BitTorrent turns 15
On 2 July 2001, Bram Cohen posted his first version of BitTorrent on a Yahoo! message board, TorrentFreak reported.
“My new app, BitTorrent, is now in working order,” Cohen wrote.
The only response he received on the board was: “What’s BitTorrent, Bram?”
BitTorrent is a protocol that allows users to share files with one another directly, without the need for a server between them.
Within three years, his protocol was responsible for a quarter of all Internet traffic. Depending on location, peer-to-peer traffic estimates peaked at around 70% of all Internet traffic.
Its traffic share has decreased in recent years as streaming video grew in popularity, but BitTorrent is still responsible for petabytes of traffic annually.
TorrentFreak said the rise of sites like The Pirate Bay, Mininova, isoHunt, and KickassTorrents helped make BitTorrent a synonym for piracy online.
“However, the technology itself is neutral and used more broadly than most people realise,” stated TorrentFreak.
It said large companies like Twitter and Facebook use the technology to distribute files across their servers.
More on BitTorrent
BitTorrent Now – ad-supported streaming for mobile devices
Kickass Torrents heads to the dark web
BitTorrent launches Live video streaming service
South African BitTorrent users beware
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