software that uses wxWidgets Free and open-source Android software Software that was ported from GTK to Qt Software that uses Qt Onion routing