This guide is one of a series of guides that are the TorrentSpy FAQ (part of the *Spy FAQ family).
What does DHT mean to me?
One of the main disadvantages of Torrents was that if the traditional dedicated tracker was down, you were unable to download. With DHT, if the traditional dedicated tracker goes down or if there is no traditional dedicated tracker at all, downloading can still proceed. While DHT is called "trackerless", in practice it makes every client a lightweight tracker.
When generating a torrent, you can choose to utilize the DHT-trackerless system or a traditional dedicated tracker.
- The DHT-trackerless system makes no guarantees to reliability but requires no resources of the publisher.
- A dedicated tracker allows you to collect statistics about downloads and gives you a measure of control over the reliability of downloads.
Recommended clients that support DHT
- uTorrent (aka µTorrent)
- Azureus
DHT at TorrentSpy
As of 18dec05 submitting torrents that are DHT-trackerless is now supported. However no statistics are obtainable (torrents will always appear to have no seeds/peers).
Special Note
Torrents at TorrentSpy that have been marked as using a private tracker may still download fine because of DHT. The same thing is true with traditional dedicated trackers that are down or not responding - with a DHT client you may be able to find seeders/peers without the need of the tracker.
- Just WAIT after the "unable to connect to tracker" etc messages, and your torrent may proceed after several (~30) minutes if DHT seeders/peers are found.
What exactly is DHT?
from Wikipedia: Characteristic of DHTs (Distributed Hash Tables) is an emphasis on the following properties:
- Decentralisation: the nodes collectively form the system without any central coordination.
- Scalability: the system should function efficiently even with thousands or millions of nodes.
- Fault tolerance: the system should be reliable (in some sense) even with nodes continuously joining, leaving, and failing.
Asking for further help
Further assistance
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Author:
- Gibbocool, MaggiePixel and other members of the TorrentSpy/IRCSpy forums and mod/admin team.