What it was. What replaced it.
Swarm download for warez and Linux
- FOUNDERS
- Bram Cohen
- PEAK
- ~35% of all internet traffic (2004)
- ANTHEM
- Linux ISOs (and… everything else)
Internal infra at Facebook, Twitter, Blizzard
Bram Cohen released BitTorrent in 2001 as a protocol, not a product — and that's exactly why it never died. Clients rose and fell (µTorrent, Vuze, Transmission), but the swarm-based distribution model became infrastructure.
Today BitTorrent quietly underpins everything from Linux ISO distribution to Facebook's internal deployments to blockchain payload delivery. The pirates built the plumbing of the modern internet.
The most successful peer-to-peer protocol ever written. Still moves more bytes per day than most people realize.
- ↗ Wikipedia: BitTorrent
- ↗ Bram Cohen — Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent (2003 paper)
- ↗ TorrentFreak: BitTorrent Inc. acquired by TRON (2018)
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