simpletorrent

simpletorrent is a simple torrent client written in C++. It supports downloading (no uploading) of torrent files, including multi-file torrents. This project was meant for me to learn more about the bittorrent protocol as well as experiment with modern C++ features and design. For detailed features of the implementation, refer to Technical Design.

Resources referenced while writing simpletorrent include:

• Building a BitTorrent client from the ground up in Go
• https://github.com/ss16118/torrent-client-cpp

Quick Start

simpletorrent requires a C++20 compiler and CMake >=3.16 to build, and is written to be used on a Linux platform.
simpletorrent has OpenSSL dependencies so install the libssl-dev package: sudo apt-get install libssl-dev

1. Clone the repository
2. mkdir build_release
3. cd build_release
4. cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
5. make
6. ./simpletorrent <path to torrent file>

Example torrents

You may find some example torrents in example-torrents folder. It contains a debian ISO torrent, and a MARS dataset from https://academictorrents.com/.

Future to-dos

Torrent client only seems to be performant on a high speed internet connection. To investigate how to make it work better on lower speed connections.