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there are a number of ways, from deep packet inspection (studying packets and throttling those that appear BT-ish) to just cutting the uplink speed for a naughty subscriber. i think i my ISP may have done that to me already, judging by my ratios.

i do my own traffic shaping in my house with a linksys router running openwrt and x-wrt. i do all my BT stuff from a vmware machine dedicated to all things BT (a win2k workstation running uTorrent) and i told the QOS config to file all traffic to and from his internal IP as bulk. i also use QOS to give priority to all traffic to and from my VOIP telephone adapter.

in case you are not a linksys firmware freak... putting openwrt on your router is like upgrading your PC to openBSD. loading x-wrt on your openwrt router is like installing KDE on your openBSD machine.

the result is BT can leech and seed 24x7x365, the humans in the house can surf and game unimpeeded and phone calls suffer no jitter from MMORPGS or BT.

i feel sort of like a hypocrite for being a net neutrality fanboy and using QOS inside my firewall... but at least i can trust myself to not degrade my access in favor of my own proprietary offerings.

some may say i am a little too trusting, but i have known me for a long time... i think we can trust eachother.

Use Azureus or utorrent and it doesn't matter that the tracker is down. They both use a DHT (distributed hashtable) that enables peers to find each other without the aid of a centralised tracker. It works surprisingly well, too.

Q: How will uTorrent's technology be integrated with the current BitTorrent client?

A: Although uTorrent is lightweight, it is missing the patented innovations BitTorrent has made at the protocol level. It is also lacking an implementation for Mac and Linux. We will improve uTorrent in these arenas.

Your subject: Open? And the FAQ says:

The uTorrent code base will remain closed source.

Q: Will the uTorrent code base be released into the open source?

A: The uTorrent code base will remain closed source.

Funny, I thought the leading bittorrent client was written in C++.

All kidding aside, you can't beat optimized C++.

• uTorrent (BitTorrent, Windows)
• Azureus (BitTorrent, Java)
• BitTornado (BitTorrent, Windows/Linux/BSD)
• KTorrent (BitTorrent, Linux/BSD/Mac)
• eMule (eDonkey, Windows)
• aMule (eDonkey, Linux/BSD/Mac/Windows)
• FrostWire (Gnutella, Java)
• Cabos (Gnutella, Java)
• Shareaza (Gnutella2/Gnutella1/eDonkey, Windows)
• Ares (Ares, Windows)
• DC++ (DirectConnect, Windows)
• RevConnect (DirectConnect, Windows)
• Valknut (DirectConnect, Linux/BSD/Mac)

I couldn't find active links for one or two of them myself, but here's an updated list -- in some cases these aren't the original sites, which have disappeared, so obviously it's worth being extra careful with antivirus software... apologies for the mess of links; the filter doesn't like short lines...

1by1 (play MP3s), AriskKey (recover passwords), AutoRuns (enumerate startup tasks), BurnCDCC (burn ISO images), CD (basic CD player), CDex (rip CDs + convert MP3/WAV), Copier [0X Copy Machine] (scan + print), CWShredder (clean spyware), DComBob (tame DCOM), DirLister (make quick file lists), Discover (force windows onscreen), DupeLocater (find and clean), FileRecovery [PC Inspector] (undelete), Folder2ISO (use with BurnCDCC), FoxitReader (read PDFs), GUIPDFTK (split/join PDFs), HijackThis (find spyware), HJSplit (split/join files), Identify_Boards (identify hardware), KatMouse installer (due to MS drivers), LCISOCreator (make ISO image from CD), Leaktest (test firewall), Microsoft keygen (people lose things), MultiRes (change res + force refresh), Multi Timer (stopwatch), NoteTab Light (text editor), NTest (test monitor setup), OnTop (pin windows to foreground), Process Explorer (task manager), ProduKey (recover passwords), Registry Commander (virus cleanup), ResHacker (examine executables), Rootkit Revealer (just in case) ShootTheMessenger (turn service off), Shred by AnalogX (simple filer shredder), TedNPad (unicode text editor), TFT (dead pixel locator), UNPnP (tame SSDP), UPX (compress executables), UnitConverter (what it says), utorrent (basic torrent app), VCdControlTool (mount ISO images),

The newest Bittorrent clients can encrypt their traffic to make it look random. Together with a random port there should be no way to detect and thus affect the traffic.

Azureus can do it since 2.4.0.0 I think and uTorrent since 1.5.

FYI, I use Shaw as well and find that uTorrent can get around Ellacoya just fine using protcol encryption. Went from around 10k to hitting the caps with that one setting.

Cheers

What does this teach kids? It teaches them that to get what they want they need to download utorrent, go to sites like isohunt and learn how to use DAEMON Tools.

If the kid really wants GTA Cop Killa edition he's going to be able to get the game. If it's a little kid it's the parents who buy the game for him anyway, and if it's a bigger kid then after failing to get it from the store one of his friends is going to tell him about the things I mentioned above.

This is yet another law that targets innocent kids. People will say that the point of the law is to protect kids from the games, but it's really to protect the adults from the kids. There wasn't that much anti video game sentiment until after Columbine. This law has the effect of hitting two birds with one stone, it supposedly stops kids from becoming violent, and it gives the cops and excuse to arrest kids on sight for piracy.

The biggest puzzle here is: why are "minors" the ones that grownups are afraid of? I don't know why either but for some reason they are. They keep us locked up in school all day, and the reason I get for that type of thing when I ask is something along the lines of "it makes it so you don't have a bunch of kids running through the streets unsupervised".

Then you have an assortment of other laws along those lines as well. Minors aren't allowed to drive cars, their not allowed to vote. I may sound kind of crazy here, but after reading this article I'm starting to see a pattern.

uTorrent

It does have screens that are more complex than I like - as I like a "when's the blinking app downloaded yet" type things, but you might like it a lot. Try it and let us know.

I would gladly use a C/C+++ GUI torrent client anyday.

C as in Torrent?

If you are having memory issues with an app that can run in only few tens of megabytes of memory, you need to seriously upgrade your PC.

Azureus needs tens of megabytes? There is a client out that needs less than 160KB. Java is definitely not as bad as the GP puts it, but there are quite a few languages out there that are better on memory usage.

You mean a PC that includes:

An office suite.

A standards compliant browswer

Maybe a simple image editor

And maybe a couple of small utility programs.

Yeah, I guess that would be worth paying for....
I mean, it's not like people are giving it away for free.

I think that FrostWire deserves a mention aswell.

Essentially, it's a open source Limewire client which connects to Gnutella. It looks like the "pro" version of Limewire, so it's easy to use but it's free and open source.

Also, uTorrentdeserves a mention to be wicked-small and fast Torrent client for Windows. It only takes 155 KB of space!

utorrent - www.utorrent.com

In part, Azureus and the BitTorrent programs are attractive because they are free software—users are free to run, share, and modify the software. By contrast, uTorrent is non-free software—users can't be sure what they're really running because they can't inspect the program or get others they trust to inspect the software for them. If uTorrent doesn't do what a user wants, changes are difficult to implement (if not effectively impossible) and are not legally allowed besides. Don't think about helping your community by improving uTorrent and distributing the improved version, users can't legally do that either. Despite these restrictions, the uTorrent refers to the situation uTorrent users face as "support" in the uTorrent FAQ which frames the issue not from the perspective that users deserve software freedom, but the more narrow developmental goals of the Open Source movement which merely shrugs slightly disappointedly at proprietary software.

Apparently it takes so little to get some to give up their software freedom, even in circumstances where there are perfectly capable free software programs to do the same job.

Why not try one of the following:

LH-ABC or ABC_OKC

Borh of these are forks of the popular python-based open source bittorrent client ABC which runs on Linux (and is itself based on BitTornado which extended from from Original Bittorrent Core System, coded by Bram Cohen). These forks should therefore also in turn run on Linux. LH-ABC and ABC_OKC both have support for RSS.

uTorrent a very small and popular closed source Microsoft Windows based bitorrent client. Has extensive support for RSS and can be run on Linux using Wine (I don't know how successfully but I know it can and has been done).

G3 TorrentAnother open-source Python based bittorrent client the Original Bittorrent Core System, coded by Bram Cohen. It has support for RSS and runs on Linux (I think).

Rufus Another open-source Python based bittorrent client (based on G3 Torrent) with support for RSS and runs on Linux (I think).

ZipTorrent Another closed source (and supposedly small) Microsoft Windows based bitorrent client. Has support for RSS, other than that I don't know anything about it.

Yes, at least one. The best Windows bittorrent client ever: http://www.utorrent.com/

It offers all of the features that Azureus supports, with a much faster slicker interface. It is of course, Windows only. I have no idea if it works on WINE. It is also very very small, a single executable file currently 154.44k (The download page doesn't even bother to zip up the exe file)

I always used azureus until I found this beauty. Everyone should give it a shot if they are on Windows.

uTorrent is a simple, elegant solution. :-)

http://www.utorrent.com/

I use uTorrent myself. A while ago, my isp (rogers.com) decided to start throttling bittorrent. I need encryption enabled to get by their throttling and get decent speeds. Before I switched to uTorrent I tried many other BT clients, but I must say uTorrent is the best one I've come across so far. Runs alot faster then Azereus and uses less cpu/mem resources. Check it out here http://www.utorrent.com/

You should give uTorrent a try if you like a small elegant client. I switched from the original BitTorrent to BitTornado to uTorrent, which I think is the best one out there right now.

It looks like it's time to migrate to utorrent if you haven't already. There no commercialization associated with it and it's much faster. The only downside is that it's for windows only.

Yep.

Today's the day I make the switch to uTorrent. It's a single executable file less than 160 kb in size.

MiniAim I mean, seriously. How can you go wrong with an 80Kb aim client?
uTorrent - Works better then the normal BitTorrent client.
ABAGames - Pretty much any one of these shooters is worth playing.

And it looks like all the other really obvious stuff has been mentioned. I also reccommend checking out an Ubuntu LiveDisk... As soon as Dapper hits the streets, this laptop will be booting Linux.

Seems no one is giving serious answers so i guess i will be the only one

Freeware or open source software:
01. Firefox, http://www.getfirefox.com/
02. Winamp, http://www.winamp.com/
03. Miranda, http://www.miranda-im.org/
04. Media Player Classic, http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli
05. ffdshow, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/FFDShow.htm
06. CDBurnerXp Pro, http://www.cdburnerxp.se/
07. Daemon-tools, http://www.daemon-tools.cc/
08. uTorrent, http://www.utorrent.com/
09. XnView, http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pierre.g/xnview/enhome.htm l
10. ExactAudioCopy, http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/
11. Dev-C++, http://www.bloodshed.net/devcpp.html
12. 7-zip, http://www.7-zip.org/
13. Real Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
14. QuickTime Alternative, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/QuickTime_Alte rnative.htm
15. Process Explorer, http://www.sysinternals.com/utilities/processexplo rer.html
16. Uniform Server, http://www.uniformserver.com/
17. nLite, http://www.nliteos.com/ (sp+hotfix+driver slipstreaming and ability to remove almost anything from the windows installation disc, including wmp, ie, drivers, services, etc, you can get your windows install disc down to 180MB with a 70MB RAM footprint after boot).

Commercial/Shareware software.
01. NOD32, http://www.nod32.com/ - simply the best antivirus software out there
02. Cinema4D, http://www.maxoncomputer.com/ Great modelling/rendering program (also available for OS X)
03. mIRC, http://www.mirc.com/ not the best irc client, but it has a tiny memory footprint/feature ratio
04. Directory Opus, http://www.gpsoft.com.au/ replace Explorer with a far better file manager.
05. UltraEdit, http://www.ultraedit.com/ great editor for many textbased formats
06. Visual Studio, http://microsoft.com/
07. Nero Burning ROM. http://www.ahead.de/ my burning program of choice

* Crimson Editor An amazingly powerful freeware text / script editor.

  * uTorrent Is there an open source Torrent Client in under 200k? Does it have RSS searching, bandwidth scheduling, automatic resume, and trackerless support? Yes? Oh, good then.

  * As -U- Type. Spell check anywhere. It's a great piece of software, if you can get over the fact that the author barely speaks any english.

  * 3 Plane Soft Screensavers. Ok, they're screensavers. And they're a rip off. But damn they're nice.

  * Trillian. 'nuff said.

  * The Bat! The second best mail client created, behind only KMail.

  * IZarc If there were need for zip clients anymore, this would be the one to have. Also handles about 50 other file standards, integrates really well with explorer, is small and efficient, and did I mention free? Best unzipper out there, including the pay options.

  * Folder Size Shows you how big your folders are. If explorer were made by Apple, it would do this by default.

  * True Crypt Data so secure even it doesn't know if there is more to be found in a file.

  * Thumbs Plus Arguably there are a lot of good applications in this space, and there are ones out there with better interfaces. But it is the only thumbnail application I've ever used that can handle upwards of 20,000 files in a single directory. If you take lots of pictures, this is the one.

  * DVD Decrypter Recently bought out by Macrovision to shut down it's decryptey goodness, DVD Decrypter is really a no-nonsense, no-fuss DVD ripper and burner. Want to rip a movie from a DVD so you can watch it later? One button. Want to rip it back to a DVD? Another button.

  * Microsoft Power Toys Nifty stuff from people who both hate and make the operating system.

And remember to use an antivirus, a firewall, and two anti-spyware suites. My personal favorites are AVG Antivirus, Kerio Personal Firewall, Spybot, and Ad Aware.

Foobar2000 - An audio player that is a painful reminder how heavy iTunes feels. Has 10x the functionality, and brutally enforces good practices in keeping a media library. 0.9 just came out a few weeks ago.

Media Player Classic - The only media player you'll need. With ffdshow, it handles just about anything I can throw at it, audio works, subtitles work, and its one exe.

uTorrent - Everything you'd want from Azureus, in a 150k self-contained exe. Makes it almost manditory to leave it open all the time because its just that slick and efficient.

BurnAtOnce - A cdrdao based burner with an amazingly simple interface. Who needs Nero with this around?

Exact Audio Copy - THE cd ripper. cdparanoia works fine in most cases, but doesn't leave you 100% sure your rip is 100% perfect like this one. And this fits in almost any audio workflow with its advanced tagging, and command line support.

More apps like these on other platforms please!

1. Download a bittorrent client like utorrent.
2. Using utorrent, download the recent security update.
3. burn the image to CD.
4. restart computer to install the update.

• putty + pageant
• total commander
• editplus
• utorrent
• klipfolio

but I'd go nuts trying to download the Daily Show... Why? Because I'd have to find it every day.

Unless you learned how to use uTorrent with miniRSS...

You know, in hacked/custom Linksys firmwares there is this thing called "WDS Watchdog" or "AP Watchdog". It automagically reboots your router in case the radio starts acting weird. Or, if you are some sort of neat freak, there's a cron job for rebooting the router every n minutes (this is actually useful if you got the five-day connection bug and does not know how to get around it)

You say crappy routers, I say get the configuration right. Well tuned a WRT can beat the heck out of many "commercial" grade routers. Oh, and no exploits for you either.

I've noticed fast torrents choking consumerl evel routers and switches on several ocaasions on different networks, and that's just with ONE running torrent. I shudder to think what a room full of torrenting computers would do.

There's a solution to this: you can upgrade to an open-source router firmware that doesn't have the problem. See this guide

Why did muTorrent have to be closed source? :-(

Thanks AC, I didn't know that.

http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php#Why_does_.C2.B5Tor rent_show_less_DHT_peers_in_the_status_bar_than_Bi tComet_Azureus.3F

Fact: Azureus is a CPU and RAM hog. Now granted, give it enough CPU and RAM to work with and obviously you won't notice an impact on system performance. OTOH, try to play any recent 3d game while Azureus is busy, on virtually any system -- you'll find it quickly becomes untenable.

uTorrent does ~99% of what Azureus does, but somehow manages to do it all in a 110k binary, while having virtually no RAM or CPU footprint. (I'm downloading multiple torrents with it just now -- and it's consuming 0-1% cpu, 4,240 kb RAM in task mgr).

However .. some recent changes to uTorrent (latest betas, http://utorrent.com/download/beta/) seem to have rocketed it WAY ahead of the pack in actual transfer completion times. Maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing 5-10x faster overall time for torrents to complete. This appears to have nothing to do with peak bandwidth and everything to do with how quickly uTorrent can connect to peers and begin downloading.

With Azureus I'm accustomed to 10-30 seconds for each peer to establish connection, and another ~10 seconds in the best case to begin actual data transfer. In contrast, with the latest uTorrent beta, I am seeing connections establish in 1-2 seconds, and data begin transferring roughly 1 second after that. The result appears to be that, while my peak transfer rate is about the same as before, uTorrent is managing to keep the average transfer rate consistently high throughout the download. This makes sense, since BT is all about connecting to and switching between peers constantly as it distributes the traffic load. If you've got a relay race going and all the runners are the same speed, but one team takes an extra 30 seconds at each handoff of the baton, you know who's coming in first.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else is seeing this kind of dramatic improvement.
http://utorrent.com/download/beta/

Fact: Azureus is a CPU and RAM hog. Now granted, give it enough CPU and RAM to work with and obviously you won't notice an impact on system performance. OTOH, try to play any recent 3d game while Azureus is busy, on virtually any system -- you'll find it quickly becomes untenable.

uTorrent does ~99% of what Azureus does, but somehow manages to do it all in a 110k binary, while having virtually no RAM or CPU footprint. (I'm downloading multiple torrents with it just now -- and it's consuming 0-1% cpu, 4,240 kb RAM in task mgr).

However .. some recent changes to uTorrent (latest betas, http://utorrent.com/download/beta/) seem to have rocketed it WAY ahead of the pack in actual transfer completion times. Maybe it's just me, but I'm seeing 5-10x faster overall time for torrents to complete. This appears to have nothing to do with peak bandwidth and everything to do with how quickly uTorrent can connect to peers and begin downloading.

With Azureus I'm accustomed to 10-30 seconds for each peer to establish connection, and another ~10 seconds in the best case to begin actual data transfer. In contrast, with the latest uTorrent beta, I am seeing connections establish in 1-2 seconds, and data begin transferring roughly 1 second after that. The result appears to be that, while my peak transfer rate is about the same as before, uTorrent is managing to keep the average transfer rate consistently high throughout the download. This makes sense, since BT is all about connecting to and switching between peers constantly as it distributes the traffic load. If you've got a relay race going and all the runners are the same speed, but one team takes an extra 30 seconds at each handoff of the baton, you know who's coming in first.

I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else is seeing this kind of dramatic improvement.
http://utorrent.com/download/beta/

uTorrent does this as well (when you have a torrent selected, in the lower pane, select the "file" view, and right-click on any file), is smaller, lighter, easier on system resources, and has no additional dependancies.

I don't understand why people use Azureus on Windows anymore, uTorrent is far superior to it. Someone should make a uTorrent clone for Linux so we can escape this plauge they call Azureus.

Regarding BitTorrent, Opera is supposed to support that in the next version. Or you could get the smaller, faster uTorrent, which is far better than BitComet in my opinion

why not just limit the programs available bandwidth? http://utorrent.com/ is a good example of a torrent client; small, sleek, and the ability to limit dl/ul.

http://utorrent.com/ smaller, faster, works too.
but it only strengthens your point. I wouldn't use firefox for downloading movies either.

Actually, Firefox name is quite misleading - Firebird was better since firefox.exe is like Phoenix - it has to be killed() frequently.

I had thought libtorrent dead. I'm not sure why, as I see it's been updated very recently now. I'm glad to see this.

libtorrent/rtorrent is linux-only, and bitcomet is Windows-only, so it's not really a situation of alternatives.

http://www.utorrent.com/, on the other hand, is basically the same idea as libtorrent, but on windows. It's written in C++ and is very efficient and lightweight. I used ABC, PTC, and Azureus until I found utorrent and I find utorrent to be much much nicer.

I've finally seen the light, though, and I'm now using Slackware 10.2 as my main OS and Windows for gaming only. rtorrent (or maybe a customized client using libtorrent) is now on my list of things to try.

it's one of the best clients

Damn straight. It's still the only BT client I'm aware of to have a proper implementation of partial downloading - which, by the way, is the exact reason I use it for my torrenting needs. Here's how it goes:

1. Open .torrent file
2. Alter path to save to, if necessary (there's a text field for the path, click [Browse] for a tree menu)
3. Uncheck files you don't want to download from the list
4. Click OK

As opposed to, say, Azureus:

1. Open .torrent file
2. Alter path to save to, if necessary (the dialog only sports a graphical tree menu. If the download is a folder, you don't get to choose the name.)
3. Click OK. Azureus will start downloading all the files and reserve the appropriate amount of disk space.
4. Right click the torrent task, click show details
5. Go to the "Files" tab
6. Select files you don't wish to download
7. Right click (careful not to unselect), Set priority -> Delete. Azureus will truncate the unwanted files to zero length.

In other words, it takes four steps to do something BitComet manages in one.

Why on earth make it so hard? I'm looking at you, the majority of BT clients. A proper implementation was promised for uTorrent (an otherwise fine client), but got dropped off the list for some reason. Would someone care to offer me an explanation as to why such a trend exists? Does no-one else believe like me that this is an important aspect in a client?

I was recently forced to download a number of files using Azureus instead of BitComet, resulting in acute frustration because of the user interface. The prospect of having to do the same with all my future downloads because of tracker owners deciding BitComet to be bad for them is not delightful, to say the least.

Speaking as a former Bitcomet user, I can guarantee that you will love utorrent. After utorrent, Bitcomet feels like Azureus bloatwise!

Azureus is the best for multi-platform.

But for Windows, uTorrent is the best. It's small (115KB), uses not alot of RAM (~5mb) and has most of the features that Azureus has! It even has a bandwidth scheduling function.

uTorrent says otherwise. Azureusish interface + features, signifigantly smaller footprint. Of course it is Windows only and not open sores, but one can't have everything.

One word. Bollocks. I have Azureus running right now. [On a Linux PC with 2GB of RAM].

Do you really feel that your experience running Linux in 2048MB somehow negates my experience running Windows in 512MB?

Perhaps there are JVM tweaks that might improve the situation. I've never looked. I'm not interested. Why should I have to resort to such things? I've switched to uTorrent, which does everything I want in about 1/20th the RAM, no tweaking required.

Try utorrent, it's like Azureus but without the bloat of java.

# Typical memory use less than 4 MB
# Incredibly small: 96 KB

http://www.utorrent.com/

Only thing it's missing is uPnP and if you have that enabled you should be shot.