2. Osprey Concept Guide

General overview of Osprey and BitTorrent. Recommended for anyone interested in using Osprey or setting up an Osprey-driven web site.

2.1. Osprey in a Nutshell

Osprey is an application suite designed to facilitate large-scale content distribution via BitTorrent. The public face is a web application, which presents information about the available content. Closely tied to the web application is a choice of two BitTorrent trackers: a php-based tracker or a C++ tracker. A single database is used for the web application and either tracker application.

The third component is Permaseed, a permanent BitTorrent seed. Unlike most BT software, which behaves like a desktop application, a permaseed acts like a server application. It is designed to run in a data center environment, deliver content from shared storage infrastructure, and scale to serve terabytes of files. Permaseed is the link between stored files and the BitTorrent network.

2.2. Osprey document objects

An Osprey document object (or just Osprey document) is descriptive information (metadata) about content. This might be a video file, software, music, a book. The more accurate and detailed the descriptive information, the easier it is for people to find things.

Descriptive information in Osprey is essentially Open Source Metadata Framework (OMF). OMF is based on Dublin Core metadata and was designed for Open Source software projects. However, it remains flexible and can be used to describe a wide variety of content.

2.2.1. Descriptive information/metadata

The descriptive information for Osprey documents is also known as attributes. Among the commonly used attributes are:

  • Title - Primary name given to a document

  • Category - Document grouping or classification (audio, video, software, unclassified)

  • Identifier - URI of an original source or web site

  • Created date - Publication or release date of the content

  • Description - Extended details in free-text form

  • License - Copying, distribution, or intellectual property rights

2.2.2. Super-docs and Sub-docs

Osprey documents can be linked together in a hierarchical fashion. This facilitates grouping documents into small clusters. For example, if you have a set of video files for a conference, they could be grouped into topics and sessions.

2.2.3. Osprey documents and torrents

In an Osprey site, torrents are linked to documents. This means that people can search the site, find something interesting, look at the related torrent files for that document, then download the desired files.

2.3. BitTorrent

BitTorrent is a means of downloading files and falls into the category of peer-to-peer applications. It is very well suited for downloading large files, such as software, music, video, or data sets. In fact, the advantage of BitTorrent is that while you download files, you are also helping others download the same files. Your client grabs files from other BitTorrent clients and shares those files with other clients. Everyone wins, especially if the files are popular and the primary source is flooded with download requests.

BitTorrent can be broken into three components:

  • BitTorrent client - the application or software tool used to download files.

  • Torrent file - a small file that a BitTorrent client needs to begin downloading files. As long as the torrent file is fetched from a web site you trust, you should get the files you want.

  • BitTorrent tracker - the part of a BitTorrent web site that helps the BitTorrent clients talk to each other.

2.4. Web application navigation

Dashboard: The main content area of in the Osprey application. This area is subdivided into dashboard blocks. In future versions, administrators will be able to define custom dashboard blocks. Additionally, users will be able to create custom dashboard views by choosing which dashboard blocks to display.

Sidebar: The area to the right of the dashboard. A search box, news items, and other information are displayed here.