Topic awaiting preservation: Using BitTorrent for Content Syncing

I want to make use of BitTorrent to automatically sync a library of files across a number of different clients.

The scenario is that there will be hundreds of kiosk clients that will play different promotional movies. New movies will come out and they will need to be sent to all of the clients.

To make things faster and conserve bandwidth on the server it seems like BitTorrent would be a great option. When a new file comes out publish it to the main tracker and all of the clients would automatically download it.

The problem is that I can not find any good information on BitTorrent, it seams any link I try to follow is something about using uTorrent or Azerous to download TV shows.

Does anyone have any information or resources about using BitTorrent in an automated setting?

What tracker might I want to look into, are there any modifiable clients out there that would be useful?

Thanks,

Dan
Code Town | Zombie Head | How Much TP? | Feed The Blob

Well, there's the Snark Bittorrent Client Library, and this thing which is a sniffer/scraper.

If you're feeling adventurous, you could always take a look at the unofficial protocol specification and implement it or something similar, since it'd essentially be a private tracker specifically tuned to your needs and providing the services you require.


Justice 4 Pat Richard

Snark looks like a good tool for the client end.

I can most likely implement a light weight tracker.

Server Side:
1. Publish file to tracker
2. Publish entry of file to a DB

Client:
1. Periodically query DB for new file
2. If new file is found use snark to grab it

Thanks for those links.

Writing my own client server while it might prove fun is most likely beyond the level of effort I am willing to put into this project.

Thanks,

Dan
Code Town | Zombie Head | How Much TP? | Feed The Blob

http://rsync.samba.org/

The problem with rsync in this setting, resio, is that it requires more bandwidth on the server the more nodes will be grabbing a file. The advantage of BitTorrent is that as more nodes get more pieces, the overall availability for any one node increases, so the potential speed that a node can receive is now limited by the node's downstream speed instead of the server's upstream speed.


Justice 4 Pat Richard

That is the problem I am trying to avoid. Sending a 600mb file 600 times from the server when a new video is posted is pretty rough. Having this work distributed out to all the nodes make it a bit less strenuous on the server and the pocketbook.

Now if there was a feature to rsync that would let it run in a way that the file transfer work could be distributed across all the nodes then I would be on board.

Dan
Code Town | Zombie Head | How Much TP? | Feed The Blob