Is Dispersy DHT compatible with other torrent clients?

General
#1

If one points a regular bittorrent client to DHT bootstrap at dispersy#.tribler.org (#=1…8), will they find functional DHT peers?

DHT swarms are fragmented at start as most bt apps have their own DHT bootstrap servers, and thus the first list of peers is for their own app users only. People who want to have a more universal DHT swam need to manually add the other DHT bootstrap servers to their torrent client, generally:

dht.libtorrent.org:6881
dht.transmissionbt.com:6881
router.utorrent.com:6881
router.bittorrent.com:6881
dht.aelitis.com:6881
router.bitcomet.com:6881

So should the dispersy servers be part of this list, in order to promote wider DHT swarming?

#2

The full list with port numbers from https://github.com/Tribler/dispersy/blob/devel/discovery/bootstrap.py for anyone who’s interested.

(u"dispersy1.tribler.org", 6421),
(u"130.161.119.206"      , 6421),
(u"dispersy2.tribler.org", 6422),
(u"130.161.119.206"      , 6422),
(u"dispersy3.tribler.org", 6423),
(u"131.180.27.155"       , 6423),
(u"dispersy4.tribler.org", 6424),
(u"83.149.70.6"          , 6424),
(u"dispersy7.tribler.org", 6427),
(u"95.211.155.142"       , 6427),
(u"dispersy8.tribler.org", 6428),
(u"95.211.155.131"       , 6428),
#3

We run our own bootstrap servers. These are only for our IPv8 (former Dispersy) network addressing system. Unfortunately, we can’t use Mainline DHT bootstrap servers for bootstrapping into our network. But we were discussing the possibility to use other means of bootstrapping (including Mainline DHT).

#4

I’m mainly concerned about compatibiity here, as in the ability to roam the largest swarm possible. Is it so that outsiders thus do not have a bootstrap gateway into Tribler swarm? It’d be nice and kind of courteous to permit it both ways.

Something that’d permit mainline DHT users to also bootstrap into Tribler DHT.
More connectivity would be the best for everyone? So that one day the above bootstrap server list would also list one to reach Tribler peers.

I’ve been testing this a little and it’s amazing how regimented the swarms can be, since all largest clients run their own bootstrap servers. Only by including them all does one reach a huge swarm immediately.

#5

Ok, to be clear: DHT is a technology to store data in distributed networks. There are many incompatible implementations of DHT technology, designed to be used for different purposes. Tribler uses two completely separate DHT networks/implementations:

  1. “Mainline DHT” for torrent swarms, provided by libtorrent library. We just use whatever libtorrent throws at us here.
  2. “Tribler DHT” for Tribler Hidden Services (e.g. hidden seeding, etc). This is implemented by us in Python with our IPv8 library, and is completely incompatible with Mainline DHT. This was never supposed to be used for BitTorrent swarms.

So, regarding your question:

Is it so that outsiders thus do not have a bootstrap gateway into Tribler swarm?

There is no such thing as a “Tribler bittorrent swarm”. Tribler use libtorrent swarms/DHT/bootstrap servers. So, Tribler clients join whatever swarms are already there provided by libtorrent Mainline DHT.

Having said all that, maybe that’s a good idea to keep a list of other client’s BitTorrent DHT bootstrap servers, so we could increase reach for our users.

#6

Yes indeed, to maximize the swarm benefits everyone. :smiley:

#7

Would you kindly create an issue for than on our GitHub? :wink:

#8

Done

And something here for the 20 character limit…