Place all large download files on u-torrent.

[tetradite]

Short term, we'd buy a server solely for seeding torrents and then we'd see how great the community spirit really is here, by seeing how many people would seed their downloads.

 

Long term, we could tie the torrents to NMM and introduce a torrent client/P2P downloader through it. We could even incentivise it later on by providing rewards for people who seed and upload 1GB, 5GB, 10GB and so on of mods through the torrents.

 

Those are just ideas.

 

Yeah, I can only see it working with incentivisation. Some of the work is already done with the existence of NMM and the fact that it preserves the original zip in a predetermined location on installation, I doubt a lot of users who download directly even keep the original zip once installed, which would be needed for this to work.

 

Personally though, it would take a hell of an incentive to get me to leave any torrent/P2P running in the background and chewing up resources and bandwidth. Even if that impact is minimal, it's still another hit (along with Steam) in the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of keeping a fast PC.

[JimboUK]

I use it for those free MMOs and I'm always surprised just how many people do seed, I also remember it being used to distribute Oscuros and people seeded that too.

[narphous]

Short term, we'd buy a server solely for seeding torrents and then we'd see how great the community spirit really is here, by seeing how many people would seed their downloads.

 

Long term, we could tie the torrents to NMM and introduce a torrent client/P2P downloader through it. We could even incentivise it later on by providing rewards for people who seed and upload 1GB, 5GB, 10GB and so on of mods through the torrents.

 

Those are just ideas.

 

 

This is more or less where I'm trying to go with the idea. Speaking for myself, I leave nnm up all the time, and having it acting as a torrent client doesn't put more than a tiny additional load (<2%) on my CPU, so the only time I'd pause it would be if I needed to download something big, like a linux ISO, or watch a movie, or even more rarely, decide to play a multiplayer shooter. In any case, I've looked at CPU utilization while Skyrim is running, as well as other games, and my entire cpu is never saturated, so I've always got spare cycles. So it wouldn't cost me anything or make a noticeable impact on anything I'm doing.

[Besidilo]

they don't cap upload speeds or download speeds at all.

 

Yes, they do.

 

 

On topic, I think it's a great idea to involve the community in file-sharing. There's nothing illegal with it and it would take a huge load off the Nexus' servers. Not to mention that the download speeds would increase tenfold for some users, and I'm sure the community like Nexus would be more than willing to seed.

 

And use an open tracker like OpenBitTorrent.

 

http://openbittorrent.com/

 

Also, don't use uTorrent. qBittorrent/Deluge/Transmission, that's where it's at. :)

[Mossyfunk]

I think this is a fantastic idea and perfect for those on slower connections. I have been extremely frustrated over the last few weeks having purchased premium membership and rarely getting over 100Kb/s on premium servers, while downloading files for free from mediafire I get around 900Kb/s. Bittorrent is an awesome P2P protocol and unfairly seen as only used for illegal warez... I get many legal files through bittorrent eg Linux iso's. There are unfortunately many selfish people who are all take and no give but I can't see it being too bad within a community like this, and I'm sure there is a way to track users share ratio and tag their account with it.

[GenRabbit]

Short term, we'd buy a server solely for seeding torrents and then we'd see how great the community spirit really is here, by seeing how many people would seed their downloads.

 

Long term, we could tie the torrents to NMM and introduce a torrent client/P2P downloader through it. We could even incentivise it later on by providing rewards for people who seed and upload 1GB, 5GB, 10GB and so on of mods through the torrents.

 

Those are just ideas.

 

 

This is more or less where I'm trying to go with the idea. Speaking for myself, I leave nnm up all the time, and having it acting as a torrent client doesn't put more than a tiny additional load (<2%) on my CPU, so the only time I'd pause it would be if I needed to download something big, like a linux ISO, or watch a movie, or even more rarely, decide to play a multiplayer shooter. In any case, I've looked at CPU utilization while Skyrim is running, as well as other games, and my entire cpu is never saturated, so I've always got spare cycles. So it wouldn't cost me anything or make a noticeable impact on anything I'm doing.

 

With programs like uTorrent/Bittorent/Vuze etc its not the CPU load you need to worry. Its the I/O. I would not run a game like Skyrim and Torrent at the same time. If you get a lot of upload/download on it, your computer is gonna take a performance hit, even if CPU is hardly any different.

 

If you want to really share stuff like that you'd get a dedicated box. Doesn't need to be the fastest'n'greatest. A box with a 1.2Ghz CPU and WinXP would do the trick. (or you could turn it of and one as you play.) maybe an SSD would help a lot on the I/O but I haven't tried that.

[narphous]

If the I/O is off-loaded, then it doesn't hit the CPU. In any case, at least on my box, I play skyrim and do big downloads including downloading, for example, the latest Ubuntu DVD ISO, and skyrim cruises right along. There's no perceptible difference. The frame rate display says there's maybe a 1 FPS hit. Hard to tell since it always fluctuates a bit.

[BrentNewland]

An old topic, but searching revealed this was the recommended topic for this discussion.

 

As far as I/O goes - no reason NMM couldn't pause seeding while a game is running. You could also limit the bandwidth and maximum number of connections.

 

The beautiful part about this arrangement is that each one of the NexusMods file servers can run a torrent client to seed the torrents. By doing this, you can utilize the bandwidth of all your servers (while limiting it if necessary) as well as some dedicated servers if you like. And by using the file servers, you can just point the torrent to the file that's already on the server, reducing storage space and replication time.

 

As far as security, most trackers use Passkey's (a URL variable tacked onto the torrent announce URL that is unique to each user) as well as IP monitoring. You can also use client ID filtering (each different torrent program sends an ID unique to the program), ensuring only NMM clients can access the tracker. By disabling peer exchange between clients, only reporting premium servers as peers to premium members, and implementing IP checking on the premium servers, you can ensure the premium servers are limited to premium members.

 

The other big advantage this has is mod integrity checking. NMM could verify the integrity of the downloaded mod file based on the torrent, and redownload any chunks that are corrupt or incorrect.

 

Besides offering incentives in the form of credits or whatnot, you can also limit the number of peers per file, the download speed of the file, and the number of simultaneous downloads. For torrents, you can relax these restrictions while seeding is enabled, and enforce them when seeding is disabled. Or you could just make it so enabling torrent mode also enables seeding.

 

 

 

EDIT You should move this topic to the Open Beta feedback forum since it would be a client implementation more than a website implementation.

 

EDIT2 Maybe rename the title, I think the author was trying to say "Support downloading large mod files via BitTorrent in Nexus Mod Manager" but wasn't familiar with the terminology.

Edited December 17, 2013 by BrentNewland

[BrentNewland]

This is a really good idea, and I reiterate my suggestion that the topic be moved and renamed.

[romano473]

I love this idea. You could webseed just in case there's no one currently seeding (I guess it's something Humble Bundle is doing with their torrents). Keep it a private, non DHT server (something like gameupdates.org is doing). I'd certainly seed the stuff I've downloaded. As it currently is, those archives just sit there, on my HDD, unused, so someone could use my bandwidth to download them and spare your servers a little stress.