this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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PeerTube

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PeerTube is a tool for sharing online videos developed by Framasoft, a french non-profit.

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I just watched how PeerTube is intended to work (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 6 days ago by squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de to c/peertube@lemmy.wtf
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Usually it shows around 1-2 peers on the player when I watch videos on PeerTube. I just watched a video that had up to 20 peers.

Here are the stats

Total downloaded: 1.5 GB
* From servers: 149 MB
* From peers: 1.3 GB
Total uploaded: 618 MB

I left the video open while writing this text an now I uploaded a total of 1.0 GB.

Nice to see PeerTube in action in a real peer to peer way.

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[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Oh wow I did not realise peertube was like torrenting almost! That is so cool :)

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 14 points 6 days ago

Peer to peer, hence the name. :)

[–] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Considering how often people try to retort "BuT WhAt aBoUt tHe bAnDwIdTh cOsTs" whenever it's mentioned as a YouTube alternative, it seems like almost nobody realizes that.

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 6 days ago

Yeah. Because if it was hosted the same way lemmy is (with storage of posts across all servers once they federate) it would be a storage and bandwidth nightmare.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

IIRC, they used some torrent codebase. It's like a closed tracker.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

In the blog post for PeerTube v6, it says:

We needed to settle a technical debt : v6 removes support for WebTorrent to focus on HLS (with WebRTC P2P). Both are technical bricks used to get peer-to-peer streaming in web browsers, but HLS is more fitted to what we are doing (and plan to do) with PeerTube

So, I guess, they use a more custom implementation now...

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 3 points 6 days ago

TIL, thanks!

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 13 points 6 days ago

It's really awesome and it's also possible to setup your PeerTube instance as a peer, for another PeerTube instance's videos.

You can see here:

The instance videos.abnormalbeings.space has a copy of the video 17 New Indie Games – June 2025, that's hosted on PeerTube.wtf.

So when you go to the video, you'll see it has at least 2 peers - peertube.wtf + videos.abnormalbeings.space.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've never seen any stats while watching on a browser or the iOS app. Where did you get those numbers?

[–] squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de 11 points 6 days ago (1 children)

On a browser the stats are hidden behind the text "1 peer" on the bottom right of the player, next to the volume icon. When you hover over "1 peer" the stats will appear.

Haven't seen this in the android app either.

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Oh that's true. When I watch something from the featured channels (i.e. something everyone else cares about, but I have zero interest in), there's an upload download counter etc. However, when I watch something that I actually want to click, I see none of that.

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Ah, are these the local stats for your computer traffic? Or is it a total for that particular video?

[–] squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Those are local stats

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Er, yikes, over how much time?

Is your bandwidth uncapped?

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 6 points 6 days ago

You can disable the P2P feature.

[–] squirrel@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 6 days ago

This is for a 15 minute long video. I have unlimited bandwidth.

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

A lot of residential plans where I live only cap the downloads.

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The hell? That's fucked up....

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I mean they probably throttle upload to 1/10th the bandwidth as download...

[–] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 1 points 6 days ago

Ding ding ding!