[ms] Tracker

[vegetaonmeth]

How hard would it be to set up our very own torrent tracker?
I don't know much about torrents, but i do know that they require a tracker to host the torrent files. With the amount of sets in P&R section i think that would be a great idea. It would also remove the problem of links going down so quickly (yousendit) or the slow download speeds (megaupload).
What do you guys think? It's just a suggestion so feel free to add your insight.

[Kamal]

Re: [ms] Tracker

excellent suggestion, I'll definitely look into it, but please be sure to check this out too

http://www.mercuryserver.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21853

[vegetaonmeth]

Re: [ms] Tracker

done

[Kamal]

Re: [ms] Tracker

thanks bro..... we'll discuss this internally and let you know

[geoffgulley]

Re: [ms] Tracker

Its a very good idea... You might want to check with our mates over at hybridized.org to see how they do it... I'm sure they wouldn't mind sharing the info.

[rewing3]

Re: [ms] Tracker

I hate torrent files. All the torrent files I have ever tried to d/l take forever to d/l. The promo section is fine the way it is. Most of the people on there will up sets again if you just ask them time. They only problem I have with that section is that it seems like people are double posting sets sometime. But setting up torrents files will not even prevent that.

[MetroSoul]

Re: [ms] Tracker

While I download my fair share of torrents, I like the way it's currently set-up. If a set is so good that it goes down within hours, wait a bit longer and someone is probably hosting the torrent on themixingbowl.org or djmixes2k.com or something like that. The only problem it would really solve, and I don't even know if this is a problem (yet), is too many downloads from the actual server, as int he [ms], metro951 and kiss100 weekly downloads. In addition, then have to worry about ratios, leaving your computer on for hours on end to seed and seed (which isn't an option for some folks with ISPs limiting their uploads). jula himself would probably end up uploading 5x as much due to the fantastic mixes he always posts and the need to get them properly seeded. More than anything, I guess I just like the idea that this site is a forum before it's a haven for terabytes of dj sets. Of course though, if there were torrents, I would probably download and seed them anyways. $0.02

[vegetaonmeth]

Re: [ms] Tracker

The idea is not to get rid of the way sets are being posted but to expand it even further. Right now, rather than discussing a set or putting a t/l together, I see ppl requesting re-ups. It's getting a bit ridiculous imo.
We'll leave it up to individual uploader whether he wants to use yousendit or megaupload or whatever he fancies.

But for ppl (such as myself) who download sets and want to help with uploading them to others, this might actually be a good solution.
Instead of uploading it to megaupload (which without the premium acc. takes forever) or yousendit, you just let it sit in your torrent client. It only takes 20 sec. to hash a set.

And I wouldn't worry too much about ratios, although I'm sure it would motivate ppl to seed longer...same way as the post count motivates to post more.

All in all I think it's worth a shot. If it doesn't work we can always get rid of it.


rewing3: which torrent client do you use?

[Kamal]

Re: [ms] Tracker

@ MetroSoul, you seem to know a bit about trackers, can you give us some more info ?

The idea basically is to see the rating that each set thats posted in P&R section gets and if there are an X number of votes and / or Y rating, then we setup the tracker on the site and maybe even host the set on the site to help with pushing it out. I dont have a problem donating the available bandwidth for the cause, just so long as setting up a tracker distribution thinga-majig brings the server to its knees because forum uptime is my priority

[MetroSoul]

Re: [ms] Tracker

I know very about torrents actually, and even less about trackers. From what I can tell, a tracker seems to be some sort of script, per se, that seems to keep track of who/where the files are. Like, a constant focal point on the internet that the clients communicate with to track of whats going on. Trackers aren't unique to a given torrent though... For example, on themixingbowl.org: "The tracker's announce url is http://themixingbowl.org/announce.php." So I don't think you could set up a tracker per set with X votes or a Y rating. Someone, somewhere, would have to appropriately set up a torrent for a set upon it reaching the criteria, and then that same person downloads the torrent from the site, saves it to it's existing directory, which causes the torrent to then be seeded, since all the data is already there. So, maybe somehow an admin is alerted when a set reaches the criteria, and sets up the torrent from there? I don't know how you'd script automatically setting one up though, since a single set sometimes has a ton of random megaupload/yousendit links associated with it.

Hosting the torrents should be easy on bandwidth though. They just seem to be small files that give a description of what needs to be downloaded and where the tracker for the torrent is (all the ones I have archived are ~30 kB). I also don't think tracker distriubution is very consuming, because there seems to be alot of torrent sites out there also running forums and whatnot.

Again, big disclaimer, I really haven't looked into any of this information at all. All just casual observations I've made throughout the past year or so as I've downloaded torrents.