Comparison of Popular Torrent Clients
Punit Lodaya, Jun 25, 2006 1500 hrs IST
We take a look at the three most popular torrent clients and put them to test.
Enter Bit Torrent
In the summer of 2002, Bram Cohen launched the beta version of the Bit Torrent network. It used a different approach in sharing the files. The files shared over the network were first broken down into smaller chunks. These chunk files information is passed on to the other clients with the help of a central server called, Tracker. The tracker retains the information of the client uploading the file. Considering the earlier example, computer 'B' is downloading the file 'ABC'. The Bit Torrent client will now update the tracker about the information of computer 'B'. Now, computer 'C' also starts downloading the same file. But, now he has the ability to download not only from computer 'A' but also from computer 'B'. This is possible even if computer 'B' has not downloaded the complete file; since every file is divided into smaller chunks. This not only reduces the load on computer 'A' in terms of uploading, it also makes downloads faster. Now, if computer 'A' logs off the network, the tracker still has the information of computer 'B' and computer 'C' and they can start transferring the file with each other. So, even with the absence of the main uploader (also known as seed in bit torrent terminology) files can still be downloaded as long as the tracker is up.
Unlike conventional P2P networks, you can't search the Bit Torrent network because of its decentralized nature. The file search is based on ".torrent" file format which contains the necessary information like the file list, single or multiple trackers IP addresses. This file format is sourced from various locations such as web sites, search engines, IRC networks, and all the other means which can be used to transfer files. Due to legal issues, we won t be providing the names of popular torrents sites. But, there are few totally legal ones such as:
www.gameupdates.org
www.linuxtracker.org
There's good news for Bit Torrent Technology that now the film and music industry have started utilizing this technology for the legal distribution of movies and TV shows.
USER COMMENTS
by jugon azmal, dublin, on Apr 18, 2008 01:20 AM, Report abuse Reply
I get my max speeds of 32 kpbs with my 256 kbps connection. Tweak your settings by going through the forum. Get ?Torrent 1.6 Release Candidate 1 (170 kB) has been released.
by Scarface, Jhumritalayya, on Jun 27, 2006 06:17 AM, Report abuse Reply
it's a theoretical MAX @ 256 kbps .. practical issues are WAY different!!! dude, stop goofin' around and misleading people!! .. and it's nothing to do with the client used, puhlease! -- and oh, do yourself a favor to read the way torrent transfers function. thanks, and please DON'T bother.
by bidhan, Pune, on Feb 28, 2008 02:42 PM, Report abuse
mutorrent is the best...minimal cpu utilisation, very stable, no installation required etc. as already said by scarface...ppl. who have been using bitcomet should try it for a few weeks/days and i'm sure they'll appreciate it a lot more than the resource hungry bitcomet/azureus. Azureus may be the best client in terms of features, stability etc. but i'd still prefer mutorent as it incorporates all the useful features while keeping the program size to the minimum(at least when compared to other clients like azureus,bitcomet etc.)and consuming the least resources( virtually nothing( around 5-6MB, 10MB max. almost zero cpu usage) compared to that consumed by azureus which takes abt 100MB of memory and a lot of processing time due to the java core, bitcomet uses a lot of memory but cpu utilisation is negligible)...Hats off to Ludvig.
by saty, mumbai, on Jun 26, 2006 10:37 AM, Report abuse Reply
There is perefect planning what r u doinig?
by hardik, bhavnagar, on Feb 23, 2008 05:28 PM, Report abuse
by Dimon, Straubing, on Jan 27, 2008 09:53 PM, Report abuse Reply
hay .. guys need serious help.. ive got mah 256 data one connection for 2weeks and im gettin max download rate of 15kbs as ave...on mah bitcomet 9.. plz temme how can i lift it up to atleast 25kbs ...ave.
by avishek, kolkata, on Sep 07, 2007 08:24 PM, Report abuse Reply
very interesting and very informative thank you for educating us about p2p and other thanks again
by nk1160, mumbai, on Sep 04, 2007 10:47 PM, Report abuse Reply
by ronnie, enschede, on Jun 07, 2007 11:11 PM, Report abuse Reply
by Alex, Caransebe, on May 21, 2007 09:18 PM, Report abuse Reply
utorrent is the best and most versatile mainly due to its advanced features and small memory footprint! it is also the most stable, I have run it continuously for more than a week uptime, and it ran rock-solid! Try playing graphic intensive games an doin memory intensive stuff while using Azureus or BitComet....they will make ur PC crawl! Also, Utorrent has a nifty scheduler setting, which is useful for people who have night unlimited or similar schemes. Most importantly, if you guys are into downloading torrents, then also do check out PeerGuardian (Google It)........ Im sure you will download as soon as you read about what it does for you! ;) Limewire pro/emule etc are all crap and should be used as last resort. I very often download files which turn out to be something else! mIRC is good provided you dont mind the fact, that while downloading, you can download only one part at a time, ie, the file is not split up and downloaded simultaneously, like in Flashget or download accelerator pro or even in Torrents...... Try using mIRC search engines like www.packetnews.com to search for files that u want..... cheers! reevester
by reevester, reevester.com, on Jun 25, 2006 11:11 PM, Report abuse Reply
by suchit singh, indore, on Apr 24, 2007 08:08 PM, Report abuse
by some one, here, on Apr 09, 2007 04:27 PM, Report abuse Reply
hi how are you ..................................................................................................////////////////////////////////////???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
by shahzadahmadbut, beijing, on Mar 10, 2007 12:24 PM, Report abuse Reply
by sunil, indore, on Feb 28, 2007 09:05 PM, Report abuse Reply
AJ I am using 256kbps Data one also i am using utorrent 1.6 but i get only 22 or 25kbps download rate why ? Can i improve this speed ? how ? please someone explain ? thank u have a niceday
by Anonymous, Mangalore, on Dec 06, 2006 11:30 AM, Report abuse Reply
in 256 connection u cant increase ur download /upload speed more than 25kbps.try to use bsnl home 500(night free) u can set scheduler time for download. it is very fast and cheaper.
by sony, jagraon, on Feb 26, 2007 12:19 PM, Report abuse
by saty, indore, on Nov 27, 2006 08:07 PM, Report abuse Reply
uTorrent is best cleint around. I have been using it for some time now. But with 1.5 Release, its been under controversy. Ppl say that the developer of uTorrent has sold the rights to Anti Piracy Group ,hance uTorrent has been banned by PeerGurdian and Protowall (firewalls used by Torrent lovers). According to makers of Protowall the developer of u Torrent has been signed on by a company which had earlier paid guys to upload corrupted stuff on P2P like kaazaa, Morphious ...etc. My Suggestion is to be carefull with this baby.. we just cant be sure .... whats been added to code of 1.5 release.
by Bit-Torrent Lov, NET, on Jun 28, 2006 04:25 PM, Report abuse Reply
by saty, indore, on Nov 27, 2006 08:05 PM, Report abuse
by abdul, dubai, on Oct 19, 2006 11:15 AM, Report abuse Reply
by abdul, dubai, on Oct 19, 2006 11:12 AM, Report abuse Reply
by abdul, dubai, on Oct 19, 2006 11:08 AM, Report abuse Reply
can anybody explain why when i downloded a video of 700MB, bitcomet dnloaded about 970MB, n dropped the rest as rubbish data, n this happens wid every file, it downloades a significant amt of rubbish data.
by JAsmeet Khosla, new delhi, on Aug 10, 2006 09:25 PM, Report abuse Reply
by hjhgj, jh, on Aug 05, 2006 10:01 PM, Report abuse Reply
by hjhgj, jh, on Aug 05, 2006 09:58 PM, Report abuse Reply
utoorent is having latest version 1.6
by Shailesh, mumbai, on Aug 01, 2006 10:38 AM, Report abuse Reply
by boat, chonburi, on Jul 28, 2006 10:26 PM, Report abuse Reply
by keller, berlin, on Jun 28, 2006 07:32 PM, Report abuse Reply
wow punit did u just copy wikipedia or did u write anything on your own.......i almost fell asleep reading the longest review EVER!!!!!!
by Russell Peters, Toronto, Canada, on Jun 28, 2006 04:15 AM, Report abuse Reply
Hi, the article is well structured i appreciate that. But i feel the basic bt client by the name of ' Bit Tornado' rocks.. it has awesome simple User interface and excellent speeds. utorrent is micro very small and easy going but the user interface is not that great and amatuers find it tough to operate. I simply prefer and recommend bit tornado to all. cheers !!!
by Hazard, CS, on Jun 27, 2006 01:45 PM, Report abuse Reply
utorrent 1.6 ruterrnet frandoo greg. Goad wurk punit.
by Alabana, Israel, on Jun 27, 2006 08:54 AM, Report abuse Reply
Ocupo hace mucho tiempo el uTorrent y no me da ningun problema, ocupa pocos recursos, es rapido, estable y muy facil de ocupar, osea un cliente torrent excelente.
by Pelaoseba, Santiago,chile, on Jun 26, 2006 11:12 PM, Report abuse Reply
WOW! This article can be easily compared to the ones by THG and AT. I hope, TT continues this newly started trend. The articles over last few months were totally crap and outdated. This one is an innovation, since no site till date ever compared torrent clients in termns of resource utilization. Gimme More~~~~~~~~
by X86, Lucknow, on Jun 26, 2006 09:07 PM, Report abuse Reply
uTorrent is really good. I was able to download 800MB SQL2005 in nearly 9hrs over 256kbps mtnl DSL. wow
by Fans....you got, Delhi, on Jun 26, 2006 05:07 PM, Report abuse Reply
by Zombie, Zombie, on Jun 26, 2006 04:48 PM, Report abuse Reply
i used azureus for 6 months while at the same time trying other clients ... i changed over to utorrent about 3 months ago ,... but i found it gave slower download speeds compared to azureus,... azureus gave me a peak of 32KBps constantly but utorrent only gives around 26KBps... any one with the same problems? i use airtel 256kpbs connection
by A.M, Manipal, on Jun 26, 2006 04:47 PM, Report abuse Reply
way 2 go mate... this is one good article... I ave used p2p programs since the start i.e, early 2000 and over the years never ever thought of not downloading... it's evolved from slow dial-up to gprs to cdma to cable to dsl.... i have used almost all available technologies/ services that u get in india... p2p is good for starters though u get wrong files and junk sometimes and there is problem with limewire or any p2p to go back to a percentage after the download completes and start again from that point endlessly... then when i got cable i started using .torrent as it was really popular outside india and bbc's click online featured it on their show... then from then on it was jus bigger and bigger files.... right now i am using bitcomet with unlimited 256 kbps dataone connection and i have reached 100gb download this month... its like tv shows and all kinda stuff... man i'm looking for anyone who has a lot of files - looking for tv shows, movies, games and all.... contact me through my website.... http://djgold.50webs.com or email me at koickgold@yahoo.com
by Goldy George, kottayam, on Jun 26, 2006 03:39 PM, Report abuse Reply
Punit Lodaya very good comparsion i started using the uTorrent recently with out knowing anything about it. this article will help everyone to understand everything torrents
by AnilTech, Bangalore, on Jun 26, 2006 03:09 PM, Report abuse Reply
Really nice and informative article. Thanks TEchtree
by satyanjoy, New Delhi, on Jun 26, 2006 02:41 PM, Report abuse Reply
awesome!!! was waiting for a long time for such an article.
by Rajesh, Mumbai, on Jun 26, 2006 01:35 PM, Report abuse Reply
you guys missed out one important, and probably the only one capable of bypassing a HTTP_CONNECT squid proxy server without any headache..... and that's "BitSpirit" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitSpirit
by Nameless, Nameless, on Jun 26, 2006 01:28 PM, Report abuse Reply
I agree that Azureus is hungry for resources, but still it runs without any problem on my system with 128MB ram, that's cool, I have even used utorrent before this but found Azureus is quite fast(In terms of download speeds). Hey you could have included Opera as they have made an effort to bring a torrent client into their browser.
by Srinivas murthy, Bangalore, on Jun 26, 2006 10:10 AM, Report abuse Reply
Everything about MicroTorrent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utorrent .
by Scarface, Jhumritalayya, on Jun 26, 2006 08:20 AM, Report abuse Reply
Nice article but should have come a long time ago. I have used many clients but finally setteled for Azureus. But I stayed away from bittorrent networks & only hooked up some four months ago when I got broadband. Infact dialup & Azeureus were the reasons why I never ventured into bittorent. It was so difficult for a new user to understand the proper functioning without any knowledge. I appreciate techtree has finally come out with terms & explaination how torrent network works. Back then when I used Azureus I was very confused as to how to run a torrent client. There were so many settings under the options which really confused me. But after going through the web I finally started with Bitlord. It was based on Bitcomet core & was very simple to use. But it was banned on torrent networks 'coz most users were leeching. Then I moved to bitcomet. It is exactly like bitlord but was supporting DHTas well. But the most severe problem with bitcomet is that it crashes a lot for no apparent reason. Its core has many snags. Every 10-15 days a new version is launched which irons out the vulnerabilities of earlier version but has new problems. But people are using it 'coz its very simple. I don't know about microtorrent 'coz I never used it. But it is the third largest used client after Azureus & Bitcoment. Finally I went to Azureus & its hell lot better than Bitcommet with so many options. New users with no knowledge of torrent networks & clients should opt for Bitcomet & Micro torrent. It will help them understand a lot. Then they can move to Azureus which I think is the best. 'coz its pretty robust. (Remember you have to use a client a lot so it should be stable). There are many other clients but you can give them a miss for any of the three clients mentioned. The simple reason being better integration 'coz most users are using them & also since they are mostly adware free!!!!!
by racy1, Bhopal, on Jun 25, 2006 07:14 PM, Report abuse Reply
I've been using ?Torrent since the last year or so. Initially started with BitComet but it was banned later. And it is still banned with some Regd torrent sites. ?Torrent is the best of all. It was designed to use as little of a computer's resources as possible while offering functionality equivalent to the most popular, full-featured clients, such as Azureus or BitComet. As seen in the review Azureus consumed a hell lot of resources whereas I can run ?Torrent for comparabily minimal CPU resources. It is very user-oriented too! No need of any installation. Hell, I can even make it invisible and use the boss keys to make it visible ;-) Or I can even minimize it to the systray and make the download bar visible "always on the top". I can even configure my speeds with the speed wizard. It even has an easter egg too !!! And yeah, using an external medial player (VLC player) you can even preview the media file after about 50% of the download. It also has RSS feed too!!! Hats off to the creator, Ludvig Strigeus. May his skills increase :-)))
by Scarface, Jhumritalayya, on Jun 26, 2006 08:19 AM, Report abuse
im using bitcomet for about 8-9 months and it hasnt given me any problem. Yeah it does utlize much memory as compared to utorrent, but its much simpler and leecher friendly ;). I try to maintain my U/D ratio as my tracker warns me, but sometimes theres nobody to download, so i cant seed, or worse, i havnt dnloaded the full file n still i dont find peers so tht i can maintain my U/D ratio. bitcomet is good for these situations.
by JAsmeet Khosla, new delhi, on Jun 26, 2006 06:09 AM, Report abuse Reply
nice review. . .wt do u think about limewire pro, emule and filepipe??
by Aatif, Mumbai, on Jun 25, 2006 06:08 PM, Report abuse Reply
And also mIRC,Bearshare Pro.......
by Prasanna Herle, bangalore, on Jun 25, 2006 09:41 PM, Report abuse
Dude, Limewire pro is not free. Plus u cannot have more than 10 hosts at a time. This happens with every p2p software i have used. Torrents dont have this limitation. The begining of torrent download is slow but once it finds a few hosts, the download speed is amazing, as a matter of fact its better than Limewire Pro which I also use. :D
by NTH, New Delhi, on Jun 26, 2006 02:56 AM, Report abuse
Thanks..this might be useful article considering no of users in India foing towards Broadband connections (though speed is an issue still) and heavy downloading
by naval_cadet4u, pune, on Jun 25, 2006 07:08 PM, Report abuse Reply
The article is nice, I have been using Torrent clients since past few months but never properly understood the terminologies, thanks a ton. micro torrent is the best, followed closely by Bit comet 0.67 & bit lord. For a small & specific file Limewire pro leaves all others (emule, kaaza, sharezaa) far behind..
by drkrack, Kochi, on Jun 26, 2006 01:26 AM, Report abuse
Hmph........u guys shudve included Bearshare & Limewire too.......those are the best according to me...........i rarely use torrents....
by Atif, Delhi, on Jun 26, 2006 01:12 AM, Report abuse Reply
bitcomet 0.67 is much better than 0.68 0.68 has some problems which slows down the download rate,use 0.67
by saikatc16, xx, on Jun 25, 2006 11:48 PM, Report abuse Reply
what do you say about bearshare?
by webgenius, Bangalore, on Jun 25, 2006 11:25 PM, Report abuse Reply
Three Cheers to Techtree. They are finally getting thier charm back.
by funky_monkey, Amazon Jungle, on Jun 25, 2006 08:41 PM, Report abuse Reply
hi, nice article....good one well done and well explained. i certainly have 2 agree that utorrent is the best client.
by Vishal_Kadakia, mumbai, on Jun 25, 2006 07:39 PM, Report abuse Reply
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