BitTorrent DHT

Discussions center on Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs), especially BitTorrent's DHT for decentralized peer discovery in P2P networks, covering bootstrapping, security risks like poisoning, and comparisons to protocols like Kademlia or Chord.

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#8614
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Keywords

SNI I2P PEX pkarr.org DNS NAT IMO IETF HN DHT dht bittorrent hash nodes bootstrap torrent peer node mainline nat

Sample Comments

anacrolix Oct 15, 2022 View on HN

This is not correct. The point of the BitTorrent DHT is to share address information of peers for a torrent.

delusional Jan 13, 2022 View on HN

I think you just reinvented the bit torrent mainline DHT.

dublinben Oct 8, 2013 View on HN

Using DHT could be a really powerful solution for this.

turblety Aug 2, 2024 View on HN

I think the closest you might get is something like the bittorrent dht. There are still bootstrap servers for the first few connections, but there's really no getting away from that, right?https://github.com/webtorrent/bittorrent-dht

frumiousirc Nov 5, 2016 View on HN

What stops attackers from poisoning the DHT? Could one publish false name IP address associations?

rakoo Jan 20, 2020 View on HN

Yes, but I'm not sure any dht client handles that functionality.

nextaccountic Aug 16, 2024 View on HN

Why didn't they set up a global DHT to find peers, like bittorrent?

gruez Jan 10, 2021 View on HN

bittorrent uses DHT with hardcoded bootstrap nodes. Has that ever been taken down?

noman-land Dec 16, 2025 View on HN

Why don't people use DHTs for peer discovery for social media?

atmosx Jun 20, 2025 View on HN

DHT (Distributed Hash Table) and PEX (Peer Exchange) let torrent clients find peers without centralised trackers. Hence, you don't need a central place / public tracker anymore