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Torrent Relay - The Cure for BitTorrent Blockage
December 23, 2008
Imagine you just got done reading about BitTorrent and all the wonderful things that it can provide. Hey, maybe you even want to just use the Vuze content store. Or perhaps there are a few creative commons movies that struck your interest. Wouldn’t it be nice to download them? Too bad you’re living on a college campus which prohibits BitTorrent use. Too bad your network administrator’s response to traffic bottlenecks is to block access to P2P technology. Looks like you might as well just stop reading this article and buy some iTunes songs, right?The problem with network administration is finding that delicate balance that makes most people happy. Unfortunately that often times means cutting off P2P access in its entirety. Network administrators are forced into a position of blocking P2P traffic for two major reasons: bandwidth and legal concerns.
It’s no secret that P2P technology, especially BitTorrent, consumes a tremendous amount of bandwidth. At peak hours, BitTorrent’s total volume of traffic can represent well over half of all data transmissions on an ISP’s network. Like college campus administrators, ISP reaction has been mixed. Comcast established a policy of “delaying” BitTorrent uploads to ease up on traffic congestion. This policy sparked a wave of protests which claimed that Comcast had violated the principles of net neutrality – the theory that all protocols and data transmissions should be treated equally. Because Comcast was only targeting BitTorrent, and no other protocols, the FCC found that Comcast had violated the principles of net neutrality and forced the company to adopt a more fair management policy. Comcast complied, and introduced us to “protocol agnostic” bandwidth management. This means that all protocols will be subject to bandwidth management, not just BitTorrent.
The fact of life for most file-sharers is that at some point, you may be in a position where network administration has imposed serious barriers. Although Comcast only delayed uploading traffic, there are much worse circumstances, such as a network where the BitTorrent protocol is blocked completely. This isn’t a rare circumstance, and a well informed BitTorrent user can circumvent this problem, thanks to a web based BitTorrent program named Torrent Relay.
If P2P technology is blocked at the network level, that means whoever is in charge of the local networks you’re on, such as a college campus or at work, had made a conscious effort to prevent file-sharing. The legal reasons are a great motivator for this as well, as it’s next to impossible for the network administration to keep an eye on all data that transfers in and out of local computers. When a network is blocked, however, regular web access is still typically intact. This is where Torrent Relay comes into play.
Torrent Relay is a web based BitTorrent client. You don’t download or install any client or program, you simply head over to http://www.torrentrelay.com, whether BitTorrent is blocked or not, and now you have full access to the BitTorrent universe. A word of caution, however - there is an extra step involved in the process.
Torrent Relay is a full featured BitTorrent client. As a web based client that finds its most frequent use during times of greater urgency, there are far fewer advanced features available. But that’s OK, it does everything we need it to. And because it's web based, all data transferred between you and Torrent Relay is web traffic
As its name implies, Torrent Relay takes on the role of the BitTorrent downloader/uploader from a remote server. You, as the eager file-sharer, are simply providing instructions to the remote sever, such as telling it what files you want. The remote machine then takes on the role of acquiring the file you want, and then, via HTTP transmission, sends the finished product your way. You’ll never have to worry about P2P protocol blockage because the BitTorrent transfer occurred on a remote machine, and the finished product was a simple HTTP transfer to you. Mission Accomplished!
Torrent Relay – Prepping the Client
Of course there’s not much prepping or installation to do with Torrent Relay. There are only two basic features you need to concern yourself with: adding a torrent file and receiving a download. Torrent Relay is free for basic functionality, but there is a premium version (meaning you have to pay) that has additional options.
Let’s take a look at Torrent Relay and go over the major options.
The Tool Bar
Add Torrent - Add torrents in a variety of fashions.
Load Again - Loads the torrent back into “Add Torrent” to download file again.
Auto Save - Allows your browser to automatically save a file to your hard drive when the download is complete.
Fast Relay - Enabling this feature will send completed files incrementally as they complete, as opposed to all at once. Good for music albums with multiple tracks.
Keep Downloading - Premium feature. Allows you to close the browser or leave your machine while the torrent completes its task. You can then access the download from a different machine (such as at work or school.)
Keep Seeding - Premium feature. Enables uploading after the download is complete.
Media View - Available to all users. Preview your torrent download.
Advanced - Torrent Relay has a collection of useful advanced features, such as “email on complete”, which emails a completed file to a specified address.
Quit - Adios
Torrent Relay – Adding Torrents
Torrent Relay gives you no fewer than three different ways to add torrents. You can either upload one that’s on your hard drive, fetch one that’s hosted on a web site, or add the torrent’s ID. Sites like MiniNova and isoHunt associate an ID number to every torrent they index, which makes circumstances such as this much easier. In other words, you can browse MiniNova for the file you want, and not worry about downloading the torrent – just copy and paste the ID number. Let’s grab one of MiniNova’s creative commons work they are promoting: [DJ ICEMOON] 045 [HOUSE ELECTRO] 07.DEZ.08 [SE]. The URL for this torrent is located at: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2076742. The digits “207642” are important, because that is the MiniNova ID for that torrent. We’ll cover this more in the MiniNova section of this book. Once the MiniNova ID is entered, click “Fetch ID” and Torrent Relay will be ready to start downloading files.
Torrent Relay – Downloading
Once you’ve added torrents, you’re ready to start the download process. The pre-download screen allows you to review the files you’re about to download. The files aren’t checked off by default, so make sure the files you want are checked off – then click Start Torrent.
Now it’s just a waiting game. Since this is a popular torrent, we can see the file below downloading rather quickly. We’ve enabled Auto Save, which will download the file to our default Firefox download folder when the download is complete. Remember, the download is taking place on Torrent Relay’s computer, not yours. After the download is complete on their end, it will then relay it to your machine.
When the download is complete, Firefox’s download manager will process the download just like any web based download. No BitTorrent protocol necessary from this point onward, the file will download just like any web-based transfer.
Premium service
Like many online networks, there’s the free version, and the premium version. LimeWire has their professional version, and you can’t touch the newsgroups without shelling out at least $15 a month. Considering that your torrent transactions take place on Torrent Relay’s servers, their free service only provides a basic, albeit very generous, insight into their service. If you have some extra cash on hand, and have been blocked by your local network administrator, it might be work considering the extra options available.
Perhaps the most worthwhile attribute of the premium version is the “Keep Downloading” option. Let’s say you’ve started a torrent download at work, where the evil network administrator has blocked the BitTorrent protocol. Everything is going great, but the file transfer is going a bit slower than you had hoped. 5:00 comes and you’re ready to go home, but the download is only 70% done. It’s a Friday and there’s no way you’re staying late. In normal circumstances, if you just got up and left, the download would continue, but there would be no way for you to retrieve it. It would sit on Torrent Relay’s server, waiting for the routine maintenance cleanup to delete it. With the premium version, however, you can start a download, close your browser, go home, log back into Torrent Relay and retrieve the file when you’re ready. A very nice feature.
Another interesting feature is the “Keep Seeding” option, which helps improve your upload ratio. While the upload ratio isn’t terribly important on public trackers, maintaining a high upload ratio on private trackers is like infusing your own bailout package to the BitTorrent community.
The more you pay the more options and features you get. For $29.95 a month, you’ll get a 5 gigabyte download limit per file – significantly higher than the 1 gigabyte limit per file associated with the $9.95 version – and much more than the free version which is less than a gigabyte.
Keep in mind, that the more you pay, the more it might be worth considering the newsgroups as an option. But if your network administrator is smart, it’s likely he or she may have that blocked as well. BitTorrent has its own unique blend of files and culture, so it might be worth exploring the Torrent Relay option if things get dicey.
Torrent Relay is a full featured BitTorrent client. As a web based client that finds its most frequent use during times of greater urgency, there are far fewer advanced features available. But that’s OK, it does everything we need it to. And because it's web based, all data transferred between you and Torrent Relay is web traffic
As its name implies, Torrent Relay takes on the role of the BitTorrent downloader/uploader from a remote server. You, as the eager file-sharer, are simply providing instructions to the remote sever, such as telling it what files you want. The remote machine then takes on the role of acquiring the file you want, and then, via HTTP transmission, sends the finished product your way. You’ll never have to worry about P2P protocol blockage because the BitTorrent transfer occurred on a remote machine, and the finished product was a simple HTTP transfer to you. Mission Accomplished!
Torrent Relay – Prepping the Client
Of course there’s not much prepping or installation to do with Torrent Relay. There are only two basic features you need to concern yourself with: adding a torrent file and receiving a download. Torrent Relay is free for basic functionality, but there is a premium version (meaning you have to pay) that has additional options.
Let’s take a look at Torrent Relay and go over the major options.
The Tool Bar
Add Torrent - Add torrents in a variety of fashions.
Load Again - Loads the torrent back into “Add Torrent” to download file again.
Auto Save - Allows your browser to automatically save a file to your hard drive when the download is complete.
Fast Relay - Enabling this feature will send completed files incrementally as they complete, as opposed to all at once. Good for music albums with multiple tracks.
Keep Downloading - Premium feature. Allows you to close the browser or leave your machine while the torrent completes its task. You can then access the download from a different machine (such as at work or school.)
Keep Seeding - Premium feature. Enables uploading after the download is complete.
Media View - Available to all users. Preview your torrent download.
Advanced - Torrent Relay has a collection of useful advanced features, such as “email on complete”, which emails a completed file to a specified address.
Quit - Adios
Torrent Relay – Adding Torrents
Torrent Relay gives you no fewer than three different ways to add torrents. You can either upload one that’s on your hard drive, fetch one that’s hosted on a web site, or add the torrent’s ID. Sites like MiniNova and isoHunt associate an ID number to every torrent they index, which makes circumstances such as this much easier. In other words, you can browse MiniNova for the file you want, and not worry about downloading the torrent – just copy and paste the ID number. Let’s grab one of MiniNova’s creative commons work they are promoting: [DJ ICEMOON] 045 [HOUSE ELECTRO] 07.DEZ.08 [SE]. The URL for this torrent is located at: http://www.mininova.org/tor/2076742. The digits “207642” are important, because that is the MiniNova ID for that torrent. We’ll cover this more in the MiniNova section of this book. Once the MiniNova ID is entered, click “Fetch ID” and Torrent Relay will be ready to start downloading files.
Torrent Relay – Downloading
Once you’ve added torrents, you’re ready to start the download process. The pre-download screen allows you to review the files you’re about to download. The files aren’t checked off by default, so make sure the files you want are checked off – then click Start Torrent.
Now it’s just a waiting game. Since this is a popular torrent, we can see the file below downloading rather quickly. We’ve enabled Auto Save, which will download the file to our default Firefox download folder when the download is complete. Remember, the download is taking place on Torrent Relay’s computer, not yours. After the download is complete on their end, it will then relay it to your machine.
When the download is complete, Firefox’s download manager will process the download just like any web based download. No BitTorrent protocol necessary from this point onward, the file will download just like any web-based transfer.
Premium service
Like many online networks, there’s the free version, and the premium version. LimeWire has their professional version, and you can’t touch the newsgroups without shelling out at least $15 a month. Considering that your torrent transactions take place on Torrent Relay’s servers, their free service only provides a basic, albeit very generous, insight into their service. If you have some extra cash on hand, and have been blocked by your local network administrator, it might be work considering the extra options available.
Perhaps the most worthwhile attribute of the premium version is the “Keep Downloading” option. Let’s say you’ve started a torrent download at work, where the evil network administrator has blocked the BitTorrent protocol. Everything is going great, but the file transfer is going a bit slower than you had hoped. 5:00 comes and you’re ready to go home, but the download is only 70% done. It’s a Friday and there’s no way you’re staying late. In normal circumstances, if you just got up and left, the download would continue, but there would be no way for you to retrieve it. It would sit on Torrent Relay’s server, waiting for the routine maintenance cleanup to delete it. With the premium version, however, you can start a download, close your browser, go home, log back into Torrent Relay and retrieve the file when you’re ready. A very nice feature.
Another interesting feature is the “Keep Seeding” option, which helps improve your upload ratio. While the upload ratio isn’t terribly important on public trackers, maintaining a high upload ratio on private trackers is like infusing your own bailout package to the BitTorrent community.
The more you pay the more options and features you get. For $29.95 a month, you’ll get a 5 gigabyte download limit per file – significantly higher than the 1 gigabyte limit per file associated with the $9.95 version – and much more than the free version which is less than a gigabyte.
Keep in mind, that the more you pay, the more it might be worth considering the newsgroups as an option. But if your network administrator is smart, it’s likely he or she may have that blocked as well. BitTorrent has its own unique blend of files and culture, so it might be worth exploring the Torrent Relay option if things get dicey.
This story is filed in these Slyck News categories
BitTorrent :: BitTorrent Clients
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