Slashdot Mirror
Long-Awaited BitTorrent 4.0 Released
wintermute1974 writes "After sitting at a stable release of 3.4.2 since last spring, Bram Cohen's official BitTorrent client has been upgraded to version 4. In addition to its existing, rock-steady functionality, BitTorrent now sports a new queue-based UI. The revision details are on the BitTorrent site. Packets are now marked as bulk data too, which is significant considering that about a third of all Internet traffic is currently torrent data."
The OS X client is still at 3.4.2. Is anyone working on an update? (I'd offer to help, but I don't program :p)
stop all the downloadin.
Does it have an FM tuner?
Since it's a decentralized standard, we'll need other clients to mark packets as 'bulk data' as well to get full benefits in routing from this. Since companies are starting to use BT commonly to distribute files in-game (or will, shortly), their code will need to be updated too. So, no magic bullet but a step in the direction of creating a heirarchy of data packets.
I'm interested to see where this'll go-- will ISPs absolutely choke 'bulk data' packets and drive folks into using older or fringe BT clients to get faster downloads? Will this help solve VoIP realtime bandwidth issues? Will the 'good net citizen' vibe surrounding writing the 'bulk data' flag into ones code overshadow potentially making ones users into second-class net citizens?
Or will this not be a big deal at all?
Probably some of everything, I suppose.
The actual link is to the download is here.
The changelog:
Gan Family Homepage
It's Java based and seems to have every useful feature you can imagine:
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/
I haven't checked out the new official client yet, but Azureus has always been way ahead of the pack and I assume it still is. (Things like fast restart, nice visualizations of clients and file pieces, etc.)
Pat
It looks to me like this new client is adding alot of the features other clients added in themselves. The main part being the configurations from a GUI. Perhaps he's trying to get everyone using HIS client, so there's more control over the populus of BT users?
Is it just me... but does anyone else find it ironic that there isn't a torrent available for downloading Bittorrent?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Because I hate going to the theater to see... uh, Linux binaries.
is bulk data what fat chick pr0n is being referred to nowdays?
"Alcohol, cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" -Homer Simpson
has had a far better interface and featureset for years.
No you don't, because the protocol has not changed.
...which is significant considering that about a third of all Internet traffic is currently torrent data.
Too bad it's all broken copies of LG3D.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Also of note is that BT 4.0 is using a modified version of the Jabber Open Source License.
It's complient with the Open Source Definition. Not huge shaking news it seems like.
Can somebody explain what that means?
I'm assuming that's not like bulk mail over the internet. I'd hate to accidently download viagra when I just when a torrent file.
Dear Lazyweb:
This version of bittorrent is licensed under the BitTorrent Open Source License. Could you please compare and contrast this with other open source licenses for me?
Thank you, Lazyweb.
Now if only I could convince my stinking ISP that downloading linux ISO's is not illegal :-)
NOTE: This is the windows version
Tried it out throwing down some linux torrent simultaneously.
Downloads save to the desktop by default (although editable) and look like Firefox's Download Manager with details, progress bars, etc. Really nice because opening up 5 torrents used to mean 5 seperate windows. Client worked fine on most of the trackers given by A Quick Google Search.
Download it quick! I'm sure someone will torrent the executable...
I hope packets are also marked with the evil bit too, which is significant considering that most of all Torrent traffic is currently evil data.
My main gripe with the default BT client is the lack of per file settings. BitTornado (site's down at the moment) allows the user to download specific files in the torrent. This is useful since people can post aggregated torrents and the user can just select the files that he wants.
--
Free iPod? Try a free Mac Mini
Or a free Nintendo DS, GC, PS2, Xbox
Wired article as proof
Don't know if this is new or not, but a streaming peer-to-peer protocol like bittorrent would be pretty cool. It could be used to inexpensively broadcast audio or video almost live, potentially making news reporting available to a wider selection of journalists. Checksums on data would obviously be a problem here and malicious nodes in the network would have an easier time of disrupting communications. This mechanism needs to be independent of media type, and rely on being used in combination with file formats that can be picked up and played from any small chunk. The client could decide which portions of the stream it would rather get, sacrificing liveness to get as much as possible, trying to pick up the nearest blocks in the future first to stay as smooth as possible, or minimizing buffer size and going after the most recent blocks to stay as live as possible.
What ever happened to that new and decentralized torrent program?
Look at the licence, it seems to me that's the "control" is something he certainly isn't overly interested in.
He probably just wants to offer a product he can be proud of, maybe so people will appreciate his work and choose to support him.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I've tried to like azureus, and I actually still use it as there is pretty much no alternative gui wise in linux, but I really wish there was.
Basically it brings my system to a crawl. Java vm (and yes i'm on 1.5) feels like a pig imo. We need a native gtk/qt gui that's in c/c++.
And please don't be a smartass and point out there is the basic gui that the official comes with. It's way too lacking. AFAIK, the only way to throttle is by using the ncurses one. Never mind that you can't set ratio's (I set all of mine to 1:1.), or bind all torrents to one port instead of needing all open. Pretty much all of the other clients do that now, except the official so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.
So as you see, there are quite a few things lacking in the official client. I've checked freshmeat periodically but couldn't find anything for linux. I know there is bitorrando and some others but they require access to a mysql server wtf?
My windows friends used to use azureus and didn't fair much better performance wise but now they pretty much all use bitcomet.
I don't mean to knock the azureus team, cause as it is they've made a pretty good functional gui, but java just brings the performance down too much.
You misspelled "Camino".
Installer doesn't give any indication it's installing until you get a "Finished!" box. No choosing paths, no status indicator, nuffin.
.torrent file associations.
Two donation nag screens.
Steals
No scraping the server for total seeder/peer numbers.
No moving completed downloads. No advanced seeding rules. No selecting of individual within a torrent. No download speed capping.
25mb memory usage running just one torrent.
Nothing excites me about this client. I look forward to its apparent efficiency increases being incorporated into Azureus et al, though.
To be honest, I haven't been waiting at all.
The official client has been miles behind most of the unofficial ones, and as far as I know nobody with any sense uses it anymore. And as far as I can see, this new version only makes it slightly less inferior. So why does it matter that it's been released? For that matter, why was it even made?
I don't see the point in reinventing the wheel as far as clients go when there are far better alternatives already out there. Let other people write the clients, and concentrate on improving the protocol.
Might as well link to the joke so...
c om puter.mov
http://media.ebaumsworld.com/index.php?e=gijoe-
and more can be found at
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/gijoe.html
It's one of those were either you laugh your ass off or become disturbed at the amount of free time people have. Personally I laugh my ass off.
Yeah no kidding, my two biggest memory hogging applications are:
- javaw.exe @ 43,616K at the moment
- firefox.exe @ 40,564K at the moment.
I like Azureus enough that I'll let this slide since I don't use it all the time (newsgroups are fun), and I dislike IE enough that 50mb doesn't seem so bad, plus I have enough ram anyway.
I have an old 400Mhz Dell Dimension L500cx with 512MB RAM. It does have a new 80GB hard-drive, but everything else is pretty old.
Azureus works fine-- no big performance problems at all. I can download and my wife can still use iTunes and MS Word at the same time. Azureus maxes out our DSL connection, but that's the network, and all computers are affected.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
1. There is actually no RFC or other detailed documentation for the BT protocol. The unofficial clients were all written based on the source code from the official client (and more recently, based on the source code of other unofficial clients). IMO Bram should create a formal RFC, but that is pretty unlikely (he's not interested and the IETF is probably too conservative to do p2p).
2. Sadly the python clients are the only ones usable on 64MB virtual private servers. Most of the unofficial clients are platform-specific (Win32, GTK+), or require a bloated JVM that has no chance of working in less than 128MB.
I find it tragic that noone has released a high quality POSIX C client. Maybe the OpenBSD guys will eventually get around to OpenBT?
Yeah. Second-rate, late, half-baked software that makes all of your books, all of your magazines, all of your movies, all of your newspapers, all of your music ... and that also sequences your DNA to help keep you alive. And, just for fun, does any aspect of your life depend on Oracle or Sybase? Does your employer use either of them? Do you use a bank, for instance, or do you ever buy airline tickets? I ask because in the past 2 years, both Oracle and Sybase have switched to Mac OS X exclusively for the development of their products.
It always makes me laugh when people shit on the Mac, because it just goes to show that they don't understand just how much of their world depends on Macs.
What, no one is going to talk about the new BitTorrent Open Source License that has been slapped on this 4.0 version?
Thoughts about this would be much appreciated. I'm reading through it right now.
here's the dude in chicago that makes 'em
http://www.fenslerfilm.com/
TODO: come up with a clever sig
If that were all he's interested in, he'd use some simple and brief non-copylefted free software license like the new BSD license or the MIT X11 license.
There is considerably more in the new BitTorrent license than in either of those licenses. Among other things, the new BitTorrent license specifies which licenses can be used as sublicenses and how much one can charge for distributing the source code of sublicensed derivatives.
Pride in one's work doesn't come from a license and people aren't going to give him money because of the license.
Digital Citizen
If you want to follow the example of Bram who only downloads legal stuff, you can test your brand new BT 4.0 client with the excellent Wired CD, in Ogg Vorbis :
.torrent
Wired CD
In practice, it doesn't leak resources like all the python/java/etc implementations do, and its interactive ncurses client is the best bittorrent one I know of. It does also use our well-known GP L :).
You forgot to add:
Yours truly,
The MPAA
The idea of OSX as just a pretty GUI is a gross disservice. I wouldn't touch OSX (or any other proprietary OS) with a ten foot pole myself, but credit where credit is due.
If the license isn't valid, you are not allowed to redistribute the code. That is basic copyright law.
The *only* thing that allows you to redistribute the code is the license. So it is in your own interest to defend the license.
Of course, if you don't redistribute the code, you don't have to accept the license. The GPL is very specific about this, but it is true for all licenses. Or used to be, apparently there is a trend in some juristictions to consider the transfer of the program from harddisk to ram in order to run the code to be covered by copyright (very much against the spirit of copyright law), which mean accepting these licenses will be needed if you just want to run the program.
I wonder if the new version has multithreaded the client so that receive and transmit are in separate threads?
This is important if you are using traffic shaping on your upstream connection, as I am. I'm on ADSL, and so my upstream bandwidth is less than my downstream. To prevent BT from consuming all my upstream bandwidth I am using the tc module in the kernel to restrict the BT packets (the rate limiting in BT is next to useless, as each instance of the client will use the programmed bandwidth - there is no "global" sharing of the bandwidth, so if you have 4 clients running it will take 4 times the bandwidth of 1 client).
The problem is that if the client is blocked sending an outbound torrent packet (because the traffic shaper queue is full), the client will not process any available incoming data packets, and this will hammer the download speed - I have expermimentally verified this.
Now, if there were separate threads for downloading and for uploading, the uploading threads would block as the TC queue filled, but the download threads would not be blocked, and could handle the download at full speed.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Comment removed based on user account deletion