Torrent publishing message flow

Question

I have been looking at the bittorrent protocol to understand how a torrent is initially created and shared. The only sources I've found are https://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification#Tracker_HTTP.2FHTTPS_Protocol and http://www.kristenwidman.com/blog/how-to-write-a-bittorrent-client-part-1/.

However I still can't seem to figure out what how a new torrent created by a user is shared with the network (what messages are sent by the peer creating the torrent to the tracker etc.?). Any links / sources or help with this would be great.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Peers communicate with each other using TCP or Torrent Transport Protocol. Information about the file to be downloaded (metainfo file) etc are communicated to peers using a peer protocol. As part of this protocol, when peers communicate, they use a single byte of packet type to indicate their state.

For data transfer, the (sending) peer that has the file should move to unchoked state from the initial choked state. On the other hand, the (receiving) peer should mtaintain an interested state during the file transfer.

Here is the BitTorrent specification: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html