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."

Comments

Good to see progress...

[ratsnapple tea]

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)

Re:Good to see progress...

[Coryoth]

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)

It's in python so you should be able to just grab the source and use btdownloadcurses.py in Terminal.app (or whatever it is). Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?

Jedidiah.

Re:Good to see progress...

[rsmith-mac]

Do you need a pretty GUI, or do you just want the new functionality etc.?

In all seriousness, it's a Mac. The userbase is not going to accept an application that doesn't have a "pretty GUI" because the GUI is much of what the platform is about. Just see OpenOffice for an example of software that's underutilized for its lack of an effective Mac GUI.

Re:Good to see progress...

[BrookHarty]

I use the command line under screen on my mac, in fact, I ssh into my mac more than sit at the desktop. My wife will be playing World of warcraft on it, and I'll just ssh for irssi/bt underscreen.

There are alot of new users that see what OSX is, a kick ass unix box with a great multi user desktop.

Re:Good to see progress...

[mattkinabrewmindspri]

Azureus runs just fine on OS X as an Aqua application. It's probably the best OS X BitTorrent out there.

1/3rd of all traffic?

[Anonymous Coward]

stop all the downloadin.

Re:1/3rd of all traffic?

[ZackSchil]

Help Computer.

The 'bulk data' tag

[Raindance]

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.

Re:The 'bulk data' tag

[ip_fired]

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?

I don't think they'll choke "bulk data", because many other protocols mark their data bulk as well (ftp being one of them, if you have a modern client).

It is very helpful to ISPs to have the bulk classification, so that their more time-sensitive data (ie, VOIP) doesn't get clobbered when someone starts using bittorrent.

It's not like it's difficult to choke bittorrent traffic anyway, just look for communication on ports 6881 to 6888.

If they do, it'll just make everyone remove the bulk flag, and then there will be no easy quality of service queing.

Link and Changelog

[perlionex]

The actual link is to the download is here.

The changelog:

# 2005-03-07: 4.0.0 is now available.
Changes since the last stable release:

All new queue-based user interface Many options are now modifiable from the interface, including upload rate Lots of other interface improvements Extra stats are visible, for those who like it Remembers what it was doing across restarts New .torrent maker "btmaketorrentgui" replaces "btcompletedir" Better performance, as always License has changed to the BitTorrent Open Source License Torrent fields are correctly created and interpreted as utf8 Too many little things to list

A few technical notes, for those interested:

Single port: launchmany can seed and client can download many files from a single port and thread Interface now uses GTK instead of wxWidgets BitTorrent packets are marked as bulk data to make traffic shaping easier

Re:Link and Changelog

[NuclearDog]

I'll translate the preamble to English...

• The BitTorrent client and updates/etc are all covered under this license.
  
• The license is considered a valid open source license.
  
• You can give it (the software) away just by itself or on a cd/in a zip with multiple other programs. You don't have to pay royalties.
  
• You have access to the source & binaries.
  
• You can modify the source & fork the program.
  
• Any modifications made to the program have to be licensed under this same license.
  
• Use it however you want, but there is no warranty provided.
  
• If you sublicense the code, you can charge for warranty/support or for offering indemnity for your customers, but the source must remain free.
  
• If you file a patent claim against the BitTorrent software, you lose all rights under the license (right to re-distribute, etc.)
  
• You can re-license any works you create based on the code, but you have to license it under an OSI-approved license that is compatible with this license.
  

(Note: This may not be 100% accurate, IANAL, I am not responsible, etc, etc.)

Re:Link and Changelog

[petard]

fwiw, it's basically the jabber license with a couple of the restrictions lifted.

HTH,

petard

Azureus rocks...

[patniemeyer]

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

Re:Azureus rocks...

[slavemowgli]

BitTornado is another nice client, with the added benefit that it's not written in Java. Not that I've got much against Java personally, of course, but it's quite a resource hog that I'd rather avoid when possible.

Re:Azureus rocks...

[MicroBerto]

Yes, Azureus does rock. It seems that the development has slowed down a bit recently, since the 2.2 series release.

This makes sense though, because it simply works incredibly, and they're probably working on some bigger things now for a new version. It's stabilized quite nicely, better than any closed-source software out there lately!

Re:Azureus rocks...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately BitTornado runs in Python, which can get almost as slow as client-side Java when you have a lot of stuff running. I'd recommend the pure C++ BitComet.

Re:Azureus rocks...

[dk01]

Yes Azureus does rock. Some of the features that have been around for a while are its support for pluggins. The one that seems to be most popular is its RSS feed reader. It monitors and filters RSS feeds for files that a user wants to have downloaded. This makes going on a several day vacation quite a bit easier. I use it to download my latest Al Franken Show from Air America. -dk

Trying to get more users?

[ProdigySim]

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?

Irony.

[DarkHelmet]

http://www.bittorrent.com/index.html

Is it just me... but does anyone else find it ironic that there isn't a torrent available for downloading Bittorrent?

Re:Irony.

[cdsr]

would you like to download winzip.zip too?

Great! I Love BitTorrent.

[Murdock037]

Because I hate going to the theater to see... uh, Linux binaries.

bulk data

[vespazzari]

is bulk data what fat chick pr0n is being referred to nowdays?

ABC

[Anonymous Coward]

has had a far better interface and featureset for years.

Re:ABC

[CammieCrookston]

ABC is nice indeed. If you are an advocate of BitTornado, but prefer a single window for all of your downloads, ABC is the client for you. (It uses BitTornado as its core, so you get all of BitTornado + extra features + a single window).

Different License

[Raindance]

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.

Bulk data?

[IntellectualCritic]

Packets are now marked as bulk data too

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.

Re:Bulk data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's look at a few options vis-a-vis protocols that make use of TCP-IP. You have, for example Voice over IP (VoIP); Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP); File Transfer Protocol (FTP); Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP); Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP); Internet Relay Chat (IRC); and Secure Shell (SSH). (This list is not complete, but it's for illustrating the point, not to list every damn protocol on the whole Internet.)

Now, taking these one at a time. VoIP has certain needs: it needs a certain amount of bandwidth, and its data must be transferred within a short period of time, or it becomes unusable. A VoIP connection is generally held for of the order of minutes, so quick setup of a connection is not a high priority. HTTP needs quick setup/teardown, because you have one connection for each file (typically kilobytes in size; yes, I know that later versions of HTTP can transfer multiple files within one connection), but latency is not a huge concern; bandwidth might be, depending on the data. FTP is an interesting beast: low latency and low bandwidth for commands, but high bandwidth and don't-care latency for data. Setup/teardown times not a major issue. NNTP needs high bandwidth, but latency is not a concern at all. SMTP usually needs low bandwidth, and latency isn't a major issue, as long as the message gets through. SSH needs low latency, but bandwidth needs are generally low.

You have a relatively small pipe to the rest of the Internet. There are high demands on this pipe. How do you decide what gets pushed through, and what gets dropped, or delayed until later?

BitTorrent marking its packets as bulk means that quality of service systems can say "These packets aren't of major importance; they can be deferred until later". So the short-term throughput of BT is reduced, for the benefit of others who need the pipe for applications like VoIP (for example). When those other applications reduce their demands, BT is able to transfer its data.

The understanding is simple: the urgency in the transfer of data via bittorrent is low, so if bandwidth is at a premium, the routers can drop, or throttle, the bittorrent data to make room for high priority data. It's the same principle as FedEx uses: if you have stuff that needs to be moved FAST, you pay a price premium, and it gets moved on the next plane, bumping off some low-urgency, low-price cargo to the plane afterwards. If there's a lot of high priority and low priority traffic, such that the low priority traffic is building up faster than it can be moved, it's time for FedEx to buy more planes, or start not accepting low priority traffic -- or, in the ISP business, to buy a fatter pipe.

Hope this helps.

Re:Bulk data?

[Spy Hunter]

if bandwidth is at a premium, the routers can drop, or throttle, the bittorrent data to make room for high priority data.

No. In order for users to voluntarily mark their packets as "bulk data", there has to be a benefit for them. That benefit is supposed to be higher overall transfer rate. The tradeoff is higher latency. So a router that receives a BitTorrent packet and a VOIP packet at the same time would send the VOIP packet first to reduce latency, and queue the BitTorrent packet for afterwards. But if the queue is full it would *not* preferentially drop the BitTorrent packet because that would reduce throughput. In fact, if the queue has many VOIP packets, the router should preferentially drop incoming VOIP packets, because it would not be able to send them with low latency anyway. This limits VOIP throughput, which is fine. In fact that's the result we want: VOIP = low latency low throughput, BitTorrent = high latency high throughput.

At least, I hope this is how ISPs implement routing for packets marked as bulk data, because otherwise it will never be adopted.

BitTorrent Open Source License

[IvyMike]

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.

Marking Packets Correctly

[Red Pointy Tail]

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.

Control?

[Chuck Chunder]

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.

Re:yep

[commodoresloat]

why bother with Firefox when we've got Safari?

You misspelled "Camino".

Initial impressions...

[Rexz]

Installer doesn't give any indication it's installing until you get a "Finished!" box. No choosing paths, no status indicator, nuffin.

Two donation nag screens.

Steals .torrent file associations.

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.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Why The Official Client Matters

[EventHorizon]

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?

Re:Hmm

[stratjakt]

eXeem is a sloppy piece of crap, and a thinly veiled vehicle to get spyware and malware on your system (whse).

Slashdot staff should be ashamed to have promoted it like they did. They did 2 or 3 articles about it, as if it were some great tech sent from the heavens.

Besides the fact that the very notion of it is what's wrong with the internet, and why the government will eventually regulate the hell out of it. The entire point is to trade warez. I did an eXeem search for linux, and didn't get one result - so don't give me some bullshit about slackware isos. Society are like kindergarteners, they had a little freedom, and blew it. Now we're all going to be grounded.

Actually, is that why michael left? It wasn't long after he "wrote" a couple "eXeem is great! get your warez on eXeem!" articles that he left.

Re:Favourite torrent sites?

[tooth]

You forgot to add:

Yours truly,
The MPAA