Hacking Torrent client for Wii?

[harryk]

I kinda was hoping that the latest Wii coding contest would bring up a good torrent software for Wii, but besides some good games there was nothing.

Maybe I've somehow missed it, but I can't find any infos on a torrent client for Wii in this forum or on google.

It would be nice to open torrents which are stored to SD card while I'm away with my notebook.

- Is someone working on a client?
- Is there an open source client we would build up on?
- Is it even possible to store downloads on SD and manage the traffic via Wii?

 

[CockroachMan]

Bittorrent itself is open source.. good luck

 

[Kevin578]

it might be possible, but there's no practical use for it.

 

[Slimmmmmm]

I know of someone that built their own torrent client (gd stuff opti

)

As for it happening on the Wii, it could be done but 99% of people would consider it useless. Maybe someone will code one just to prove it could be done, but for now torrenting onto a Wii using SD will be a waste of most peoples time.

Maybe when there is USB 2 support for most HDD, then some will consider it a more worthwhile project, only time will tell. My guess a very long time.


(Which in the current wii scene means nothing)

 

[YellowYoYos]

I wish somebody would make uTorrent WebUI work on the Wii. that would be helpful

 

[Trolly]

Yeah, seems kinda pointless tbh.

 

[hankchill]

Having BitTorrent capabilities on the Wii would be extremely useless. I would even go into the many downsides and problems there would be with wanting to run something like that on the Wii, so let's just leave it at useless.

 

[noONE]

I know of someone that built their own torrent client (gd stuff opti

)

As for it happening on the Wii, it could be done but 99% of people would consider it useless. Maybe someone will code one just to prove it could be done, but for now torrenting onto a Wii using SD will be a waste of most peoples time.

Maybe when there is USB 2 support for most HDD, then some will consider it a more worthwhile project, only time will tell. My guess a very long time.


(Which in the current wii scene means nothing)

the USB speed is fast enough as of now to support any download rate the wii would archieve anyway.
also, homebrew is able to use SDHC since homebrew channel beta 9


QUOTE(YellowYoYos @ Nov 18 2008, 09:51 PM) I wish somebody would make uTorrent WebUI work on the Wii. that would be helpful

i had no problems connecting to Utorrent WebUI thru Opera..

 

[herculean1982]

how is it useless? the wii uses less power than a computer, and could download files to the sd/usb.

sounds like a cool thing to have.

 

[Beatchu]

Would be best if it downloaded files on standby

 

[Slimmmmmm]

I wish somebody would make uTorrent WebUI work on the Wii. that would be helpful

i had no problems connecting to Utorrent WebUI thru Opera..

Thats a really cool idea actually

I'm thinking about people seeding for like days, or weeks from their wiis sd card, I don't think most have compatible usb hdd and imo this would not be good for the sd card or the wii. If they didn't leave things to seed they would either need to move things to there pc etc to seed, or be a hit & runner, and that's just bad

 

[HowardC]

It'd be useless because once you get the torrent downloaded, you'd need a pc to manage it. Filebrowsers on the wii are akward and somewhat cripppled, there's no rar/zip/ect support built into them and even if they were allthe file browers are basically command-line based so it's much simplier to deal with the downloaded files on the pc. Also most people use the wii's built in wifi connection instead of a hard line, which makes downloading things slow. And also don't forget that the wii only has 64 megs of ram, which means you can't extract a archive larger than 64mb.

 

[Xta Large]

A webUI channel for the Wii would be cool, but who needs torrents anyway when you've got jDownloader?

 

[digitydogs]

I don't understand why anyone would would to download torrents with the wii... Talk about a sure fire way to drastically shorten your wii life. think of all the reads and writes to that precious flash memory... How long do you think it would take before the memory craps out... Remember Flash memory is only good for a set number of reads and writes per block... yes it may be around 100 thousand, but then torrents can write to memory thousands of time each depending on the size and speed of the torrent, and the cache settings. Not to mention with only 512 megs of memory anything you download will likely be transfered to memory card, then to your computer for unpacking, if its a wii program then its back to the sd to be transfered to the wii Even saving to the SD card will probably use flash memory as the wii only has 88megs of ram, and as anyone whos downloaded torrents and checked ram usage knows, a good size torrent can easily eat 100 megs of ram. Anyone happen to know what the wii memory life is rated at? (i'm too lazy to look it up today) Now there may be some workarounds to address most of these issues, but really when it comes down to it your better off to use your pc.

Feel free to correct any of the above, as most of this i am writting from memory, which may be cloudy

 

[Slimmmmmm]

I don't understand why anyone would would to download torrents with the wii... Talk about a sure fire way to drastically shorten your wii life.

Nuff said.

WebUI is a very good idea though. xtalarge metioned a channel, that would be cool next to your internet channel, a local channel, for all your "get the pc to do this" tasks.

 

[cr08]

Sooo many things wrong in the past two posts:

1) NOBODY even considered using the NAND flash to store torrents and if they did, it'd be pretty assinine to do so. That is what SD and USB storage is for.
2) High ram usage only means one thing: A shitty torrent client. Firefox can easily use over 100MB of ram, but you don't see the internet channel complaining? A custom (and properly written) torrent client for the Wii should have no problems with the system's available ram.
3) Did you ever possibly consider that file manipulation after the fact is not REQUIRED in this case? Load up a bunch of torrents that download to a USB hard drive, disconnect when all done, move over to a PC. Or, there is always the perfect possibility of adding simultaneous samba access over the network to said USB drive while the Wii is using it.
4) And as far as using the inherent flash of an SD card: There is a certain feature in MANY torrent clients where it will download and hold onto data till it gets to a certain stored amount (2MB, 4MB, etc.) and then write it all in one go to reduce how many writes are made to the drive. A single torrent run with this feature from start to finish even on the largest available SD card would not use NEARLY a fraction of it's allotted write cycles. And like many other flash devices, reads are irrelevant as they do not modify the bits in any way which is what ultimately wears down the drive.

 

[digitydogs]

Love people who think they are right and say no one reads
Re-read my post carefully. I state that most of the issues can be worked around. No high ram usage does not mean a shitty torrent client. Go download a large file and check your memory usage jackass. As far as the internet channel.. hmm a underpowered nowhere near full featured browser.... i wonder why it doesn't have any issues being able to eat 88 megs of ram to itself If the files aren't being stored in ram then they have to be constantly written to a disk. Which is going to cause The high read write problems with either sd or Flash. Uhm 99% of torrents nowadays require some form of unpacking/file manipulation. I cant think of one instance where something you'd download to the wii via a torrent would be able to be used in the form you receive it.
The whole point of my post was that it is possible but pointless. as you yourself admit that even with a USB HD you would still have to move it to the pc... and Samba access yeah thats possible but again WHAT IS THE POINT of downloading over a slower wi-fi connection to your wii, and then turning around and re-transfering it to your home system over the same slow wifi... Again i already adressed caching and if you had one clue how it worked you would realise that torrents DO NOT download sequentially and therefore even with caching you will have a large number of unneeded writes,
You have not made one decent or valid point again the post you attempted to flame. Go read do some research and come back when you have something valid to add. Oh yeah and think before you speak. thanks.

 

[Beatchu]

Im sure 1 instance could be a pr0n jpeg uncompressed...

 

[digitydogs]

Porn the ultimate excuse for anything, lol

I see this becoming a flame war, so im going to leave this topic be.

Anyone seriously interested in this idea do some web searching for real info. As opinions are like assholes and everyone has one.

 

[cr08]

No high ram usage does not mean a shitty torrent client. Go download a large file and check your memory usage jackass.Love the choice of words. And guess what, 10MB ram usage from utorrent with a 25GB torrent going. What did you say about shitty torrent clients?

Uhm 99% of torrents nowadays require some form of unpacking/file manipulation. I cant think of one instance where something you'd download to the wii via a torrent would be able to be used in the form you receive it.Maybe YOUR torrents. Fact is, you don't NEED to work with the files on the Wii the very second it finishes downloading. Ya know, like park about a dozen queued torrents on it, wait till it's all done, THEN work with the files on another machine?

WHAT IS THE POINT of downloading over a slower wi-fi connection to your wii, and then turning around and re-transfering it to your home system over the same slow wifiYou do realize that the wireless connection itself is inherently faster than the internet connection you are downloading through? It may still be slow, but not godawful slow.
QUOTE(digitydogs @ Nov 18 2008, 06:36 PM) Again i already adressed caching and if you had one clue how it worked you would realise that torrents DO NOT download sequentially and therefore even with caching you will have a large number of unneeded writes,

It's called fragmented writes. On top of that, I think most people would be using a USB hard drive and those daring enough to use a flash device would know the consequences.
QUOTE(digitydogs @ Nov 18 2008, 06:36 PM)

You have not made one decent or valid point again the post you attempted to flame. Go read do some research and come back when you have something valid to add. Oh yeah and think before you speak. thanks.

I did read tyvm. YOU clearly did not consider everything here and seem to think the only use for a torrent client on the Wii would be for instant gratification pirated torrents which would OBVIOUSLY be worthless to try with a torrent client built for the Wii. One instant case I can see is for seeding a good sized torrent on the side. No writing necessary, just reading. No need to transfer or unpack files or any of that garbage. PERFECT use without tieing up a computer.

Simply put: A torrent client for the Wii is PERFECTLY possible, COMPLETELY realistic, and not WORTHLESS as some people might seem to think.

*climbs out of the cesspool of gbatemp for now*