Over the course of this weekend, I will be executing the swap of direct MP3 downloads and Bittorrent, to making Bittorrent be the default in the main enclosure feed and the direct MP3 to be a special separate feed. My goal is that no child is left behind here. For maybe 80% of the people, things will just keep on working but now they’ll be getting Bittorrent files. They may not even know the swap has happened, which is fine.
I’m publishing two files, which will be jimmied in the RSS feed to be the permanent first two files in the default feed. One is a small Bittorrent MP3 file that says “The test worked, you can get Bittorrent files, all is well.” The other is a direct download MP3 that says “If you didn’t get the Bittorrent test, you need to subscribe to a different feed” and then goes on to describe a little about what to expect from the show and then the long promised goofy disclaimer. My theory and goal is that when I make the switch, most people will get both files and all will be well. People that use tools that don’t support Bittorrent or are in a network situation where that won’t work will have to go back and resubscribe to a different feed. I might lose a few people on this, but I hope not many.
In the long run, this will be the way to go I think. My big curiousity will be to see what the Bittorrent is like the first time I publish a regular podcast after the switch. I’m thinking I should get close to an order of magnitude more people downloading via BT, which should mean lots of simultaneous downloads and faster responses for everybody. Cool, no?
So, how are you hosting the trackers for your BitTorrent feeds? Are you doing the tracking on your own servers, with your BT client seeding the new files, or are you using some other service to provide tracking. I’ve been looking into this before trying to do an audio show for my blog.
Ben, I’m running my own tracker and using Azureus on my home system to seed the torrents.