Opentracker
BitTorrent peer tracker software
title: "Opentracker" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["bittorrent-tracker-for-linux", "free-network-related-software"] description: "BitTorrent peer tracker software" topic_path: "technology/operating-systems" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opentracker" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary BitTorrent peer tracker software ::
::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | opentracker |
| logo | Opentracker logo.svg |
| developer | ("erdgeist") |
| programming language | C |
| operating_system | Unix-like (Linux, BSD, ...) |
| size | ~95 KiB |
| genre | BitTorrent tracker |
| license | Beerware |
| website | |
| :: |
| name = opentracker | logo = Opentracker logo.svg | developer = ("erdgeist") | programming language = C | operating_system = Unix-like (Linux, BSD, ...) | size = ~95 KiB | genre = BitTorrent tracker | license = Beerware | website =
Opentracker is a free (licensed as beerware) BitTorrent peer tracker software (a special kind of HTTP or UDP server software) that is designed to be fast and to have a low consumption of system resources.
Features
Several instances of opentracker may be run in a cluster, with all of them synchronizing with each other. Besides the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) opentracker may also be connected to via User Datagram Protocol (UDP), which creates less than half of the tracker traffic HTTP creates.{{cite web | url=https://xbtt.sourceforge.net/udp_tracker_protocol.html | title=UDP tracker protocol | date=March 19, 2006 | publisher=XBT Tracker | access-date=June 1, 2009 | archive-date=July 27, 2010 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100727015406/http://xbtt.sourceforge.net/udp_tracker_protocol.html | url-status=live | url=https://bmaurer.blogspot.com/2007/02/big-media-dmca-notices-guilty-until.html | title=Big Media DMCA Notices: Guilty until proven innocent | first=Ben | last=Maurer | date=February 7, 2007 | access-date=June 1, 2009 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090309212046/http://bmaurer.blogspot.com/2007/02/big-media-dmca-notices-guilty-until.html | archive-date=March 9, 2009 | url-status=dead | df=mdy-all opentracker may mix in random IP address numbers for the purpose of plausible deniability.
Technology
It runs completely in RAM, accounting for much of its speed advantage over other tracker software. It is written in C and based on the library libowfat that manages network connections. For some new functionality like the UDP support with IPv6{{cite web | url=http://opentracker.blog.h3q.com/2007/12/28/the-ipv6-situation/ | title=The IPv6 situation | first=Dirk ("erdgeist") | last=Engling | date=December 28, 2007 | access-date=January 8, 2013 | archive-date=February 4, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130204033601/http://opentracker.blog.h3q.com/2007/12/28/the-ipv6-situation/ | url-status=live
Adoption
The world's largest tracker at The Pirate Bay switched from their selfmade software Hypercube to opentracker in the end of 2007.{{cite web | url=http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-switches-to-opentracker-071208/ | title=The Pirate Bay Now Running on Opentracker | first=Ernesto | last=Van Der Sar | date=December 8, 2007 | publisher=TorrentFreak | access-date=June 1, 2009 | archive-date=January 31, 2010 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100131084738/http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-switches-to-opentracker-071208/ | url-status=live
The Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation uses it to distribute their own TV shows.{{cite web | url=http://nrkbeta.no/2009/03/08/norwegian-broadcasting-corporation-sets-up-its-own-bittorrent-tracker/ | title=Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation sets up its own bittorrent tracker | author=Eirik Solheim | date=March 8, 2009 | access-date=January 8, 2013 | archive-date=February 3, 2013 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130203152057/http://nrkbeta.no/2009/03/08/norwegian-broadcasting-corporation-sets-up-its-own-bittorrent-tracker/ | url-status=live
Popular public torrent trackers opentrackr{{cite web | url=https://opentrackr.org/ | title=OpenTrackr.org - Free to use torrent tracker | date=February 10, 2019 | access-date=April 21, 2024 | archive-date=April 3, 2024 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240403212048/http://opentrackr.org/ | url-status=live | url=https://twitter.com/opentrackr/status/1081698792376844289 | title=OpenTrackr on Twitter | date=February 10, 2019 | url=http://coppersurfer.tk/ | title=Open torrent tracker coppersurfer | date=February 10, 2019 | access-date=April 21, 2024 | archive-date=October 22, 2020 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201022155941/http://coppersurfer.tk/ | url-status=live
References
References
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::