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Does every peer become a DHT node every time it requests peers for a particular file? or do nodes exist independently of peers? in essence, how do you become a node? can you be a peer but not a node?

I'm sorry if the question is too simple (noob here) but I wasn't able to find an answer in any other place. The terminology I'm using is the same that is used here.

4nt
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  • You may also want to check out http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1332107/how-does-dht-in-torrents-work and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia – antiduh Jul 03 '14 at 23:30
  • Thanks, but the question I'm asking arose after reading that info. I don't know if I'm missing something though. – 4nt Jul 03 '14 at 23:34

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It is possible to just be a DHT node (a bittorrent client with DHT enabled but no torrents for instance). It is also possible to just be a bittorrent peer (a bittorrent client with DHT disabled and at least one torrent started).

Since the DHT is not tied to any specific torrent, running a (DHT) node will help out the global DHT network by aiding in routing and storing of peer-lists for random torrents.

Conversely, it's possible to be a bittorrent peer without participating in the DHT at all. One could even make DHT lookups for a torrent and still not participate in the DHT (by not responding to any requests for instance).

Arvid
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  • Thanks, that's what I wanted to know. Regarding the last paragraph, how would you make a bittorrent client ignore DHT requests, doesn't disabling DHT prevents you from being both a node and a peer? or were you assuming a hypothetical situation? – 4nt Aug 12 '14 at 11:09
  • Assuming you write your own DHT implementation or modify an existing one. – Arvid Aug 12 '14 at 18:12