STUN is not always possible and TURN means proxying the connection through a server which would be counter-productive for the purpose of using bit-torrent as an alternative to direct HTTP downloads as you are now paying for the bandwidth in both directions. This is very much not a problem with magic solutions.
Re:Download responsibly
by jauntywundrkind on Tuesday September 23, 2025 @11:57AM
(#45348833)
Agreed! But STUN's success rate is pretty good! As the number of peers goes up it should be less likely that one would need to use TURN to connect to a peer, but I am skeptical webrtc is built to fall back like this, to try other peers first.
The advantage is that at least it's all builtin. It's not a magic solution, but it's a pretty good solution, with fallbacks builtin for when the networking gets in the way of the magic.
This basically handles every problem stated. There's nothing to install on computers: it's just js running on the page. There's no firewall rules or port forwarding to setup, all handled by the stun/turn in webrtc. Users wouldn't necessarily even be aware they are uploading.