Is it possible to use tracker servers to set up my own peer-to-peer network?

Question

If I want to develop a C application to share files over a p2p network similar to how Bittorrent allows you to share files over a p2p connection by finding peers with Tracker servers, is this possible? Could I use tracker servers that already exist Or are tracker servers owned by someone who also owns rights to the client software used to connect to the tracker servers.

Answer 1

The trackers servers are part of the BitTorrent protocol. The way it works is you need to have a BitTorrent client running at both the server and the client, and they only understand the .torrent file. You can make things working but at the "other" end, you need to have an instance of your application running, which is I think what you don't want.