High-performance open BitTorrent tracker, consisting of sub-implementations for different protocols:
| Name | Protocol | OS requirements |
|---|---|---|
| aquatic_udp | BitTorrent over UDP | Unix-like (using mio) |
| aquatic_http | BitTorrent over HTTP with TLS (rustls) | Linux 5.8+ (using glommio) |
| aquatic_ws | WebTorrent over TLS (rustls, optional) | Linux 5.8+ (using glommio) |
Features at a glance:
- Multithreaded design for handling large amounts of traffic
- All data is stored in-memory (no database needed)
- IPv4 and IPv6 support, with separate swarms
- Supports forbidding/allowing info hashes
- Built-in TLS support (no reverse proxy needed)
- Automated CI testing of full file transfers
Known users:
- explodie.org public tracker (
udp://explodie.org:6969), typically serving ~80,000 requests per second
- Install Rust with rustup (latest stable release is recommended)
- Install cmake with your package manager (e.g.,
apt-get install cmake) - Clone this git repository and enter the directory
- Build the implementations that you are interested in:
# Tell Rust to enable support for all SIMD extensions present on current CPU
# except for those relating to AVX-512. SIMD is required for aquatic_ws and
# recommended for the other implementations. If you run a processor that
# doesn't clock down when using AVX-512, you can enable those instructions
# too.
. ./scripts/env-native-cpu-without-avx-512
cargo build --release -p aquatic_udp
cargo build --release -p aquatic_http
cargo build --release -p aquatic_wsGenerate configuration files. They come with comments and differ between protocols.
./target/release/aquatic_udp -p > "aquatic-udp-config.toml"
./target/release/aquatic_http -p > "aquatic-http-config.toml"
./target/release/aquatic_ws -p > "aquatic-ws-config.toml"Make adjustments to the files. You will likely want to adjust address
(listening address) under the network section.
Note that both aquatic_http and aquatic_ws require configuring certificate
and private key files to run over TLS (which is optional for aquatic_ws).
More details are available in the respective configuration files.
To increase performance, number of worker threads can be increased. The sum of
socket_workers and swarm_workers should equal the total number of CPU cores
that you want to use. Recommended proportions:
| aquatic_udp | aquatic_ws | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU cores | N | 2-11 | 12-19 | >=20 |
| Swarm workers | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Socket workers | N-1 | 1-10 | 10-17 | >=17 |
Access control by info hash is supported for all protocols. The relevant part of configuration is:
[access_list]
# Access list mode. Available modes are allow, deny and off.
mode = "off"
# Path to access list file consisting of newline-separated hex-encoded info hashes.
path = ""The file is read on start and when the program receives SIGUSR1. If initial
parsing fails, the program exits. Later failures result in in emitting of
an error-level log message, while successful updates of the access list result
in emitting of an info-level log message.
aquatic_http and aquatic_ws support exporting Prometheus metrics.
Pass the prometheus feature when building:
. ./scripts/env-native-cpu-without-avx-512
cargo build --release -p aquatic_ws --features "prometheus"
cargo build --release -p aquatic_http --features "prometheus"Then activate the prometheus endpoint in the configuration file:
[metrics]
run_prometheus_endpoint = true
prometheus_endpoint_address = "0.0.0.0:9000"If you're running aquatic_http or aquatic_ws, please make sure locked memory
limits are sufficient:
- If you're using a systemd service file, add
LimitMEMLOCK=65536000to it - Otherwise, add the following lines to
/etc/security/limits.conf, and then log out and back in:
* hard memlock 65536
* soft memlock 65536
Once done, start the application:
./target/release/aquatic_udp -c "aquatic-udp-config.toml"
./target/release/aquatic_http -c "aquatic-http-config.toml"
./target/release/aquatic_ws -c "aquatic-ws-config.toml"If your server is pointed to by domain example.com and you configured the
tracker to run on port 3000, people can now use it by adding its URL to their
torrent files or magnet links:
| Implementation | Announce URL |
|---|---|
| aquatic_udp | udp://example.com:3000 |
| aquatic_http | https://example.com:3000/announce |
| aquatic_ws | wss://example.com:3000 |
Implements:
- BEP 015: UDP BitTorrent tracker protocol (more details). Exceptions:
- Doesn't care about IP addresses sent in announce requests. The packet source IP is always used.
- Doesn't track the number of torrent downloads (0 is always sent).
This is the most mature of the implementations. I consider it ready for production use.
More details are available here.
- Using glommio
- Using io-uring
- Using zerocopy + vectored sends for responses
- Using sendmmsg
Implements:
- BEP 003: HTTP BitTorrent protocol (more details). Exceptions:
- Only runs over TLS
- Doesn't track the number of torrent downloads (0 is always sent)
- Only compact responses are supported
- BEP 023: Compact HTTP responses
- BEP 007: IPv6 support
- BEP 048: HTTP scrape support. Notes:
- Doesn't allow full scrapes, i.e. of all registered info hashes
aquatic_http has not been tested as much as aquatic_udp but likely works
fine in production.
Running behind a reverse proxy is currently not supported due to the difficulties of determining the originating IP address without knowing the exact setup.
More details are available here.
Aims for compatibility with WebTorrent clients. Notes:
- Doesn't track the number of torrent downloads (0 is always sent).
- Doesn't allow full scrapes, i.e. of all registered info hashes
aquatic_ws has not been tested as much as aquatic_udp but likely works
fine in production.
Running behind a reverse proxy is supported, as long as IPv4 requests are proxied to IPv4 requests, and IPv6 requests to IPv6 requests.
More details are available here.
There are load test binaries for all protocols. They use a CLI structure similar to the trackers and support generation and loading of configuration files.
To run, first start the tracker that you want to test. Then run the corresponding load test binary:
./scripts/run-load-test-udp.sh
./scripts/run-load-test-http.sh
./scripts/run-load-test-ws.shTo fairly compare HTTP performance to opentracker, set keep_alive to false in
aquatic_http settings.
Copyright (c) 2020-2023 Joakim Frostegård
Distributed under Apache 2.0 license (details in LICENSE file.)
The tracker is called aquatic because it thrives under a torrent of bits ;-)