[gregordv]

I always push my devs to really study the Bittorrent protocol. The elements of the protocol are all fairly easy to understand, but it's gorgeous to see how elegantly it solved a social problem rather than a computational problem. The tit-for-tat and fast-finish protocols are incredibly graceful ways to create virtuous cycles in a social/technical hybrid, and replaced very real vicious cycles in previous protocols.

Various TCP backoff algorithms are also a great study in how to approach problems with insufficient knowledge of the system under test, and building desirable properties (reliable in-order delivery) from a undesirable input (arbitrary packet loss, and loss in the face of congestion). I make all the kids try to implement their own, then walk through the history of TCP approaches to the modern day.

[avinassh]

> The elements of the protocol are all fairly easy to understand, but it's gorgeous to see how elegantly it solved a social problem rather than a computational problem.

One more protocol / paper which fits this description, imo, is Bitcoin paper [0]. It's easy and accessible to all and elegently explains how to solve a complex problem with existing tools. Not sure it can be called as an 'algorithm'

[0] - https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

[ArtWomb]

BitTorrent is foundational to the rise of decentralized stores and sharing: IPFS, Dat Protocol, WebTorrent, Storj, Holochain, etc.

An Introduction to Kademlia DHT & How It Works

http://gleamly.com/article/introduction-kademlia-dht-how-it-...

[luxcem]

DHT Algorithms are nice, the Chord is really simple and easy to understand.

[dmihal]

Any suggestions where I can read about the BitTorrent protocol?

[avinassh]

There is an official document on the protocol [0], but it doesn't go much into the details. Theory.org's resource [1] does a much better job.

[0] - http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0003.html

[1] - https://wiki.theory.org/index.php/BitTorrentSpecification

[war1025]

I implemented a BitTorrent client as a sophomore in college, available here: https://github.com/war1025/Torrent

It worked pretty well. Used it for several years until I started making real money and decided I could buy things rather than pirate them.

I had only been coding for a year or two at that point, so it is probably filled with lots of odd choices, but it also isn't super optimized like I would guess the more well known clients might be, and so might be easier to parse.

[otachack]

I'm the same way in that I haven't been using torrents in awhile. But a few legit things they're used for us Linux distros so if you ever feel like helping in that endeavor you can seed out some ISOs.

[ivanstame]

I would be interested in that too :)

[tombert]

I second this; Kademlia has always struck me as one of the most beautiful and elegant algorithms out there; Bittorrent is wonderful too.

[solidr53]

Bencode is such a piece of junk though.