Cameron Dale/ blog/ posts/ apt-p2p 0.1.3: now faster

I have updated apt-p2p to version 0.1.3, which is available now in unstable and my repository (see my previous post introducing apt-p2p).

This update brings mostly speed improvements to finding peers to download from, and performing the download. Nodes in the DHT are now checked for responsiveness more thoroughly before adding them to the routing table, and rechecked more frequently afterwards. This should prevent bad nodes from propagating through the system, and departing nodes remaining in the system long after they have left. Downloading from peers is also quicker, as bad peers are dropped with a quicker timeout value and after a small number of errors. There was also a bug revealed by about 10% of the mirrors that caused downloads to fail, and was fixed in version 0.1.2.

This update is STRONGLY recommended, as keeping unresponsive nodes out of the DHT will make everyone's experience better. If you tried apt-p2p and had some problems, I hope you'll consider trying again now. Unfortunately, these are enhancements I could not predict needing before releasing to the public, as the problems they solve are all caused by having a larger number of users, some of which are unresponsive.

There are still a large number of peers (maybe 50% of them) that are unreachable, and so can not share any files with other peers. I don't have a good way to check yet, but you can go to sites such as this one to probe your client for you. Just enter the remote IP address and port (available on the status page) of your client in the form http://ipaddress:port/ (e.g. http://1.2.3.4:9977/). If the check returns any HTTP headers (even a 404 Not Found response) then you're fine, but if it doesn't return anything then your peer is firewalled or NATted and should probably be fixed.

Here are the changelog entries for 0.1.2 and 0.1.3:

Tags: apt-p2p debian