It has been almost 2 weeks since two of the most popular online BitTorrent trackers, PublicBitTorrent and OpenBitTorrent, started going down. Considering the recent news of DDoS attacks at many BitTorrent tracker websites, the public feared that both this trackers became victims of such an assault. However, the cause is friendly fire now, though the largest trackers are really overloaded.
Both PublicBitTorrent and OpenBitTorrent are BitTorrent tracker sites of a non-commercial origin using Opentracker software. None of this services hosts or links to the .torrent files. Besides, the trackers are free to use by any BitTorrent user. The services are actually listed on the top of the most popular services, coordinating in common the downloads of twenty million users at any given time.
One of the services, OpenBitTorrent, though had a seemingly neutral setup, managed to get lots of legal troubles last year. The tracker faces legal issues from both movie and music industry that were fighting against what they understand an illicit service. Hollywood was the first to win the court case against the Internet service provider of the tracker. Then, after the tracker found a new one, IFPI traced it in Spain, thus forcing the service to move again.
With all this intensive history in mind, it wasn’t a surprise that many file-sharers were afraid of the worst when the tracker appeared to become unresponsive a few days ago. Nevertheless, this time the outages were not caused by legal issues. It turned out that the downtime is actually caused by a constantly increasing number of file-sharers. OpenBitTorrent’s servers are just overloaded and aren’t able to process all the requests. However, the operators ensured the users that the troubles will be dealt with in a few days.
At the same time when OpenBitTorrent faced the issue, another major BitTorrent tracker, PublicBitTorrent, also had to solve the problem of too many users in the network, with similar results. Over the last few days PublicBitTorrent has also been unresponsive for 50% of the time, because its servers were also overloaded. This proves only how vulnerable the BitTorrent tracker ecosystem can be. The tracker also ensured the users it’ll be all right in a few days.
Still, the good news is that most users can continue downloading, because torrents work fine relying on DHT and PEX.
Both PublicBitTorrent and OpenBitTorrent are BitTorrent tracker sites of a non-commercial origin using Opentracker software. None of this services hosts or links to the .torrent files. Besides, the trackers are free to use by any BitTorrent user. The services are actually listed on the top of the most popular services, coordinating in common the downloads of twenty million users at any given time.
One of the services, OpenBitTorrent, though had a seemingly neutral setup, managed to get lots of legal troubles last year. The tracker faces legal issues from both movie and music industry that were fighting against what they understand an illicit service. Hollywood was the first to win the court case against the Internet service provider of the tracker. Then, after the tracker found a new one, IFPI traced it in Spain, thus forcing the service to move again.
With all this intensive history in mind, it wasn’t a surprise that many file-sharers were afraid of the worst when the tracker appeared to become unresponsive a few days ago. Nevertheless, this time the outages were not caused by legal issues. It turned out that the downtime is actually caused by a constantly increasing number of file-sharers. OpenBitTorrent’s servers are just overloaded and aren’t able to process all the requests. However, the operators ensured the users that the troubles will be dealt with in a few days.
At the same time when OpenBitTorrent faced the issue, another major BitTorrent tracker, PublicBitTorrent, also had to solve the problem of too many users in the network, with similar results. Over the last few days PublicBitTorrent has also been unresponsive for 50% of the time, because its servers were also overloaded. This proves only how vulnerable the BitTorrent tracker ecosystem can be. The tracker also ensured the users it’ll be all right in a few days.
Still, the good news is that most users can continue downloading, because torrents work fine relying on DHT and PEX.
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