Mottr.am

A decent explanation of DHT, PEX and magnet links, prompted by the Pirate Bay’s closure of its tracker. I’ve been wondering whether magnet links would catch on for yonks. When I first wrote about them a few years back, I thought they’d eventually become popular, but– amusingly enough–doubted they’d ever be used in conjunction with the then-newfangled Bittorrent.

In fact, back then I briefly hitched my wagon to konspire2b, a peer-to-peer protocol that emerged at around the same time as Bittorrent, but was doomed to failure by its publisher/subscriber model. A shame, really—konspire2b effectively combined Bittorrent-style peer-to-peer distribution with podcasting, before either were popular. The moral of the story? Never listen to my technology prognostications.