BitSharp: A BitTorrent Client Library for C#/Mono

Posted by Jonathan Allen on Feb 20, 2007

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In what hopes to be a new tend, an interesting new library for .NET developers was developed with Mono as its main audience. In conjunction with Google's Summer of Code, Alan McGovern has created a set of BitTorrent client libraries using C# and Mono he collectively calls BitSharp.

While Mono was the primary target, all of the libraries also work with Microsoft's version of the .NET platform. The libraries should also be accessible by other CLS-compliant languages such as VB, IronPython, and Ruby.Net.

Miguel de Icaza says that the library and command line client are "quite mature".  Unfortunately he cannot say the same for the Gnome UI. Apparently is hasn't been updated for quite some time and is quite simplistic.

Jeff Atwood has an interesting take on BitTorrent

The BitTorrent model is innovative, but it isn't suitable for every distribution task. The centralized server model is superior in most cases. But centralized distribution is a tool for the rich. Only highly profitable organizations can afford massive amounts of bandwidth. BitTorrent, in comparison, is highly democratic. BitTorrent gives the people whatever they want, whenever they want it-- by collectively leveraging the tiny trickle of upstream bandwidth doled out by most internet service providers.

But just because it's democratic doesn't mean BitTorrent has to be synonymous with intellectual piracy. BitTorrent has legitimate uses, such as distributing World of Warcraft patches. And Amazon's S3 directly supports the torrent protocol.

InfoQ Asks: What scenarios do you see using BitTorrent for?

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