Tribler

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Tribler


Tribler 5.1.2
Developer(s)	The Tribler Team: Delft University of Technologyand Vrije Universiteit
Initial release	?
Stable release	5.5.13 (February 13, 2012; 4 days ago) _[±]
Preview release	5.2.1 (June 15, 2010) _[±]
Written in	Python
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	English
Type	BitTorrent client
License	LGPL^[1] (free software)
Website	tribler.org

Tribler is an open source peer-to-peer client with various features for watching videos online. The user interface of Tribler is very basic and focused on ease of use, instead of including features.^[2] Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching.^[3] Due to this overlay network Tribler does not require an external website or indexing service to discover content.^[4] Tribler features include: video-only searching, experimental video streaming, and an integrated video player. Tribler is available for Linux, Windows and OS X.^[5]

The name Tribler stems from the word Tribe, referring to the usage of social networks in this P2P client. The first version of Tribler was a small enhancement on the ABC (Yet Another BitTorrent Client)

In 2009 the development team behind Tribler stated that their efforts for the coming years are focused on integration of Tribler in television hardware.^{[citation needed]}

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[edit]Features

Tribler adds keyword search ability to the BitTorrent file download protocol using a gossip protocol, somewhat similar to the eXeemnetwork which was shut down in 2005. The software includes the ability to recommend content. After a dozen downloads the Tribler software can roughly estimate the download taste of the user and recommends content.^[6] This feature is based on collaborative filtering, also featured on websites such as Last.fm and Amazon.com. Another feature of Tribler is a limited form of social networking and donation of upload capacity. Tribler includes the ability to mark specific users as online friends. Such friends can be used to increase the download speed of files by using their upload capacity.^[7] Due to these features Tribler differs from other popular BitTorrent clients such as Vuze and μTorrent.

[edit]SwarmPlayer

The SwarmPlayer is a Python based BitTorrent Internet TV viewer. It allows you to watch BitTorrent-hosted peer-to-peer digital media distribution of video on demand and plays live Triblerstreaming media. It is based on the same core as the Tribler TV application.

The core software is free and open source software based on the Tribler platform, licensed under the LGPL 2.1.

[edit]Development

Tribler was created by university researchers trying to improve peer-to-peer technology.^[8] Tribler is designed to enhance BitTorrent by removing the need for central elements such as the websites for finding content. The aim is to increase performance, reliability, and scalability.

[edit]Popularity

After a news article on TorrentFreak^[9] in February 2012 mentioned Tribler's decentralization and the fact that its index is impossible to take down, the website became hugely popular, causing it to be reduced to just the download page to comply with demand.

[edit]Uses

The European Union's P2P-Next project to develop an internet television distribution standard builds on Tribler technology under development at the Delft University of Technology.^[10]