Having a server overseas to download torrents?

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jizznit

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#19600 23-Feb-2008 13:13

Hi,

Ive heard of people 'renting' servers/computers overseas and then setting them up to download torrents and then FTPing the files from the server/computer to their desktops.

Is this possible? how would you go about setting it up? apparantley this is faster and cheaper then downloading straight to their desktops - are there any other advantages?

Thanks

jizznit

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#112484 23-Feb-2008 14:54

What exactly are you trying to achieve by doing this?

As for is being faster, sure it is faster to have to download everything twice rather than once.
Cheaper, yeah it is cheaper to pay for hosting/traffic overseas and then have to pay for your traffic again here in New Zealand.

hellonearthisman

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#112496 23-Feb-2008 16:20

Yes you can have a website running a torrent application collecting your required information. Web hosting companies know this and are not permitting there networks to be used in that way or charge you heaps for all the data. But like rscole86 said, your still paying for the data to be collected on your rented server and then pay ya isp to get it down again.

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Optimize_BitTorrent_To_Outwit_Traffic_Shaping_ISPs might be of more use?

freitasm

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#112524 23-Feb-2008 18:30

But then you lose the benefits of the torrent, which is to have mutlple peers delivering things faster than a single download source... Sure it gets faster to your server in the U.S., but how slow will be from that server to your PC here in New Zealand?

ccar063

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#112533 23-Feb-2008 19:05

"faster and cheaper" is dubious, you may want to do this if:

(1) your ISP shapes P2P applications, you would be downloading via HTTP, FTP, SCP, whatever ... hence avoid this

or

(2) you download your torrents from private trackers that require you to maintain a decent upload/download ratio

but (1) can be solved easily, (2) is a personal choice but it won't be cheaper

to set it up you would rent a server and run your torrent client on it. if you want to use windows you could remote desktop into the machine and run your client that way, in linux you would most likely use torrent flux or a command line client

places to rent a server:

https://www.vectoral.info/servers/servers.php
http://www.leaseweb.com/index.php?p=dedicated
http://www.softlayer.com/product.html
http://www.layeredtech.com/servers.shtml

(there's heaps of other options)

eXDee

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#112536 23-Feb-2008 19:18

The common term i believe is a a "seedbox".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedbox

Its a great idea, and apparently works very well, much better than people here seem to think.
Its great because you can seed 24/7 on a high upload/download speed, good for private trackers. It also avoids using up expensive NZ bandwidth for uploading. It also prevents hogging bandwidth if you do online gaming or other programs that become affected.
Don't forget that if you rent a dedicated box you've the benefits of running any server you wish, however bittorrent will hog bandwidth a bit.

I'd bet on it that you'll get much faster speeds FTPing to the seedbox than torrenting them from home. With a download manager i can can peak at 500kb/s, with torrents ive never seen over 300kb/s, with port forwarding/header encryption. This is probably due to ISPs shaping it. Bittorrent should be theoretically faster than HTTP, but with all the shaping etc its far from it.

Some people also share the cost and server with mates to keep the price low.

hellonearthisman

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#112539 23-Feb-2008 19:28

I see Mauricio's point about torrents being faster than a server as some servers limit there ftp bandwidth,
jizznit has some stong points on the echnomic balance that could be a saving, but alot of work.

RustyGonad

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#112563 23-Feb-2008 22:05

Somehow I think I'm missing the point -

No doubt that it would be faster, your closer to the majority of the seeds, and trackers, who also have more upsteam bandwidth than us in NZ, which for most DSL users is <900k.

So you get to rent a server for good $ per month to make it faster. You still have to get it here, which regardless of speed costs money. You haven't uploaded anything in NZ, so you've saved a bit there, but the cost of bandwidth here remains the same, you still pay to get it here at at least $1 per GB.

For example I bought the BBC Planet Earth HD from Amazon. Its on 4 Disks which contain about 100GB of data. It costs about $60 bucks and took about 3 days to get here.

Humor me and assume I bought this online using a legitimate source who distributed it online using Bittorrent, and lets say I paid $40, cause the shipping was cheaper.

Now to get it here I used a leased server to get the torrent, and then FTP the 100GB down over my DSL line @ $1 GB = $100

It just cost me $140 bucks (or $100 if your online 'store' is cheaper than mine :) ) to get it here... Plus for the links above a couple of hundy for the leased server. Same method applies for a single HD Disk. Anything smaller than 1GB any I don't believe you'd see the time savings when compared to the extra effort.

Unless of course someones found some new innovative way to use Bittorrent for legal purposes that I don't know about.

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hellonearthisman

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#112568 23-Feb-2008 22:40

A file from a torrent is from 20% - %50 bigger than if you got the file from FTP. At 50GB = $40nz it can add up fast.

Torrent's in NZ are often shaped, slowing them and causing more time uploading data.

manhinli

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#112569 23-Feb-2008 23:11

hellonearthisman: A file from a torrent is from 20% - %50 bigger than if you got the file from FTP. At 50GB = $40nz? it can add up fast.

Torrent's in NZ are often shaped, slowing them and causing more time uploading data.

Technically that's incorrect as BitTorrent files are the same but uploading as part of the sharing process can increase bandwidth usage.

I don't think torrents are at all throttled in NZ, but restricted by others and by our abysmal upload speeds compared to most other international users.

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RustyGonad

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#112570 23-Feb-2008 23:28

hellonearthisman: A file from a torrent is from 20% - %50 bigger than if you got the file from FTP. At 50GB = $40nz it can add up fast.

Torrent's in NZ are often shaped, slowing them and causing more time uploading data.

I know - but there's a point where you defeat the purpose of using Bittorrent in the first place. $150-200 per month of hosting (about the norm for the services listed above) could also pay for 150-200 GB of bandwidth per month. If your doing anywhere near that your sticking your head up along way... Probably asking to get shot as well... Especially once the new copyright law gets passed.

Shaping is becoming a fact of life, it'll get worse before it gets better - lack of seeders is usually more of a problem. I understand the concept really well, but there's a point where you just go and buy the object inside the torrent.

hellonearthisman

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#112577 23-Feb-2008 23:55

It would be a very geeky way to get a torrent. But a great way to seed.

I always say that if you like something then you should pay buy it.

eXDee

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#112585 24-Feb-2008 01:08

If you are an avid bittorrent user it does work well im told, even better when you share it among a group of friends. I suspect most people who have them are on a private tracker, therefore get an excellent seed ratio.
Its not going to be $200 per month, there are sites that do seedbox services.

manhinli: I don't think torrents are at all throttled in NZ, but restricted by others and by our abysmal upload speeds compared to most other international users.

Wrong. They are prioritised lower on most ISPs than other traffic, some are believed to throttle, orcon full on blocked trackers for a while. Im pretty sure ive read posts from isp tech staff that they do have throttling/prioritising software.
On 'fair use' plans it is admitted that p2p is throttled in the terms and conditions im pretty sure.

sub

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#112595 24-Feb-2008 05:44

Depending on what type of stuff you want to download, you may be better off getting a subscription to one of the NNTP usenet aggregators. Some provide nice web interfaces to search the zillions of files uploaded to usenet in the last 60 days or so, and you can download anything at full speed. I download a typical one hour US show (42 minutes) in about 20 minutes.

See http://www.newsgroupservers.net/ for info about some of the bigger usenet services.

barf

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#112604 24-Feb-2008 09:11

TLDR
linux box in the states and http://www.torrentflux.com/

Sniffing the glue holding the Internet together

lchiu7

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#112608 24-Feb-2008 09:39

sub: Depending on what type of stuff you want to download, you may be better off getting a subscription to one of the NNTP usenet aggregators. Some provide nice web interfaces to search the zillions of files uploaded to usenet in the last 60 days or so, and you can download anything at full speed. I download a typical one hour US show (42 minutes) in about 20 minutes.

See http://www.newsgroupservers.net/ for info about some of the bigger usenet services.

Guess it depends on your ISP also. I know sub you have the same ISP as I do, but I have downloaded a TV show in about 20 minutes via BT also. But just to show what great BT seeding can do, I signed up for bittorrent.com service for a test. After purchasing a TV show (and don't talk to me about the onerous DRM and IP checking that went on), I was able to download the 350Mb file in about 10 minutes! I was averaging over 1000Kbs on the download speed and no upload at all.

I haven't purchased any more since then since just to get the video to play was a herculean effort. And it was restricted to WMP, a particular PC etc.

Staying in Wellington. Check out my AirBnB in the Wellington CBD. https://www.airbnb.co.nz/h/wellycbd PM me and mention GZ to get a 15% discount and no AirBnB charges.

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