webtorrent

bittorrent-dht

JavaScript2015–2024

webtorrent / bittorrent-dht

bittorrent-dht

🕸 Simple, robust, BitTorrent DHT implementation

Web Development Networking

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9Distinct people

11Mentions

0Explicit recommenders

1.3KGitHub stars

REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

🕸 Simple, robust, BitTorrent DHT implementation

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use has been verified yet.

What people are saying

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Also in these discussions

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year11 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-06-05 16:19:28 UTC to 2024-08-02 06:04:50 UTC.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges

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Period	Start (UTC)	End (exclusive, UTC)	Mentions	Comments
2015	2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	5	5
2016	2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2017	2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2018	2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2019	2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2020	2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2021	2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	0	0
2022	2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2	2
2023	2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1
2024	2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC	1	1

What Hacker News says

11 sources

turblety·Aug 2, 2024

I think the closest you might get is something like the bittorrent dht. There are still bootstrap servers for the first few connections, but there's really no getting away from that, right? https://github.com/webtorrent/bittorrent-dht

In Peerfetch – Peer-to-Peer HTTP over WebRTC

feross·Jun 19, 2023

bittorrent-dht: https://github.com/webtorrent/bittorrent-dht (JavaScript implementation used by WebTorrent)

In Theseus DHT Protocol (2018)

throwawayallday·Oct 10, 2022

>One of those protocols is highly centralized and advertises users and their requested data packets as well as their available data packets to a centralized registry. This hasn't been true for almost two decades. DHT exists so trackers are not required [0]. So now both protocols are decentralized. [0] https://github.com/webtorrent/bittorrent-dht

In How much people lost with Celsius Network

chatmasta·Mar 9, 2022

I'm not talking about the consensus protocol of the blockchain itself, but of the p2p algorithms underlying it, e.g. using Kademlia for service discovery and message routing. I'm asking why a distributed system would choose something like Consul (which uses Raft, and requires a coordinator node) instead of running a decentralized protocol like Kademlia (which has no coordinator nodes) within their distributed single-tenant environment. I did a bit more research last night, and discovered that Bitfinex actually does something like this internally (anyone know if this is up to date?) [0] — they built a service discovery mesh by storing arbitrary data on a DHT implementing BEP44 (using webtorrent/bittorrent-dht [1]). This seems pretty cool to me, and IMO any modern distributed system should consider running decentralized protocols to benefit

Read the rest

from their robustness properties. Deploying a node to a decentralized protocol requires no coordination or orchestration, aside from it simply joining the network. Scaling a service is as simple as joining a node to the network and announcing its availability as an implementation of that service. At first glance, this looks like a competitive advantage, because it decouples the operational and maintenance costs of the network from its size. So I'm wondering if there is a consistent tradeoff in exchange for this robustness — are decentralized applications more complex to implement but simpler to operate? Is latency of decentralized protocols (e.g. average number of hops to lookup item in a DHT) untenably higher than that of distributed protocols (e.g. one hop once to get instructions from coordinator, then one hop to lookup item in distributed KV)? Does a central coordinator eliminate some kind of principle agent problem, resulting in e.g. a more balanced usage of the hashing keyspace? Decentralization emerged because distributed solutions fail in untrusted environments — but this doesn't mean that decentralized solutions fail in trusted environments. So why not consider more decentralized protocols to scale internal systems? [0] https://github.com/bitfinexcom/grenache [1] https://github.com/webtorrent/bittorrent-dht

In Static torrent website with peer-to-peer queries over BitTorrent on 2M records

mohitmun·Dec 19, 2018

Recently I figured Kademlia is how bittorrent achieves trackerless torrents. I used bittorrent-dht[0][1] to build simple decentralised ride hailing app(was able implement POC with end to end booking). I wonder what other modern problems can be solved by this technology [0]: https://github.com/webtorrent/bittorrent-dht [1]: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0005.html

In Kademlia: A Peer-To-peer Information System Based on the XOR Metric (2002) [pdf]

joeyspn·Apr 13, 2016

Yes, there are already several implementations... https://github.com/feross/webtorrent https://github.com/feross/bittorrent-dht https://bitbucket.org/vardump/webrtc-kademlia etc...

In Apple Jumps on the WebRTC Bandwagon

lewisl9029·Oct 29, 2015

There's also fairly robust pure JS implementation of the BitTorrent DHT that works in both Node and the browser: https://github.com/feross/bittorrent-dht I'd love to see more decentralized web apps built on similar technologies.

In BitTorrent's DHT

lewisl9029·Oct 23, 2015

Does IPFS have a client-side JS library for building apps that interact with the IPFS DHT? Something similar to https://github.com/feross/bittorrent-dht. I've been looking into developing distributed client-side apps for IPFS, and it would be great if we could just tap into the native IPFS DHT rather than having to depend on a separate IP-based DHT for peer discovery in our apps.

In IPFS Pics

lewisl9029·Sep 9, 2015

Thanks for the quick reply. I was actually thinking of an app running on a separate IP-based DHT, but your reply brought to my attention that IPFS actually already runs on a DHT. Since IPFS runs on its own DHT, are there any plans for a client-side IPFS DHT library for apps to use to connect to peers on the IPFS network? Similar to https://github.com/feross/bittorrent-dht, but with native support for IPFS peers? Something like this would make building a client-side real-time app based on IPFS a much more streamlined experience since developers won't have to depend on an external DHT.

In Neocities is implementing IPFS – distributed, permanent web

rich90usa·Jul 15, 2015

https://github.com/feross/bittorrent-dht

In Socket.IO P2P

__john·Jun 5, 2015

>no servers or IP knowledge involved when you say this you're not talking about bittorrent-dht's bootstrap nodes right[1]? [1]https://github.com/feross/bittorrent-dht/blob/497d1e08f5bc06...

In Bluntly: Serverless, NAT-breaking P2P with public keys and BitTorrent DHT