Lesson plan
Tracker scrape
A scrape, or tracker scrape, is a request sent by a BitTorrent client to a tracker. A request is sent, connection to the tracker is established, information is exchanged, then the connection is closed. The request does something like a "wipe" or a "pass" over the tracker, and then the tracker sends information back to the client. The returned information can contain such information as, whether the tracker is on- or offline, the reason it is offline, the numbers of peers and seeds (sending a list of all peers in the swarm is usually much more bandwidth consuming than just sending a scrape result), etc. Note that some trackers don't support scrape requests, but it is still possible to use the tracker as usual. A client scrapes in order to determine whether or not to send an announce requesting more peers. Sending a scrape result usually requires less data transfer than sending a list of peers. Clients with scrape support will scrape the tracker many times during the course of a download to update its information about the swarm. The tracker is scraped many thousands of times for each torrent alone, even if the swarm is not very big. The tracker can usually handle this number of requests. However, if there are more requests than strictly necessary, this can destabilize the tracker and put it offline.
Article summary
A scrape, or tracker scrape, is a request sent by a BitTorrent client to a tracker. A request is sent, connection to the tracker is established, information is exchanged, then the connection is closed. The request does something like a "wipe" or a "pass" over the tracker, and then the tracker sends information back to the client. The returned information can contain such information as, whether the tracker is on- or offline, the reason it is offline, the numbers of peers and seeds (sending a list of all peers in the swarm is usually much more bandwidth consuming than just sending a scrape result), etc. Note that some trackers don't support scrape requests, but it is still possible to use the tracker as usual. A client scrapes in order to determine whether or not to send an announce requesting more peers. Sending a scrape result usually requires less data transfer than sending a list of peers. Clients with scrape support will scrape the tracker many times during the course of a download to update its information about the swarm. The tracker is scraped many thousands of times for each torrent alone, even if the swarm is not very big. The tracker can usually handle this number of requests. However, if there are more requests than strictly necessary, this can destabilize the tracker and put it offline.
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
No sources recorded.
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.