I have a webhost that lets me have ftp accounts for large file transfers. I can use vuze in OS X to create a torrent fine...but I don't know how (or with the more research I do if it's possible) to tell the torrent to download those files from the ftp.
Should I not use an FTP? I want it to be secure so people can't break into my webhost account but I don't want the torrent to be passworded yea?
Where do I start?
ok, so its clear I had no idea what I was talking about.
So how do I setup a bittorrent client to seed on my webhost? my userCP doesn't have anything about setting bittorrent and the live chat guy I talked to didn't know either. There's all these PHP and SQL options... does any of that work?
Is there any way to do this without having to host the files on one of my computers in my house?
[side note] - this got moved to superuser.com from stackoverflow.com - now I have a different account/name. Can I migrate or combine the two?
55 Answers
Many BitTorrent clients support adding "web seed" URLs, which allow the initial downloading to be done from a http:// address (until enough peers have the complete file).
You say "my webhost", so you could just publish your file over HTTP – with a .torrent file pointing to it, if you want. However, web seeds are limited to HTTP only – certainly not password-protected FTP.
6If you're thinking that using a .torrent will speed up the file transfer, you are incorrect.
Even if you can download a torrent file from your host, you will not get any better speed than you would with FTP.
Torrent's great feature is that you can download small parts of a file from many different hosts. Each file doesn't have to download very quickly to add up to decently fast transfer speeds on your end. A lot of 10kbps and 20kbps chucks add up to pretty fast speeds for you.
But with a single host you're limited to the upload speed of that single host.
So even if it is a technical possibility, you'll gain nothing by downloading a file this way.
UPDATE:
Oh, and most hosts don't like torrents. They tend to use a lot of CPU and it may be difficult to convince them you aren't hosting illicit files.
2Bittorrent has nothing to do with FTP. What you are trying to do does not make sense. If you have FTP acces, then you just upload and download the files using FTP.
Torrents and ftp are separate things.
If you want to transfer a file by either you need to be running a program on both client and server that understands the same protocol ie either BitTorrent or FTP.
For BitTorrent you create the .torrent file in Vize as you suggest but the actual file to be transferred must be on a server running a bittorent program e.g. Vuze which can sendthe data to other clients.
If you want to ftp the data set up the server as you have done and then give the address of the ftp server and path to the file to the people who download it e.g. ftp://host/path/to/file . the ftp server can be setup so that it cannot be written to and so people can't brak into the account.
Also as you say webhost then you could also allow users to get the file via http
0I don't think this is possible, but I might be wrong. The way it works in my belief is you can only use torrents using torrent-trackers, who have their own protocol.
You might be able to set up a torrent tracker on your website but I dont think you can 'link' a torrent to a ftp server
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