bit-tech.net

BitTorrent is coming to routers

Published on 24th October 2006 by Brett Thomas

Wireless storage routers such as the WL-700gE from ASUS will feature BitTorrent in firmware.

Some days, you just have to chuckle at what is about to be the MPAA and RIAA's next headache. Just in case anyone thought BitTorrent couldn't get any easier or more popular, it just did - now router manufacturers are building it right into networking products. That's right, you can now buy wireless routers, NAS boxes, and other networking peripherals with built-in clients for the world's most popular pirac...err, P2P tool.

Users can log on to the network device like they normally would, only now these devices will have a bit-torrent option built right in. Wireless routers will automatically stream the data to an IP of choice (not limited to a PC), NAS boxes and wireless storage routers will download right to their own drives. Though we're not sure about remote configuration options for those on-the-go, one would bet that to be a key feature - remote operation of your torrents from wherever you are.

ASUS is the manufacturer leading the pack, with three products being released that include the functionality. This includes two routers (one wired, one wireless) and a wireless storage router for media sharing. The company is excited about merging the technologies, as expressed by TenLong Deng, Associate VP of the Wireless Device Business Unit.

"BitTorrent technology is clearly going to be the default platform for downloading high-quality digital entertainment, which makes them a key partner for us and a key ingredient in our product roadmap," he said.

As BitTorrent becomes even easier to use (now no longer even requiring a PC) and becomes more recognized as the optimal media delivery vehicle, one has to wonder when lawyers will start taking another stab at the service. After all, if it's big enough for hardware manufacturers to get in on, it's got to be turning some more heads. Soon, we might even hear Senator Stevens talking about the tubes being clogged with all the BitTorrent traffic. Darn tubes.

One has to wonder if BitTorrent could even sustain itself if even someone like my grandmother could plug it in and download an episode of "Friends." Piracy has long survived by being an art of the techically elite, who know how to cover their tracks well enough to protect themselves and design more anonymous services. In fact, many credit the fall of Kazaa and Napster to their ease of use, where people with little familiarity of computers became targets for viruses and lawsuits (often together).

Got a thought on the new routers? Or is all this just betting on a technology that will evolve into something new before any of this is even useful? Should BitTorrent be so easily accessible? Tell us your thoughts in our forums.

26 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

JADS 24th October 2006, 15:49

Nifty, although I'd like to be able to use my own client like Azureus ;) Oh and hardware IP address filtering in the router tied into something like safepeer wouldn't go amiss!

Nature 24th October 2006, 15:51

Not good. Uneccessary attention to bit torrent, this will make them #3 after napster & kazzaa..

Vigfus 24th October 2006, 16:14

Yay! Until they make them illegal i want .torrent clients everywhere. You can't fault the system for what the user does. That argument is getting pretty worn out by now, too bad it's the ony one we need. ;)

I hope this widens peoples visions and makes them see that .torrents isn't all illegal piracy stuff. "If we get it in hardware there can't be anything wrong with it".

Duste 24th October 2006, 16:18

A wired version of the router also? Can't wait! I was totally bummed out when I only saw a wireless router with the built-in technology. :(

specofdust 24th October 2006, 16:25

Doesn't matter - Bit Torrent can't really be killed off like most peer to peer networks can be. Bit Torrent is a technology, and so long as there are groups of people getting together to share their bandwidth and files semi-privately, bit torrent will continue to be used.

DXR_13KE 24th October 2006, 16:59

bit-torrent is like knifes, a knife by its own can not do any harm, if a person wants he or she can do wonderfull things with a knife (like cooking and carving wood), but it can also be used to do ilegal stuff like harming/killing people/animals.

RIAA and MPAA and all of their dogs can bark all they want, it is not ilegal to own knowlage and technology that can be used for good, there are far worse things to go after.

Veles 24th October 2006, 17:05

I really doubt they'd be able to pull down bit torrent, they might try to close big tracking web sites like the pirate bay but I doubt they'll ever be successful. Torrents arn't just used by pirates either, it has many legitamate uses, one of the biggest is patch distribution for a little know game called World of Warcraft.

It would be like trying to ban the internet itself.

Vigfus 24th October 2006, 17:33

I'm sure they would ban the internet if they could... But that's a too big target, thankfully.

Once we get truly decentralized .torrents there can be no stopping it. "Can't stop the signal, Mal" - Mr. Universe

specofdust 24th October 2006, 17:50

Torrents probably won't be truly decentralised untill absolutely neccesary, but I think it could probably happen fairly easily. DHT seems to work well enough, and the principle wouldn't be too far off that I don't think. You'd just need one good client to decentralise and free the whole entire thing.

Zidane 24th October 2006, 17:56

AT LAST! linux to the rescue!

they wont ever be able to shut down bittorrent, it has a verifiable legal use. its the primary source of downloading linux (free software == no money for bandwidth, bittorrent == free bandwidth).

the most they can do is prove that it can be abused, much the same way as a knife can be used to kill someone, but thats not its intended purpose.

much props to asus, it just seems like a good idea to intergrate it into the router and stream out the downloaded data.

<edit>
i should point out, they wont ever be able to shut down the bittorrent technology, however, they can shutdown trackers (i.e. you cant stop bittorrent, but you can raid the pirate bay and nick their servers).
</edit>

Warrior_Rocker 24th October 2006, 18:24

You cannot fault the technology as Vigfus said. Also I do not even begin to understand the need to have that sort of thing built into a router at all. Rarely do you have to forward a port at all to get torrents to work and seed properly. More popular clients such as azureus seem to be happy just as they are. I only see this as a ploy by manufacturers to appeal to the 'hacker' or in this case 'that kid who is obsessed with downloading things'

Fun to see attention from vendors, but not needed ;)

DeX 24th October 2006, 18:31

Could someone explain what hardware BitTorrent entails? It wasn't exactly explained in the article. Does it mean that when you download a .torrent file, your router will recognise it and feed your browser an HTTP stream making it appear to work just like a normal download? If that's the case then where does all the information about seeds, peers, and ratio go? Would you have to access your router's admin page to get that info? And how does your router gain access to the parts of a file that you've already downloaded? As far as I know, your browser won't allow your router access to that kind of data from your hard drive for obvious reasons.

Anyway, I think BitTorrent is a brilliant protocol. I just wish more people would use it legally. For example, there are hundreds of sites that offer free patches, demos and trailers but they are all so frustrating to use because every single mirror is constantly full and they want you to pay to gain access to any of the content. If these sites used BitTorrent it would reduce bandwidth costs significantly and probably increase download speeds too. The way I see it, BitTorrent is the future of all high volume data services over the internet. But this just won't happen if people keep reinforcing it's image as a tool for piracy.

Kipman725 24th October 2006, 18:44

I download loads of legal files as do many other people as it saves sites bandwidth for things like linux ISO's. JUst because it can be used for downloading files that your nont ment to dosen't mean is should be stigmatised. I mean you dont go around acusing HTTP of been a "piracy tool" do you?

Vigfus 24th October 2006, 19:02

The piratebay has been mentioned a few times. I thought i'd share this post on the TPB blog with those who hasn't seen it. :)

Quote:

Just some stats... ... here are some reasons why TPB is down sometimes - and how long it usually takes to fix:

Tiamo gets *very* drunk and then something crashes: 4 days
Anakata gets a really bad cold and noone is around: 7 days
The US and Swedish gov. forces the police to steal our servers: 3 days

.. yawn.

Sidenote: God loves pirates

A politician went public with the fact that he pirates stuff. His computer promptly gets seized. While the police were rifling through his files - lightning kills it.
I don't quite understand why the HDD got killed, but i guess it did because there is no more case.

Buzzons 24th October 2006, 19:14

the only issue with pirate torrents is as some one else said, they can get the seeders, or, just start downloading it, and watch other people connect to them as they seed it them selves. its rather easy to catch users once they directly connect to you as a seeder and start getting a file.

specofdust 24th October 2006, 19:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by Buzzons
the only issue with pirate torrents is as some one else said, they can get the seeders, or, just start downloading it, and watch other people connect to them as they seed it them selves. its rather easy to catch users once they directly connect to you as a seeder and start getting a file.

They can only get the seeders if they can connect to the seeders ;)

Peerguardian 2 - 727,023,827(that's seven hundred and twenty seven million) IP's blocked

Buzzons 24th October 2006, 19:27

yes? all they do is get one that isnt blocked? home isp for a FED etc?

K.I.T.T. 24th October 2006, 21:09

as idea i think its good but, i also think its unnecessary...its makes the whole process of downloading via bit torrent much more difficult to control. i've seen my entire bandwidth be eaten by uploading (i know you can set a max upload and the upload on my connection is pretty bad anyway...hell i can max out the upstream with packet ACK's from dl'ing at full speed) and the number of simultaneous connections it can be making at once can be silly...i think its another example of something that should be left to a small PC being off loaded onto another piece of network hardware to slow it up (look at the Freecom FSG-3 its like this but 10x worse when you look at what it does).

In my honest opinion i think it should still be something done by only the technically enlightened as they would know the best thing is to have it running on a box with hot swap drives so they can be easily pulled and hidden if the nice people in police cars turn up at your front door (or in the case of TPB decide to let themselves in).

unless of course this all a conspiracy fronted by asus to catch unsuspecting people that will simply claim ignorance (like that works anymore) about what they're doing when the RIAA / MPAA ask them to come round for a 'little chat' . with the intention that it'll scare the masses off and possibly deplete to a certain extent the number of Bit Torrent users in the hope it'll die off by itself anyway.

EDIT: shall we start on PeerGuardian for routers now or when people start getting caught, cause thats something else the routers won't be able to do which a small PC can

Firehed 24th October 2006, 22:18

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nature
Not good. Uneccessary attention to bit torrent, this will make them #3 after napster & kazzaa..

Which are... were centralized. You saw how well the shutdown of TPB went. You can't stop the (decentralized) signal.

Re: media joining torrents
If they're part of the swarm, the copyright holder is providing the content. Which means you obtained it legally.

Reaper_Unreal 25th October 2006, 01:49

Unless that router supports alternate ports, and packet header encryption, that's going to be useless for me. Though the idea of having BT on something that isn't my PC is awesome. Should help my speeds a bit.

rupbert 25th October 2006, 11:28

Anyone else think this has relevance to Windows Vista having it's own inbuilt torrent engine?

Tibby 25th October 2006, 13:18

"If A Plane Goes Down Do You Sue The Boeing Coroporation For The Plane?
No You Sue The Pilot"

Thought the quote applied.

I think this is a good step for bittorrent, it is a step in a more legal direction which will always help.

webbyman 25th October 2006, 16:23

isn't this old news?

unrealhippie 25th October 2006, 16:43

The is old news :p I own the Asus WL-500gP (basically same as picture shown except mine doesnt have inbuilt hard drive. Just hook up an external and your ready to go.

It also has a print server which is handy :)

leexgx 25th October 2006, 18:11

clients like azururs and uTorrent have DHT (p2p tracker) so you do not need an tracker as well for it to work With Azururs you do not even need the .torrent file just the file name i think (or by hash like eMule)

Pegasus 25th October 2006, 23:59

As I understand these NAS (and Router) BT clients, you control them via a web interface. So the NAS (or Router) will have a small web server installed as well (as many already do today for configuration of the NAS/Router. You then access the NAS's web interface and there control the BT client.
Just like with the Web interface that the BT client uTorrent is about to get.

Also the BT protocol still needs a server (tracker). And BT is an open protocol, with many implementations of the server/client software.
It is not the BT protocol that can be attacked, but the use of the protocol and thus it will be the users or trackers that will be targeted.

On another note: The only reason ThePirateBay exists is because in Sweden it is not illegal to provide a service that can direct you to locations of illegal contraband.
I Denmark (where I live) several judgements has established that it is illegal to even publicise the where abouts of illegal stuff.

So the question is, in your country would it be illegal to have web site that shows how to build bombs, build home-made guns, where to shop for narcotics etc. ?