[okfn-discuss] data distribution

Thu Jan 12 20:03:20 UTC 2006

On Thu, Jan 12, 2006 at 07:23:18PM +0000, Rufus Pollock wrote:
>   1. Mirroring. By the nature of BT I assume you can't explicitly 
> select a mirror as you often do when downloading in the traditional 
> manner so to what extent does BT do mirroring for you?

Every downloader is also a (partial) mirror. The process of setting up
the download involves creating the tracker then pointing a client which
has 100% of the file at it; that client transfers to other clients on
demand. If you want more redundancy guaranteed you can have more clients
of your own; however the tracker is a single point of failure.

>   2. Is there any way to do fallback in BT so that clients which can't 
> support BT can download normally? If not is this an issue?

There is no automatic fallback mechanism. It's probably a good idea to
have an http link somewhere for people who can't or don't want to use
BT.

>   3. Any tips on setting up a tracker (or should one use trackerless 
> torrents)?

Never tried it.

Pete
-- 
Peter Clay                                   | Campaign for   _  _| .__
                                             | Digital       /  / | |
                                             | Rights!       \_ \_| |
                                             | http://www.ukcdr.org