Passkey Tracker coming on Wednesday....

[U2Lynne]

This is the thread for people to post questions about the passkey tracker we will begin to use on Wednesday. The site will be closed while I make the modifications. Then, a notice will be posted at the top of the forum telling you that we are now in passkey mode and you will need to redownload your torrents. If you do not redownload the torrent file, your bittorrent client will start to give you errors!

Please post all your questions and problems in this thread so that it is easy for me to address.

This is currently working correctly on Azureus, uTorrent, and BitTorrent (as of 10 am PST). If you have DHT enbabled in your bt client, you will still be connecting to people not using the passkey system. However, your stats won't update and they won't show up on the Peers List here.

Thanks for everyone's patience while I iron out all the problems. And thanks for the detailed information (errors, clients, OS) that allows me to figure out the problems.

Some additional information:

Personalized torrents (or what some people call a passkey tracker) make sure that the tracker identifies each person by a unique 'passkey' that they get assigned. When you download a personalized torrent, it will have this passkey embeded in it. When your bittorrent client talks to the tracker, it is given your passkey and thus it knows exactly who to credit any upload or download stats to. Our tracker has been using your IP to identify you. This did not always work well when users had dynamic IPs or shared an apartment with someone else also using the tracker.

What this means is that unpersonalized torrents will no longer work on this site. Once we go into passkey mode, your torrent files will give you an error. You must then go back to the thread where you got the torrent file and redownload the torrent file. You must then remove the old torrent file from your bittorrent client and then start the new one up and point it to your download. There is a pictorial tutorial on how to do this in Azureus here - don't forget to delete the torrent from your Azureus window first, before you add the new personalized torrent!

For now on, when you upload a torrent to the site, you must then download a new torrent file that is personalized for you and start that torrent in order to connect to the tracker. If you use the torrent you uploaded, which is not personalized, you will get an error!

UPDATE: OK, we have *something* new installed. I'm very frazzled right now so be kind in your posts. (In the middle of my database mods, the host had to do an emergency reboot of the router. This screwed me up because I was in the middle of the install, so I had to manually make a bunch of database changes. Then my linksys piece-of-sh*t router decided to keep disconnecting me. Anyone want to recommend me a good, reliable router? Not wireless, we have a separate belkin access point for that.

[Scott]

For those of us that are stupid, um, are there clients that are more compatable with all this passkey stuff than others?

[ColinM]

Passkey is not client picky. That being said, some clients are better than others.

I got this list from another tracker and it has held true most of the time. In my opinion:

ABC - Randomly reports bad stats to the tracker.

Acquisition - Not a proper Torrent client.

BinTorrent - Users caught cheating with this client.

BitLord - Based on old buggy BitComet code.

BitSpirit - Randomly sends DHT packets to its own public tracker.

BitComet - Very very popular client but EVERY version reports bad stats to the tracker.

Bittorrent++ - Does not uniquely identify itself.

burst! - No longer maintained.

CTorrent - Communicates with the tracker incorrectly (aka not following BT spec).

ed2k - Not a proper Torrent client.

eDonkey2000 - Not a proper Torrent client.

eXeem - Not a proper Torrent client.

G3 - Consistently reports bad stats to the tracker.

MLdonkey - Not a proper Torrent client.

Qtorrent - Does not identify itself correctly.

Opera - Not a proper Torrent client.

Shareazza - Not a proper Torrent client.

Torrentstorm - Development and bug fixes ceased 30th March 2005.

Torrent Station - Does not uniquely identify itself.

Turbo Torrent - Rumored to do bad things.

XBT Client - By default does not identify itself on the swarm or can be configured to pretend to be another client.

Ziptorrent - Does not identify itself correctly (specifically it lacks version number). Being used principally by spoofers, taking advantage of this bad code decision.

[ColinM]

I had a question.

I'll have two computers setup very soon at home with separate interneet connections. Will I be allowed to seed from two IP addys? What about leech from two?

[Gibblet]

How long will this site be shut down?

Originally Posted by ColinM

I had a question.

I'll have two computers setup very soon at home with separate interneet connections. Will I be allowed to seed from two IP addys? What about leech from two?

You want to know if you can use the same username for more than one computer at a time?

Originally Posted by Gibblet

How long will this site be shut down?

Maybe she can use LiveJournal.com to keep you informed if it takes too long?
http://thetradersden.livejournal.com/

[ColinM]

Originally Posted by Trader Dave

You want to know if you can use the same username for more than one computer at a time?

Yep.

[U2Lynne]

My first order of business is to get the tracker up and running. Then I will worry about how many computers you will be allowed to seed or leech from. I'm not going to play with any of that code until people settle in and get comfortable using personalized torrents. At the beginning, it won't matter if you are seeding/leeching from several computers at a time.

As for how long the site will be down, um.... I'm hoping less than an hour. But, I will update the vB front page that you get when I take the site offline.

[cuzin_jawn]

This sounds like how dimeadozen works, with personalized torrents. Now as long as I remeber the site wil lbe down and don't freak out when I can't get on here.

I forgot my question, so will our download/upload ratios be reset? or will the current ratio remain. Thanks

Jon

[Scott]

Based on what ColinM wrote, were fucked!

[smr]

Some of you are freaking out for nothing.
What you will gain from this is an accurate ratio unlike how it has been before.
The only thing that will change with this is when you upload as you do, now after uploading the .torrent FILE, you then click it to download as if you were going to be the leecher.This is so it registers with the tracker and can then give an accurate ratio on that file/torrent

So if you are just a downloader, you have nothing to worry about.Just do as you always do.
If you are someone who uploads, do as you always do only now after you upload, it wont start seeding until you download the .torrent you just uploaded.Your client will check it, then start seeding.No big deal.Most all trackers use this.

If you have a torrent going right now and know it wont finish while all this goes down, after all this gets put into place, stop your torrent, remove it ( .torrent file only! ) as in delete to trash, then find the post and re-download the new .torrent file.Your client will check it ( takes a minute or two ) and then continue to download.Nothing to orry about.

[glens]

Another big thing to keep in mind is not to let someone else use your torrent file once it has been downloaded with your passkey. Like, don't send the .torrent file with your passkey to someone else so they can use it to access the files. All torrent activity with a certain passkey will attribute to the person who has it, so it's possible that one's ratio can go all to hell. I've seen one torrent being leeched dozens of times by the same user, under dozens of different IPs.........

So this will also help deter people from posting links for TTD torrents elsewhere on the internet

I had a question.

I'll have two computers setup very soon at home with separate interneet connections. Will I be allowed to seed from two IP addys? What about leech from two?

I understand wanting to seed from two, but why would you want to leach from two? You'd just be wasting your bandwidth to get two coppies of the same thing! Sure, your two coppies will be communicating with eachother, but I really don't think this will make much difference, unless of course you're on a torrent with only 2 or 3 peers...

[pmonk]

Is the end of TTD as we know it