It's time for 5.1-R bits

[Bruce A. Mah]

If memory serves me right, Tim Baur wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Jun 2003, Scott Long wrote:
> 
> > 3.  BitTorrent.  I personally like this idea.  We only need a few
> > mirrors to act as seeds.  Once the release happens and people start
> > using these seeds, they'll become seeds themselves and the load will
> > quickly flatten out.  However, it's up to you guys.
> 
> It only takes one box to get the ball rolling. I'm sure you can find a
> couple people to toss it up. I'd run with it Scott, even if you decide not
> to make it public in the official release. Just jump on irc and pass the
> word. It'll spread fast enough, and then you'll know how well it works for
> next time.

I played with BT a little bit today.  A few observations:

1.  It seems well suited for transfering large hunks of stuff that
    don't change (such as *.iso files).  It can handle directory
    hierarchies, but not if the files contained within might change.
    (I was thinking that our package trees might not work well with
    this, since we always need to tweak these with last-minute fixes.)

2.  The tracker process (rendezvous point for the clients) needs to
    run somewhere.  I'm not sure if a project-sanctioned torrent would
    need to have its own tracker or whether it's OK to use some
    existing tracker.  Anyone know the convention for this?

3.  Because there's no access control (well, none that I can see),
    using BT as a method for staging bits on mirrors (before a
    release) isn't ideal because anyone with the *.torrent files can
    download the *.iso files or whatever.  I think it makes more sense
    to use it as a mechanism for distributing to end-users and mirrors
    after the release is announced.

Bruce.
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