FC2 BitTorrent URL's

[Jeff Vian]

Rodolfo J. Paiz wrote:

> At 22:21 5/17/2004, Scott Burns wrote:
>
>> Let's see if I understand: I download one file by bt, and other 
>> people can connect to 6881 on my machine to download from me.  I 
>> start a second simultaneous bt download of another file.  Others can 
>> now connect to me on port 6882 to download the second file from me?
>>
>> This strikes me as slightly loopy given http seems to be able to 
>> serve many files using just one open port...
>
>
> The BitTorrent client keeps the connection open, so it ties up the 
> port; Apache serves up lots of files, one at a time, and closes the 
> connections so lots of clients are able to keep up with one port. If 
> you are downloading *one* torrent, then the first remote BT client 
> that connects to you to share that torrent will take port 6881 and 
> keep it open for itself, the second will take 6882 and keep it, etc. 
> Only if the first client disconnects will port 6881 be freed for 
> another client to connect.
>
> Make more sense that way?
>
Your analogy with Apache is slightly flawed.  There is one master server 
that listens on port 80.  When a request comes in, it is handed off to a 
child server that uses different ports.
AFAICT the bittorrent client does it differently. There is only one 
server, and it listens on 6881. When another tries to connect it uses 
the next port for the actual connection and keeps 6881 open for another 
new connection.
So Apache => many servers, many ports
     bittorrent => one server, several ports
In both cases there is one server listening on one port that hands off 
connections elsewhere.