Pushing P2P to the developer with http://share.btsharp.com (Beta)
P2P has huge advantages over existing server to client architectures. In an effort to push these protocol advances to the .NET developer, I've developed a framework to ease integration of P2P technologies into your applications.
So, I'm announcing http://share.btsharp.com/ Beta. This free .torrent file hosting web service is currently in beta.
While I encourage developers to develop off of the BTSharp library, you may host any .torrent file with the service.
The SOAP-based interface for this is available at http://share.btsharp.com/ShareHostingApi.asmx.
Overview
http://share.btsharp.com provides a free .torrent file hosting service for developers. This service doesn't host your content files for you, only the .torrent metafile descriptions of the content file.
The motivation behind this service is the vision you, as a developer, shouldn't need to own any servers to host P2P content in your applications. We host the tracker, we host the .torrent files, and we power the P2P file transfer. There should no need for you to buy or lease a server for your highly-scalable applications.
A walkthrough for C# developers using Visual Studio 2005
This is a wrapper around the http://share.btsharp.com/ShareHostingApi.asmx.
// You don't have to use the wrapper, it may just make it easier for you to interface with the web service.
// Below is the Unit Test for the wrapper.
// Below, we can see the output from the http://share.btsharp.com/ShareHostingApi.asmx wrapper Unit Test.
// This is a globally accessible URL for accessing the .torrent file that was uploaded to the service.
// And finally, we can see what an end-user would see if he or she were to click the link in a web-browser.
// Keep in mind that if you're writing applications that leverage the power of P2P, then you'd preferrably not open this link in a web-browser. You'd prefer to transfer this link to an application on another end-user's computer in an automatic fashion, so there would be no need for interaction from the end-user. This is just proof of function. The poision dart frog got censored.
*Disclaimer*
If you host files that are not .torrent files, they will be promptly deleted.
This is currently is Beta, and will be updated in the future. You should *expect* that all data will be deleted before the service moves out of Beta. We are not responsible for any loss of data you may encounter as we actively develop.
I'd love to hear peoples' feedback. What would you like to see? This is a pretty straight-forward functional web-service right now, but the oppritunities for great features are obvious. Can you think of any? 