Background

Okay, this is my first real blog attempt, but I thought it might be a good idea to talk a bit about the life of a BitTorrent tracker admin (or SysOp, for those that subscribe to the TBdev lingo). The challenges of running a tracker are pretty unique to the subject, and I haven't seen any really in-depth discussions of what this entails. The closest thing I've seen is a TorrentFreak article which only really focuses on the personal implications. Hopefully, this blog will give readers a good idea of what the process entails, to warn away the unprepared and prepare those that want to go ahead with starting their own sites.

I've been running a tracker for almost two years now. I won't say what tracker for security reasons (the same reason I'm using a different alias here), but the astute may figure it out anyway. If you do, please be quiet about it. I'll be talking frankly about security measures and stuff that is normally kept under wraps, so I don't want most people to make the direct connection to the site. Instead, I'll be referring to the site as TorrentFries.

TorrentFries is middlish in size, no Demonoid, but certainly enough to keep me occupied. Signups are permanently open, and accounts never expire. At the moment, the tracker is open as well, so you don't need an account to download stuff. The tracker occupies a pretty unique niche in the torrent world, and is the only one of its kind that I know of. I would love to see more of its kin appear, but so far there's nothing that I've heard of.

This brings me back to the original point of the blog. We need more trackers out there, and it's up to you to make them. So, learn from my mistakes and the things I've accidentally done right and you'll do just fine.

Over the next few weeks, I'll make a series of retrospective posts covering the process we've gone through up to this point. Once that's done with, we can get going on the here-and-now. So hop on and enjoy the ride. :)