The number of torrent dht users has almost doubled in a short time

The number of bittorent downloaders using the distributed hash table, where data about downloads is exchanged independently of trackers, has almost doubled, according to German researchers.

By using dht technology, which has been implemented in a large number of bittorrent clients, publicly available bittorrent downloads in particular become less dependent on servers that act as trackers. For example, p2p downloads via the bittorrent protocol should become more stable. However, according to German researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the number of peers in the dht network has suddenly almost doubled; instead of approximately 6 million dht users, more than 10 million have now been identified.

It was initially thought that the dht protocol may have become infected with false references. However, after further research, it appeared that a recent change in the dht protocol could explain the sharp increase in the number of users. According to a uTorrent developer, the so-called flapping feature is the cause of the strongly increased number of dht users.

It is still unclear whether this will cause major problems for bittorrent users; Torrent-freak reports that it has questions about the new dht implementation with the developers of the p2p protocol.