[Xastir] torrents and xastir

[Tom Hayward]

> b) People make various maps available for download.  For instance I
>   have three DVD's containing all of the USGS topos for WA that are
>   freely distributable.  I also have a good portion of OR and a few
>   for ID/MT/HI.  I'd love for these to be "out there" for other
>   people to use.

I'm glad you suggested this. With all the BitTorrent buzz, I've been
meaning to ask if you could post these. I still haven't got up to the
UW Library to copy them myself.

> c) These same people create a torrent file out of this data, upload
>   it to the Wiki, and edit the Wiki to make that torrent link show
>   up.

Yes, just remember to add a step in the middle. Create the torrent,
upload the .torrent file to the tracker, so the tracker acknowledges
it, then post the link. Some trackers are open and don't require this
action, but this attracts pirates who who want to host copyrighted
material. To use http://northwest.aprs2.net/rivettracker/, you must
first upload the torrent to the tracker. To do this, use the username
'upload' and my callsign for the password.

> d) The first download ends up being a server/client relationship as
>   you described, but if at least a few of the people doing the
>   downloads leave their torrent client up and running, they become
>   a shared resource for the same file.  More than likely if we put
>   maps up there we'll have non-Xastir people doing downloads as
>   well, maybe even becoming additional resources to download from.

...the beauty of a distributed protocol such as BitTorrent.

> 1) Would we want to create a torrent for each file?  For each CD or
>   DVD set?

Standard procedure is to create one .torrent per set. The reasoning
behind this is that the downloader can instruct their client which of
the files to download (with a multi-file torrent, there is nothing
stopping you from only downloading a few of the files).

With a data set as huge as "USGS topos", this might not be reasonable.
Are the maps segmented geographically? I would suggest one torrent per
state, each with geographically labeled directories (by county?) so
users could identify what they needed to download.

> 3) Is the idea of distributing maps via torrent workable at all?

Yes. Lets get to work.

Tom KD7LXL