Every now and then, when I’m connected to a torrent a peer will connect that has a reference to “Swarm Merging” in their name. What is swarm merging?
Every now and then, when I’m connected to a torrent a peer will connect that has a reference to “Swarm Merging” in their name. What is swarm merging?
At least in BiglyBT, the process is automated. The match is based on exact file size; it’s a crappy technique* (as the odds of a false match are rather high) and the usage case is fairly small (two identical files across different torrents), so not too commonly used.
*odds are that Vuze implemented it this way because requesting a hash would break the BitTorrent protocol, and prevent interoperability of multiple clients.
Well, I might have to try it for the torrent that I’m trying to download. Merging may not be effective for most cases, but in this case, this peer was the only one that managed to get a full copy of the torrent content. They disconnected before I could grab all of it though, so now I’m stuck at 50%. :(