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.
In June 1999, a program called Napster was released and it completely revolutionized the internet usage. Napster was the first widely used peer-to-peer (P2P) music sharing service. It enabled the user to share and download audio files directly from other users; with the help synchronization provided by the server. But, it led to massive copyright violations and accusations by the music industry. Soon, Napster was forced to shut down the free service and then later resurrected as a paid model service.
But, Napster laid the foundation for many free file sharing applications such as iMesh, Kazaa, Morpheus, and many more. All these applications took a step further and provided the option of sharing any kind of files such as videos, executables, zips, etc. But, most P2P network technologies had limitations such as download speed, availability, and authenticity of the file.
The moment you start the P2P client, the client indexes the shared files list and sends it to the central server, which is stored as long as the user is connected to it. This indexed file list is used to find information about the availability of the file. Suppose, computer A has a shared file called ABC , this file information will be sent to the server. Now, traditionally when a user will search a particular file, the file name is passed on to the centralized server, which will search the entire indexed files list on the server. Consider, the user who wants to get access to the file ABC is computer B . The server then sends a list back to the computer B containing the information of the user who has the files, which in this case is computer 'A'.
Now, the user can start downloading the file from computer 'A'. This method works perfectly until other user, namely C, starts downloading the file at the same time. Since only computer 'A' has the complete file, computer 'C' will also start downloading from computer 'A' that consequently splits the upload speed of computer 'A' into two parts, which in turn reduces the download speed of computer 'B' and 'C'.
Now, for some reason computer 'A' logs off from the network, with computer 'B' and 'C' having downloaded half way. Only the availability of computer 'A' will allow them to resume their download.
Another problem was the reliability and authenticity of the file. Any user can rename a file and format it to something else, and end up downloading something unwanted. All these problems were foreseen by a skilled programmer "Bram Cohen".
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Good
Tridip Chatterj | Kolkata | 08/05/08 11:19 AM | Report abuse Reply
helo
jugon azmal | dublin | 18/04/08 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.
Scarface | Jhumritalayya | 27/06/06 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.
bidhan | Pune | 28/02/08 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.
saty | mumbai | 26/06/06 10:37 AM | Report abuse Reply
There is perefect planning what r u doinig?
hardik | bhavnagar | 23/02/08 05:28 PM | Report abuse
rr
Dimon | Straubing | 27/01/08 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.
avishek | kolkata | 07/09/07 08:24 PM | Report abuse Reply
very interesting and very informative thank you for educating us about p2p and other thanks again
nk1160 | mumbai | 04/09/07 10:47 PM | Report abuse Reply
cool dit ff kijken
ronnie | enschede | 07/06/07 11:11 PM | Report abuse Reply
Vreau si eu utoorent
Alex | Caransebe | 21/05/07 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
reevester | reevester.com | 25/06/06 11:11 PM | Report abuse Reply
suchit singh | indore | 24/04/07 08:08 PM | Report abuse
fheryrf ,jhlyukytc
some one | here | 09/04/07 04:27 PM | Report abuse Reply
hi how are you ..................................................................................................////////////////////////////////////???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
shahzadahmadbut | beijing | 10/03/07 12:24 PM | Report abuse Reply
dfgrd
sunil | indore | 28/02/07 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
Anonymous | Mangalore | 06/12/06 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.
sony | jagraon | 26/02/07 12:19 PM | Report abuse
hi
saty | indore | 27/11/06 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.
Bit-Torrent Lov | NET | 28/06/06 04:25 PM | Report abuse Reply
hiu
saty | indore | 27/11/06 08:05 PM | Report abuse
GOODY
abdul | dubai | 19/10/06 11:15 AM | Report abuse Reply
IT GOOD
abdul | dubai | 19/10/06 11:12 AM | Report abuse Reply
i like
abdul | dubai | 19/10/06 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.
JAsmeet Khosla | new delhi | 10/08/06 09:25 PM | Report abuse Reply
uiouy
hjhgj | jh | 05/08/06 10:01 PM | Report abuse Reply
ryrdfghgjh
hjhgj | jh | 05/08/06 09:58 PM | Report abuse Reply
utoorent is having latest version 1.6
Shailesh | mumbai | 01/08/06 10:38 AM | Report abuse Reply
but use good It with cool
boat | chonburi | 28/07/06 10:26 PM | Report abuse Reply
tyyt
keller | berlin | 28/06/06 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!!!!!!
Russell Peters | Toronto, Canada | 28/06/06 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 !!!
Hazard | CS | 27/06/06 01:45 PM | Report abuse Reply
utorrent 1.6 ruterrnet frandoo greg. Goad wurk punit.
Alabana | Israel | 27/06/06 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.
Pelaoseba | Santiago,chile | 26/06/06 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~~~~~~~~
X86 | Lucknow | 26/06/06 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
Fans....you got | Delhi | 26/06/06 05:07 PM | Report abuse Reply
Useful info.
Zombie | Zombie | 26/06/06 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
A.M | Manipal | 26/06/06 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
Goldy George | kottayam | 26/06/06 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
AnilTech | Bangalore | 26/06/06 03:09 PM | Report abuse Reply
Really nice and informative article. Thanks TEchtree
satyanjoy | New Delhi | 26/06/06 02:41 PM | Report abuse Reply
awesome!!! was waiting for a long time for such an article.
Rajesh | Mumbai | 26/06/06 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
Nameless | Nameless | 26/06/06 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.
Srinivas murthy | Bangalore | 26/06/06 10:10 AM | Report abuse Reply
Everything about MicroTorrent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utorrent .
Scarface | Jhumritalayya | 26/06/06 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!!!!!
racy1 | Bhopal | 25/06/06 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 :-)))
Scarface | Jhumritalayya | 26/06/06 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.
JAsmeet Khosla | new delhi | 26/06/06 06:09 AM | Report abuse Reply
nice review. . .wt do u think about limewire pro, emule and filepipe??
Aatif | Mumbai | 25/06/06 06:08 PM | Report abuse Reply
And also mIRC,Bearshare Pro.......
Prasanna Herle | bangalore | 25/06/06 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
NTH | New Delhi | 26/06/06 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
naval_cadet4u | pune | 25/06/06 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..
drkrack | Kochi | 26/06/06 01:26 AM | Report abuse
Hmph........u guys shudve included Bearshare & Limewire too.......those are the best according to me...........i rarely use torrents....
Atif | Delhi | 26/06/06 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
saikatc16 | xx | 25/06/06 11:48 PM | Report abuse Reply
what do you say about bearshare?
webgenius | Bangalore | 25/06/06 11:25 PM | Report abuse Reply
Three Cheers to Techtree. They are finally getting thier charm back.
funky_monkey | Amazon Jungle | 25/06/06 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.
Vishal_Kadakia | mumbai | 25/06/06 07:39 PM | Report abuse Reply