Topic: BitCoinTorrentz.com - Torrent Download Service - page 32. (Read 57199 times)

Our server is suffering from some temporary hardware issues that the support team are working on as we speak. The bios had died and the server was unable to start up. The bios battery has now been replaced and the site should be up again within the hour with some BIG improvements. I'll post more about the improvements once the site is back up.

DOWN

Thanks a lot mate. If you try it now, you will find that I have fixed the problematic part of my code. That btjunkie link is now working fine, in addition to many other trackers that did not previously! I completely rewrote the code I was using, but it is working much better now. Thank you very much for giving me the incentive to look into it further.


What I'm thinking here is putting a button on the status page (i.e. the page once the torrent completes) that would give the user the option to archive the entire torrent for an additional fee. This is quite a good idea, as I was also thinking of adding another button to enable "1:1" seeding (again for an additional fee) if for example the users tracker requires >=100% seeding, so this would be killing two birds with 1 stone.


I am hoping to invest in a US based server in the future, so I can ensure consistent fast speeds in europe and america. But it's early days yet. I still have to grow my userbase to the point where I can afford to make capital investments in more server power.

Anyway, thanks again for your feedback. It has been EXTREMELY helpful.

I'm able to download the file using "curl -o filename " on the command line. It appears that there is no redirect on the URL, because I'm even able to telnet to port 80 on dl.btjunkie.org, enter some HTTP commands and download the torrent file in a single shot without getting redirects. Here is an example URL, that doesn't work directly on bitcointorrentz.com:

http://dl.btjunkie.org/torrent/Ubuntu-11-04-i386-iso/5027a38d02c287893842a32825aa866e00828a318f07/download.torrent

Quote from: mjcmurfy on September 11, 2011, 10:34:09 PM

With regards to the payment system, I am aware that all payments are going to the same bitcoin address. I am already in the process of creating unique wallet addresses for individual users, however, for the time being it is not so big of an issue as you would think. The cost of the download is filesize in GB (to 3 decimal places) * 0.1, then rounded down to 4 decimal places. It is the price of the torrent that identifies the payment, and unless two users simultaneously download a torrent of the EXACT same size, it is not an immediate problem. I plan to transition to a unique-address based solution soon.

I would consider this a big issue because it destroys anonymity. I can go to your payment address on blockexplorer and see transactions sent by other users, and go through the history of their coins if I want. It's good to know that you're working on a unique-address solution.

Quote from: mjcmurfy on September 11, 2011, 10:34:09 PM

Another good point you brought up with regards to multi-file torrents, with many subdirectories. I had considered doing exactly as you suggested and zipping up the whole torrent, but then I felt that some people may want instant streaming access to files contained within. I am still not decided on how I will proceed with this.

Interesting, I hadn't thought of the need for direct streaming. You may want to support both use cases, maybe as selected by the user to save on disk space.

Quote from: mjcmurfy on September 11, 2011, 10:34:09 PM

As for your speed, 400kb is indeed very slow. I don't understand how it could have been that bad. It is a 100mbit server with unmetered bandwidth. I max out my 30mbit home broadband connection downloading from this server every time, without fail. It could be due to the fact that the server is located in europe, so has to travel that little bit further to reach you. Or maybe you just got it on a particularly congested time. It's hard to say. But I know that I am downloading something off it right now at a speed of 2.4 mb/s.

My location is west-coast USA, so maybe that affects my download speed. I've updated my review to reflect this.

Quote from: mjcmurfy on September 11, 2011, 10:34:09 PM

Thank you once again for your very in depth review of the site.
I really appreciate the time you took to write up this review and provide me with such stimulating feedback.

Happy to help!

I tested this service recently with a small file, and here is my review of the whole experience:

Initiation:
I searched for a torrent on btjunkie.org, copied the download URL and pasted it on the website. I got a message that said: "Sorry, there was an error opening the file". I then downloaded the same URL on my computer using wget (worked just fine), and tried uploading it. This time I got an error which said "file is invalid". I realized that wget had changed the file extension to ".torrent.1", so I renamed it back to ".torrent" and uploaded it. This time the server accepted the file successfully.

Payment:
The server checked the file size, and quoted me a price in BTC (which seemed quite affordable, IMHO). I paid the amount, and in less than ten seconds, the server had confirmed my payment. In other words, it proceeds with a 0-confirmation transaction, which makes for a slick user experience. On another note, I noticed that the server provides the same bitcoin payment address for every transaction, since the address already has a few transactions on blockexplorer. I also confirmed this by downloading a second torrent. This should probably be changed ASAP for user privacy protection and security. See this wiki page: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Merchant_Howto#Common_Errors

Torrent download:
I received a download status page, which just says "Downloading", but no progress bar or ETA for finishing the torrent download. I reloaded the status URL regularly until the status changed to "Completed." Since I downloaded a small file, I couldn't estimate the exact download speed. It was definitely around or above 1MB per second - could possibly be larger for bigger files.

HTTP download:
After the torrent was downloaded on the server, it gave me a URL to download from. My torrent was a multi-file torrent, so clicking on the URL dumped me on to a web-server generated directory listing. I would have had to navigate through this directory listing and download each file individually, if not for tools like wget. Providing a zip file of the entire torrent would be much preferred here. Also, the download URL is not hashed or obscured in any way: this may allow users to guess the locations of other "popular" torrents for example. It also allows me to download the same file multiple times, and from different IP addresses. This will allow users to pay for a download once and distribute the URL on a forum, for example. I don't know if this will really be a problem, but you may want to think about this. As for download speeds, I'm connected to a 100Mbps high-speed university internet connection (west coast USA), so downloads from most fast servers go at 10 MB/s. However, I was only able to download my torrent from bitcointorrentz.com at 400KB/s, which I would consider slow.

In a nutshell, the core service works fine. There are a few rough edges here and there, but nothing that can't be fixed. I hope this feedback is useful for future users and to mjcmurfy for improving the service.

No problem. I think I will actually put the price of the service on the home page for the sake of clarity.

My apologies, I didn't even see the FAQ link and thought the front page was all there was to the site.  Question answered.

Sorry for the ambiguity. If you go to the FAQ page, there is a section there explaining the costs.
It's a pretty straight forward pricing structure. The rate is 0.1 BTC per GB.

So, if you want to download a 100mb file, thats roughly 10% of 1GB, so the price would be 0.01btc.
A 1GB file would cost 0.1btc, and a 5GB file would be 0.5btc, etc.

If you want to check the cost of any particular torrent, just upload it and the exact price will be displayed.
You can then proceed with the download if you choose.

It says the fees are calculated based on file size, but do you have any ballpark figures to give?  Like for a 100 MB file, 1 GB, 5 GB?

Thats actually a great idea Jessica, thanks for that. This is why I love this place!

At the moment, torrents will seed for a maximum of 60 minutes, with limited upload speed, and will then automatically stop. I may indeed include the option of continual seeding for those using private torrent sites, for an additional fee. Though, if you happen to have access to a private torrent tracker, the odd's are you probably wouldn't find much use for my service in the first place.

Kind of you to offer your valuable signature space! I'll have to get back to you on that! :p

You should at least have the system seed the torrent to a 1:1 ratio (ex. 100MB dl'd, 100MB ul'd), or have an option to do so, or seed more. Might make it more handy for user of private torrent trackers which embed user data in the .torrents.

Also. I can rent out my entire signature space, 1BTC a week. I post a lot, and you are going to get a lot of publicity ^^

Thanks for your kind comment. I really do think that more services should start to accept bitcoin as a means of payment if the currency is to continue to exist in a useful form, rather than a speculative vehicle. I feel that my service is one small step in the right direction.

With regards to my personal liability, I have included the following disclaimer on the homepage:


I should probably pad-out the disclaimer a little bit though.

I would appreciate it if anyone here who has used the bitcointorrentz.com service could provide feedback on the system. Is there anything that could be improved upon or modified to make the service more user friendly?

heh a nice big disclaimer should do him just fine 

This is a perfect application of bitcoin, I'll definitely be spreading the word.

If users are downloading copyrighted material, aren't you also liable? How do you plan to handle this?

BitWillit will not remain free indefinitely. They are offering a free service right now in order to increase their user base. But once they have enough regular members, I wouldn't be surprised to see the introduction of service fees. It's a good strategy, if not a bit devious. In my experience with them though, their unreliable service outweighs the fact that it is currently being offered free of charge. Hence the decision to create my own solution.

You should! Admittedly, it's hard to beat the "free"-price point of Bitwillet, but maybe you could make it work by offering excellent reliability.

VERY VERY cool!

Great for people in dorms or public computers!

Keep me updated, add me to the Beta

-Charlie

Great question! I have actually created my own checkout feature based on the bitwillet system. In the beginning, i decided to use bitwillet for it's simplicity and ease of use, but it proved to be extremely unreliable. Their system would go down for days making it impossible for users to checkout.

Because of this, I decided to code my own custom-hosted version to replicate the functionality bitwillit provided, albeit intermittently. It works absolutely perfectly, and hands-down beats trusting my earnings to an intermediary.

My checkout feature is probably the thing I am most proud of on the site. I am actually considering releasing it as a standalone service/plugin that users can use and host on their own websites, instead of having to trust 3rd party checkout services.