Archive: https://archive.today/BXc0m From the post: >>A tracker is a core component of the BitTorrent protocol. Trackers are the services that point you to other peers for the torrent. Without trackers, there would be no one to share the file with. Obviously this represents a major source of centralization in the torrent protocol. If your trackers aren’t maintained – or if they get forced offline by certain industry organizations – you’re out of luck. We have an alternative, called Mainline DHT, which performs a more decentralized lookup of peers based on infohash alone. DHT isn’t perfect, though. It relies on bootstrap nodes and is vulnerable to Sybil attacks. And in the example of my poorly-served torrent, DHT wasn’t surfacing any peers, regardless.