TorrentD

What is it?

Torrentd is a fast bittorrent client session control daemon. It is designed to serve a the business logic portion of a regular bittorent client, running strictly in daemon mode, and offering no direct interface. Other programs communicate to torrentd and use it to conduct bittorrent transactions. The program supports multiple user authentication and is designed to manage bittorrent sessions for multiple users at once.

Why is it useful?

Bittorrent downloads can take a long time, and in order to maintain a healthy torrent, users must agree to seed for even longer. With many bittorrent clients this means leaving the program open and minimized for hours on end. A bittorrent client that uses torrentd as its backend, however, can be closed as soon as the transaction is initiated. You can even log out of your workstation. In fact, since torrentd's control protocol works over TCP, you can even opt to run it on a completely different computer, perhaps a home server appliance, and turn your desktop completely off for the night without interrupting the download.

Another application is in networking for businesses. Because of the intense strain the bittorrent protocol places on networks, many businesses do not allow employee access to it. Using a torrentd-enabled client, however, all employees can conduct bittorrent downloads through a single torrentd server. Since all bittorrent traffic comes from a single centralized location, the network can easily be planned so that bittorrent traffic does not affect other business operations.