BitTorrent IPv6 Client

Because I could not find any Peer2Peer Software that supports IPv6 I decided to see if I could add support for it to one of the existing protocols. Adding this support BitTorrent seemed to be easy, because the protocol does not make any restrictions what is transfers as the peer IP address. and I started to work on it.

After 2 days the result is an IPv6 enabled BitTorrent peer client and tracker. You can download it from this page. For IPv6 support python2.3 is required.

IPv6 support is available for the tracker and the peers.

IPv6 enabled Tracker:
The tracker will accept IPv4 and IPv6 connections (if not bound to a specific address with --bind). The type of connection the peer makes to the tracker decides with type of IP is used in the peer list. Peers connecting through IPv4 connections will be listed with IPv4 address, IPv6 connecting peers with IPv6, if they do not specify a different address with --ip.

IPv6 enabled Peer Client:
The client can connect to IPv6 and IPv4 peers without problems.

The type of connections to the peer depend on the type of address that is listed in the peer list from the tracker.

• If the peer is listed with IPv4 (either because it connected to the tracker by IPv4 or used the --ip switch with an IPv4) it will work like before (if not bound to an IPv6 adress with --bind, what makes no sense).
• If the peer ist listed with IPv6 (as above IPv6 connection to tracker or --ip switch with IPv6) it only other IPv6 clients can make connections to it. The peer itself can still connect to other IPv4 clients, so it will perform like a firewalled client to IPv4 only peers. Even if you do not have a IPv6 connection to the tracker you can use the --ip switch to force your IPv6 address in the peer list and IPv6 peers can communite over IPv6 when the tracker does not support IPv6.
• If the peer is listed with a domain name (with --ip switch) peers should be able to connect with every IP address associated with the domain name. So if the domain has a A and AAAA entry IPv6 peers can connect via IPv6 and IPv4 clients with IPv4.

Download: bittorrent.tar.bz2