This is the second in a three part series of Tribler, a revolutionary new BitTorrent client servers to grace the BitTorrent community. The first story dealt with it’s installation and setup, and this is to cover what sets it apart from all others.
What first sets Tribler apart from other client servers lies in it’s social networking capability. When downloading files you of course encounter other peers with whom you share data back and forth in the pursuit of acquiring a file in it’s whole. Well, Tribler uses a collaborative filtering algorithm which compares your download history to that of peers you meet. If a peer has torrents in its download history which you have not yet downloaded it will reccomend them to you. The reccomendation value assigned to the torrent and shown in the RECOMENDATION WINDOW depends on how similar the peer’s download history is to yours. So the higher the value, the more you are predicted to like it. This feature can be disabled if you so desire, and further versions promise to allow for additional filtering of these recomnedations.
I’ll go over how this works to give you an idea of what it all means.
From the ACTION TAB select RECOMMENDATION.
This will bring up a list of RECOMMENDATIONS BASED on the reasons mentiond above.
If you find something that you indeed like, simply “double-click” the listing and it will load into the Tribler window for downloading. It’s that easy. This is truly a leap forward as it allows you to download items that perhaps youy may have never heard of before and may enjoy, unlike the old model where what you seek out is based on personal searching or word of mouth.
Now for the real “magic” behind Tribler.
Early downloading protocols (e.g., Gnutella) have no incentives for donating upload bandwidth. This approach has serious limitations in real environments, because unconstrained bandwidth sharing is sensitive to freeriding. The BitTorrent tit-for-tat mechanism was the first system which offered an incentive for uploading. The current BitTorrent mechanism also has its disadvantages, because without enough seeding peers, the download speed of a peer depends on its actual contribution to the community. In real systems this is overly restrictive, as BitTorrent tit-for-tat bartering protocol limits a peer’s effective download bandwidth to its upload link capacity. Hence, peers with asymmetric Internet access, such as ADSL or ADSL-2, cannot fully use their download capacity.
Tribler has developed a new cooperative downloading protocol which makes use of social groups, where members who trust each other cooperate to improve their download performance. Peers from a social group that decide to participate in a cooperative download take one of two roles: they are either collectors or helpers (see Figure 1). A collector is the peer that is interested in obtaining a complete copy of a particular file, and a helper is a peer that is recruited by a collector to assist in downloading that file. Both collector and helpers start downloading the file using the classical BitTorrent tit-for-tat and cooperative download extensions. Before downloading, a helper asks the collector what chunk it should download. After downloading a file chunk, the helper sends the chunk to the collector without requesting anything in return. In addition to receiving file chunks from its helpers, the collector also optimizes its download performance by dynamically selecting the best available data source from the set of helpers and other peers in the BitTorrent network. Helpers give priority to collector requests and are therefore preferred as data sources.
So, in summary Tribler offers faster downloading speeds as well.
To set up user groups of trusted peers you perform the following series of tasks.
First of all, from the ACTION TAB select MANAGE FRIENDS.
This will bring up an edit window to add, delete, or edit friends in your user group.
By selecting the ADD tab, you will bring up a window that will allow you to of course ADD friends or peers to your user group.
Ok, now for the fun part, filling out a “form.” Name is self-explanatory, but the rest will take some legwork. The easiest way, in my opinion, is to simply have the “other” person e-mail you the rest of the info for you to enter yourself.
“Ok, how do they do that/” you ask. Well, that’s easy. Have that person click the MY INFO tab on the main window which will bring up that person’s INFO.
They should then see the box below. It will contain all the necessary information needed to add them to your user group. All they need to do now is copy and paste the info in an e-mail that they can send to you
NOTE: the info below is bogus so don’t go trying to add me to your “buddy” list.
Presto, buddy added. This further enhances the recommendation capability of Tribler as now you and your buddies can instantly see what each other is downloading, perhaps enticing you to retrieve some of the same for yourself. This is the real “magic” of Tribler as for the first time users can form groups that makes sorting through all the media files out there much easier. In addition, through the power of cooperative downloading as mentioned above, your download speeds are maxmized, unleashing BitTorrent full potential as a true file-sharing powerhouse.
And for those that missed it, please check out Getting Started with Tribler
Also for list of BitTorrent download sites check out the page HERE at Zeropaid
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus
