- Tracker Announce URL
The Announce URL is used by BitTorrent clients to make a
connection with your tracker. Torrents created for your tracker
must use your tracker's Announce URL, or they will not function
properly.
If a torrent with an incorrect Announce URL is uploaded to your
tracker, the members of the swarm will never be able to make
connections with the tracker or each other, and the number of
seeds/peers listed in your torrent table will always be 0.
Your tracker's Announce URL is the URL of your tracker
(including the port number) followed by /announce.
http://my.domain.com:6969/announce
PLEASE NOTE: The Announce URL does not have a trailing slash ( / ).
If used, the URL is considered incorrect and the torrent will
not function properly.
- Force Announce URL (on Upload)
By default, BNBT EasyTracker does not force an Announce URL on
uploaded torrents. This feature causes the Announce URL in a
torrent to be modified when the torrent is uploaded to the
tracker using the Torrent File Uploader.
It is not a good idea to use this feature in my opinion, because
if someone uploads an invalid torrent, there is no way for you,
as an administrator, to determine why the torrent is not active.
i.e. Incorrect Announce URL, Different Tracker Announce URL.
It will simply appear that no one is using the torrent.
Of course, if the original torrent uploader starts her seeding
by clicking the download link for the torrent, it will actually
work properly. However, if she launches the torrent she created
from her hard drive, and the torrent has the incorrect Announce
URL, none of the downloaders that use the posted torrent will
be able to download from the original seeder.
This configuration key's value is specified as follows:
bnbt_force_announce_url = http://my.domain.com:6969/announce
If you do not force the Announce URL, you can easily open the
torrent file in TorrentSpy, to see if the correct Announce URL
was used for any given torrent. A torrent's Announce URL can
also be edited using MakeTorrent. Once saved, the modification
date will be changed and will be placed at the top of the
torrent table if sorting by descending date.
- Force Announce URL on Download
In addition to allowing the tracker to modify the Announce URL
for uploaded torrents, you also have the option of modifying
the Announce URL when a user downloads a torrent using the
download link on your torrent table.
This feature will not modify the Announce URL of the torrent
stored in your tracker, but will only modify it on-the-fly
per user, when the torrent is downloaded.
This method of Announce URL modification is typically only
useful if your tracker's URL changes. This can, however, cause
problems. If the original seeder (or anyone seeding with the
complete file/fileset) does not use the download link on the
torrent table after the URL change, new downloaders will not
be able to make a connection with the members of the swarm.
This feature ONLY works properly in conjunction with Force
Announce URL.
bnbt_force_announce_url = http://my.domain.com:6969/announce
bnbt_force_announce_url_on_download = 1
- Announce URL Displayed on the BNBT File Uploader
When a user with upload permission visits your tracker's
Torrent File Uploader, the Announce URL will be displayed for
her convenience.
— If you are using the default configuration and NOT FORCING an
Announce URL, the displayed value will be contructed using the
URL currently displayed in the user's web browser with
/announce tacked on to the end.
Announce URL: http://my.domain.com:6969/announce
This confuses many tracker administrators, when they visit their
own tracker using either localhost or their internal
network IP Address, because those values will be used in the
display, such as:
Announce URL: http://localhost:6969/announce
... or
Announce URL: http://192.168.1.2:6969/announce
Please be assured that outside visitors will never see these
incorrect Announce URLs. This display can also be hidden by
setting the display to none in your tracker's stylesheet:
.announce_url { display:none }
— If your tracker is configured to force an Announce URL,
the forced Announce URL will be displayed on the Torrent File
Uploader as such:
Auto Announce URL: http://my.domain.com:6969/announce
This value is taken directly from your tracker's configuration
file and can also be hidden using the same css specification
shown above. Please notice the addition of Auto,
which specifies that the Announce URL is being forced.
