The BitTorrent peer-to-peer technology has been around for quite a few years; its huge popularity ensures that it will be around for at least as many. Anyway, the BitTorrent protocol has evolved over the years to the point where BitTorrent trackers, the sites which managed the initial communications between clients, are now useless. In fact, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, the Pirate Bay, is shutting down for good, but users of the site have nothing to worry about, for the most part they shouldn’t even notice the change.
“TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well,” the Pirate Bay announced. “By moving to a more decentralized system of handling tracking (DHT+PEX) and distributions of torrent files (Magnet Links), BitTorrent will become less vulnerable to downtime and outages.”
As the Pirate Bay puts it, it’s “the end of an era” but the fact is that for the user little will change. Up till now, in order to download a file through BitTorrent, the client software had to first connect to a tracker server, which would then give it the necessary info to find peers. After this, the actual … (read more)