Looking at the current development for BitTorrent, I like how certain things are so simplistic; it’s nearly trivial to tinker with. Bram has managed an elegance; with Python being supported on multiple platforms, Windows, Mac, UNIX junkies can all utilize the same basic platform.

The biggest issue I find is that the trackers are generally hard-coded to port 6969; it should be trivial (it is, to all but rather low-grade end-users) to proxy this via other ports.

It should have a [better] discovery system. Some universities are already filtering out all known BitTorrent ports (defaults to 6969 for the tracker, and 6881 through 6889 for the client).

Currently, for my own use and for those whom have issues with sharing BitTorrent, I’ve likened to using port 1080 for the tracker, as I have no internal need for SOCKS support, it’s legacy, but usually left open; as well, under UNIX, root access is not required as it is over the 1024 lower ports boundary. As requests for client can use any list of ports, I’m contemplating a new means of discovery and sharing, or perhaps hardcoding some other viable defaults. The existing schema just doesn’t stand up to three seconds with enable, or almost any cheap router.

I’ll be working on modifications to this existing system in the near future. I don’t feel the direct need to tie to any specific port; the creation utilities just point you to a home server to obtain information and find your peers. This should be trivial to decentralize, but with this information being written into the .torrent itself; I really don’t want to break off and start anew.

Thoughts?