# BitTorious volunteer: server-side extensions for centrally-managed volunteer storage in BitTorrent swarms

## TL;DR

The BitTorious Volunteer project enables public users to donate storage space for scientific data through a modified BitTorrent system, potentially offering large-scale storage at low cost.

## Contribution

A server-side BitTorrent extension is introduced to allow anonymous public storage donations for scientific data archival.

## Key findings

- The BitTorious portal v3.0.0 includes server-side support for volunteer storage donations.
- Automated test cases validate the 'peer affinity' concept and announcement protocol.
- A C++ reference implementation of affinity calculation is provided for integration into libtorrent-based projects.

## Abstract

Our publication of the BitTorious portal [1] demonstrated the ability to create a privatized distributed data warehouse of sufficient magnitude for real-world bioinformatics studies using minimal changes to the standard BitTorrent tracker protocol. In this second phase, we release a new server-side specification to accept anonymous philantropic storage donations by the general public, wherein a small portion of each user’s local disk may be used for archival of scientific data. We have implementated the server-side announcement and control portions of this BitTorrent extension into v3.0.0 of the BitTorious portal, upon which compatible clients may be built.

Automated test cases for the BitTorious Volunteer extensions have been added to the portal’s v3.0.0 release, supporting validation of the “peer affinity” concept and announcement protocol introduced by this specification. Additionally, a separate reference implementation of affinity calculation has been provided in C++ for informaticians wishing to integrate into libtorrent-based projects.

The BitTorrent “affinity” extensions as provided in the BitTorious portal reference implementation allow data publishers to crowdsource the extreme storage prerequisites for research in “big data” fields. With sufficient awareness and adoption of BitTorious Volunteer-based clients by the general public, the BitTorious portal may be able to provide peta-scale storage resources to the scientific community at relatively insignificant financial cost.