[HELP] Creating Your Own Private Tracker

[joshuapurwadi]

Hi,

I don't really know if this is the right place to ask this question but anyway, can you guys give me some light on what's needed to run a private tracker on a server?

This tracker will be mainly used to host content from a few sources only so there we won't actually accept torrent from other members (let's say only mods and uploader who are able to post torrent and use the tracker).
It will be like a tool to distribute our content to our member, not vice versa.

We will probably post 8-15 new torrent per week to our site.

I've googled some of the online guides and have been hearing some frontend package which come with their respective backend such as FTS and XBTIT.

I've also heard some better backend tracker which is mainly XBT Tracker and opentracker.

What's your take on those?

And what I'm curious is will those backend automatically assign pid (pass key) to every account like those used in existing private tracker sites or should we do something to the backend to enable that happening?

And another thing is would the tracker take a lot of resources?
I currently has a server already with Amazon EC2 and I wonder how much will my bill rise by opening up a private tracker.

And once things starts rolling would I be able to leave the system running by its own lets say assigning pid to each member and disabling download if ratio is not satisfactory?
I'm wondering because we won't accept torrent from our members so there shouldn't be heaps of torrent using our tracker (only 8-15 per week and counting) which free us from the job of regulating those torrents.

I would like to say thank you before actually hearing any feedback regarding this as I'm really an newbie in this world of private tracking.

And I hope this is the right section to post this thread.


Regards,

Josh...
ACSP 10.8

[kjf]

When you say "your content" do you really mean to say you have license to distribute that content? That you can prove? If not, I expect Amazon will pull the plug on this pretty quickly.

Why make this a private tracker? If it really is your content, wouldn't you want to push it out without restriction? In which case, you'd also want to post in on TPB.


That said,

I don't have a whole lot of experience with FTS or XBTIT. Both are written in PHP so if you are familiar with PHP you can customize them fairly easily.

Opentracker is easy to use, however it isn't suited for private torrents if you are going that route.

XBT is a better choice for a private tracker.


You are probably best off using XBTIT with its built in tracker and down the road transitioning to XBT if XBTIT's built in tracker gets overwhelmed.


If it becomes a popular site, you are probably going to have a hefty bill, which you can alleviate quickly by dumping the tracker component as that will be where the bulk of your resources go. Of course, that won't be an option if you are hosting private torrents.

[joshuapurwadi]

When you say "your content" do you really mean to say you have license to distribute that content? That you can prove? If not, I expect Amazon will pull the plug on this pretty quickly.

Why make this a private tracker? If it really is your content, wouldn't you want to push it out without restriction? In which case, you'd also want to post in on TPB.

Hi, thanks for the insight.
I won't say license as to distribute the content actually, we are doing some kind of a hard fan subbed TV Shows (not in english, that's why we are subbing).

We have a couple of shows that we are currently subbing and we usually release our materials in 4 or 5 version (360p, 480p, 720p, and 1080p for some).

We're thinking about private tracking as we only want to distribute the content to our community members. (We only allow streaming in 480p from our website to our visitors and only VIPs will have access to all version of the vids)

We're currently using cloud hosting to distribute our content such as Mega, Hotfile, ADrive, FileFactory, etc.
The problem with that, some are hard to access, some does not allow download managers which means slow speed, Hotfile is busted, PutLocker uses bitcoin which is kinda annoying, some sites are famous for taking down links and we're basically running out of options.

Then the thought came, why not make use of BitTorrent, that's exactly why BitTorrent is created anyway.

Amazon will probably become my test server at first actually and I will see whether I can keep using amazon for the real run, and that's also why we're making it private, in order control the torrent and to prevent too much leakage. (Will that work?)

Opentracker is easy to use, however it isn't suited for private torrents if you are going that route.

XBT is a better choice for a private tracker.

You are probably best off using XBTIT with its built in tracker and down the road transitioning to XBT if XBTIT's built in tracker gets overwhelmed.

On that note, what makes opentracker not suitable for private?

I will have a look at XBTIT and XBT then.
Will transitioning later on be complicated? Why don't use XBTIT package with XBT tracker from the start?
I will definitely need to read on these stuff more.

And will tracking consume lots of resource? I need to think on which kind of server configs to use as well

UPDATE : I've been hearing about TorrentTrader and Gazelle, any suggestion on the comparison? We currently use SMF for our forum interface fyi.

Thanks again for the insight and sorry for the heaps of question (newbie here)
Really appreciate them!

[kjf]

and that's also why we're making it private, in order control the torrent and to prevent too much leakage. (Will that work?)

You can't control leakage. Others can and will repost it elsewhere if it has value. Making torrents public can actually work in your favor if the are uploaded unmodifed elsewhere, as then they will not be splitting the swarm. Obviously, if they are modified, it will be a whole new swarm, but that is no different than someone making a public version of a private torrent.

You can have a public index/tracker where you still control what gets listed and tracked.

On that note, what makes opentracker not suitable for private?

Opentracker doesn't have support for authorized users. Anyone can announce anonymously, so you can't restrict access or have ratio controls.

It does have a hash whitelist or blacklist, but the list is only read once at launch so it can't be modified live. You would have to restart the tracker every time the list was modified.

XBT can connect to MySQL so you can have live access control and hash restriction.

Will transitioning later on be complicated? Why don't use XBTIT package with XBT tracker from the start?

XBTIT works out of the box with its own tracker, so you will be able to get online quicker not trying to integrate XBT from the start. Once you are online and have all the bugs ironed out, you can focus on resource usage and determine if a dedicated tracker is necessary, and if so, how to transition.

And will tracking consume lots of resource? I need to think on which kind of server configs to use as well

Consider that every active torrent has each peer announcing when they start and stop each torrent, and every 30 minutes or so in between. Add to that scrapes for each torrent in their queue. It adds up quick.

Opentracker or XBT can easily handle over a million peers on a low end dedicated server when configured properly. But by that point, the majority of your operating costs are going towards controlling who can and who can't download your torrents.

Private torrents will always require a tracker, so you will never be able to get rid of it.

I've been hearing about TorrentTrader and Gazelle, any suggestion on the comparison? We currently use SMF for our forum interface fyi.

Both are also PHP scripts. I don't have any experience with them.

I recommend XBTIT only because it would be the easiest to integrate with XBT.

You can install all 4 (or more) of the packages you have been looking at side by side for comparison and determine which you would prefer to work with.

Any of them can be made to work for you if you have sufficient experience with PHP and MySQL.

[joshuapurwadi]

You can't control leakage. Others can and will repost it elsewhere if it has value. Making torrents public can actually work in your favor if the are uploaded unmodifed elsewhere, as then they will not be splitting the swarm. Obviously, if they are modified, it will be a whole new swarm, but that is no different than someone making a public version of a private torrent.

You can have a public index/tracker where you still control what gets listed and tracked.

Well yeah that's true, even with our current distribution method once they got the data they are able to make a torrent out of it and that can't be fully controlled. We try our best in telling them to refer to our site instead of reposting the content but people are difficult.
Let's just say we believe in our people, lol.
The thing is we don't want our content to free float in the internet, we want to distribute them to the people who know who we are, and by joining the community they can enjoy the content.
This will help us grow the community and to keep the community alive.

What do you mean by controlling what get listed and tracked? I understand that I can set my torrent with public trackers and list it in my BitTorrent site but will that method allows me to keep watch of the ratio and assign PIDs to the torrents?

Opentracker doesn't have support for authorized users. Anyone can announce anonymously, so you can't restrict access or have ratio controls.

It does have a hash whitelist or blacklist, but the list is only read once at launch so it can't be modified live. You would have to restart the tracker every time the list was modified.

XBT can connect to MySQL so you can have live access control and hash restriction.

Both are also PHP scripts. I don't have any experience with them.

I recommend XBTIT only because it would be the easiest to integrate with XBT.

You can install all 4 (or more) of the packages you have been looking at side by side for comparison and determine which you would prefer to work with.

Any of them can be made to work for you if you have sufficient experience with PHP and MySQL.

I will definitely try to deploy XBTIT with XBT before anything else then, and I've been reading the release note and examining the source code and it seems to support integration with SMF as well which we already use so I'll experiment to see how it integrates.

Another question regarding the passkey or PIDs, will XBTIT figure out how to assign PIDs to each member and embed them in the torrents downloaded by members automatically right out of the box (and thus count the ratio)?
Or should I do something with the configuration and with the SQL database?

I've been trying to look for this information before I start but nothing shows.
Or is this a dumb question and every private tracker script should already enable this capabilities?

And thanks to you I'm learning a lot about this thing, what's left is experiment! really excited about this

[kjf]

What do you mean by controlling what get listed and tracked?

Simply that you can allow anyone access to the index, but only that you or a handful of others can publish torrents on the index. The tracker would only allow announces for the hashes of those torrents.

Another question regarding the passkey or PIDs, will XBTIT figure out how to assign PIDs to each member and embed them in the torrents downloaded by members automatically right out of the box (and thus count the ratio)?
Or should I do something with the configuration and with the SQL database?

Given that user control is inherent to private trackers, I would guess the controls are in there somewhere. Some might use IP for access control while others might issue a unique code. This should be somewhere in the settings.

[joshuapurwadi]

Sorry for the late reply! Very busy week indeed.

Simply that you can allow anyone access to the index, but only that you or a handful of others can publish torrents on the index. The tracker would only allow announces for the hashes of those torrents.

Well yes, but then I assume that I won't be able to have a ratio control as the public tracker (for example publicbt, etc) won't assign PIDs to the torrent downloads.
Am I right?
So the XBTIT site will act like an index only?

I will definitely try to deploy this beast once I got my holiday! Lol

[kjf]

Well yes, but then I assume that I won't be able to have a ratio control as the public tracker (for example publicbt, etc) won't assign PIDs to the torrent downloads.

Correct.

So the XBTIT site will act like an index only?

XBTIT has the ability to be both an index and a tracker. What it does depends on what features you enable.