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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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