How to distribute AWS S3 objects using BitTorrent

S3 provides highly available and reliable file hosting, but it could become very costly to distribute large files such ISO images as AWS charges for bandwidth usage. You can significantly reduce bandwidth usage by distributing your large files using BitTorrent protocol.

You can distribute and seed any files in your S3 bucket via BitTorrent protocol by configuring public access to your files and adding torrent parameters when accessing the files.

1. Create an S3 bucket.

   Related: How to create private AWS S3 bucket
   Related: How to create public AWS S3 bucket

2. Go to S3 dashboard of your AWS Management Console.

   Related: AWS S3 Management Console

3. Click on the bucket that contains the file that you want to distribute using BitTorrent.
4. Click on the upload button.
5. Click on the Add files button.
6. Select file and click the Open button.
7. Click Upload to start uploading the file to AWS.
8. Wait for upload to finish.
9. Enable public access to the file.

   Related: How to allow public access to private AWS S3 bucket objects

   This is required even if your bucket is already configured with public access policy.

10. Click on the file that you want to distribute using BitTorrent.

    This and the remaining steps are to test that you can download the file using a BitTorrent client.

11. Copy the Object URL at the bottom of page.
12. Paste URL in browser and append ?torrent towards the end. Press Enter.
13. Use the downloaded torrent file to start downloading the S3 file using your favorite BitTorrent client.