computer lab software distribution

[rbos]

I've been experimenting with torrents on and off for computer lab software distribution, and Bittorrent Sync sounds like it could be what I need.

I'd like to be able to have one host containing a folder to distribute to all computers. Computers should be able to join the swarm at any time and ideally fetch chunks of the file as close to themselves as they can (over the local network switch if possible).

One computer should be able to contact a LAN host and at full network bandwidth be able to make a local copy of a remote folder. Normal torrent tends to fail at this because you can only make one TCP connection per host. So when you only have one seed and one leech in the swarm, then it only downloads one chunk at a time, which doesn't come close to maximizing available bandwidth.

It has to be completely silent and automated, with no user interaction.

It would be nice to run it trackerless, but I can (and do) run a local tracker.

So far, my best results have been to mount the remote filesystem using CIFS, then start up four seed instances on localhost plus a fifth to do the actual download. That gives the individual computer in the swarm four guaranteed seeds, which comes pretty close to saturating the available network bandwidth. However it is pretty hacky and still does not give very consistent performance.

Would Bittorrent Sync work in my situation or should I keep using aria2c or some other equivalent?

[Harold Feit]