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BitTorrent: File Sharing for the 21st Century | View information about BitTorrent: File Sharing for the 21st Century within our Technology Website Directory section by reviewing this area of our website. We provide a wealth of information online to help our visitors become better informed about Computer Buzz. |
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BitTorrent: File Sharing for the 21st Century
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BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, a method of distributing large amounts of data without the original distributor incurring the entire costs of hardware, hosting, and bandwidth resources. Instead, when data is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, each recipient supplies pieces of the data to newer recipients, reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source, providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence on the original distributor. This protocol is was designed by Bram Cohen in 2001. It is now maintained by Cohen's company BitTorrent, Inc. Usage of the protocol accounts for significant traffic on the Internet, but the precise amount is difficult to measure.
A BitTorrent "client" is any program that implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of requesting, preparing, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network. Confusingly enough, the first BitTorrent client was eponymously named "BitTorrent."
A "peer" is any computer running a copy of any BitTorrent client. To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a "torrent" file. This small file contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the "tracker," the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file first obtain a torrent file for it, and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.
Here's how it works: Users browse the web to find a torrent of interest, download it, and open it with a BitTorrent client. The torrent file causes the client application to connect to the specified tracker(s), from which it receives a list of peers currently transferring pieces of the requested file. The client then connects to those peers to obtain the various pieces. Such a group of peers connected to each other to share a torrent is called a "swarm." If the swarm contains only the initial seeder, the client connects directly to it and begins to request pieces. As peers enter the swarm, they begin to trade pieces with one another instead of downloading directly from the seeder.
Though both protocols ultimately transfer files over a network, a BitTorrent download differs from a classic full-file HTTP request in several fundamental ways. These differences allow BitTorrent to achieve much lower cost, much higher redundancy, and much greater resistance to abuse than a regular HTTP server. However, this protection comes at a cost: downloads can take time to rise to full speed because it takes time for enough peer connections to be established, and it takes time for a node to receive sufficient data to become an effective uploader. As such, a typical BitTorrent download will gradually rise to very high speeds, and then slowly fall back down toward the end of the download. This contrasts with an HTTP server that, while more vulnerable to overload and abuse, rises to full speed very quickly and maintains this speed throughout.
There are already more than three dozen BitTorrent clients written in a variety of programming languages and running on a variety of computing platforms, and more are popping up every month. We can't cover them all, but we have selected several notable ones for your consideration.
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BitTorrent: The eponymous client
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BitTorrent is a computer program developed by Bram Cohen. It is used for uploading and downloading files and pieces of files via the BitTorrent protocol. BitTorrent was the first client written for the protocol, and it is often nicknamed Mainline by developers denoting its official origins. The program is currently only available for Windows.
The BitTorrent client enables a user to search for and download torrent files, the main window including a Search box, that allows a search term to be entered and which then opens the user's default web browser at the BitTorrent torrents search engine page with the results of the search.
The client enables a range of features including multiple parallel downloads. It also intermediates peering between itself, source file servers ("trackers"), and other clients, thereby yielding great distribution efficiencies. BitTorrent also enables users to create and share torrent files.
Official Website: www.BitTorrent.com
Adjacent image shows BitTorrent for Mac OS X display.
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Azureus: The poison frog client
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Azureus is a Java-based BitTorrent client. The core developers of Azureus have formed a company called Azureus, Inc. The program's logo is the blue poison dart frog, shown on the Azureus webpage, as well as within the program's start-up splash screen, from which the project took its name. Azureus was first released in June 2003. It is now one of the most popular BitTorrent clients. Released under the GNU General Public License, Azureus is free software. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Unix.
Azureus allows users to download multiple files in a single graphical user interface. The program also features detailed statistics and a large number of user-configurable settings. While downloading a file, the user can view several different statistics including:
* Current download and upload speeds and estimated time remaining
* The percentage of each file completed and information on the "pieces" (small parts of the complete file) still needed including the piece number and availability
* File names, sizes and levels of completion for specific files within the download directory (BitTorrent allows a user to create a torrent file for an entire directory). It is also possible to prevent certain files from downloading.
* Peer data including IP addresses (and country with the use of a plugin), the speeds at which you are downloading and uploading to/from them, the port they are running BitTorrent on, and the BitTorrent client they are using
* The total and average "swarm speeds"
Azureus allows users to specify maximum upload and download speeds and is configurable. Azureus also allows users to open some files that have been completed before the entire torrent from within the program. Additionally, Azureus can serve as its own tracker, allowing users to share their own files with others without uploading it to any site. Azureus supports Message stream encryption, an anti-throttling method.
Official Website: www.Azureus.com
Adjacent image shows Azureus splash screen.
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Bits on Wheels: The eye-candy client
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Bits on Wheels is a BitTorrent client copyrighted by Nicolas Berloquin. It claims to be the first 100% native BitTorrent client for the Mac OS X." It is available only in Macintosh form and required Mac OS 10.3 (Panther) or later. It is a freeware program, but it is not in the public domain, and the source code is not open.
Computer Buzz has been testing Bits on Wheels for some time now, and we are impressed. While downloading a file, you have a choice of five views with which to monitor the progress of the transmission. These range from more-or-less character based to fully graphical. Our favorite is the "swarm wheel" which shows how your computer is exchanging data with others. BoW isn't any faster or more sure-footed than any other BitTorrent clients we tested, but it's a helluva more fun to sit and watch. We heartily recommend this piece of software eye candy.
Official Website: www.BitsOnWheels.com
Adjacent image shows Bits on Wheels view of a swarm wheel. Blue nodes around the perimeter of the swarm are seeding (i.e., sending data to) the client; red nodes are leeching (taking data) from the client.
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LimeWire
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LimeWire is a peer-to-peer file sharing client for the Java Platform, which uses the Gnutella network to locate and share files. It is not strictly a BitTorrent client, although recent versions now include BitTorrent support. Released under the GNU General Public License, Limewire is free software for Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and Unix. It also encourages the user to pay a fee, which will then give the user access to LimeWire Pro.
Written in the Java programming language, LimeWire is able to run on any computer with Java Virtual Machine installed. Installers are provided for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Support for Mac OS 9 and other previous versions was dropped with the release of LimeWire 4.0.10.
Lime Wire LLC, the developer of LimeWire, distributes two versions of the program; a basic version for free, and an enhanced version sold for a fee of US$24.95 that offers faster downloads.
Prior to April 2004, the free version of LimeWire was distributed with a bundled program called LimeShop (a variant of TopMoxie), which was considered by some computer security experts to be spyware. Among other things, LimeShop reportedly monitored online purchases in order to redirect sales commissions to Lime Wire LLC. Uninstallation of LimeWire would not remove LimeShop. With the removal of all bundled software in LimeWire 3.9.4 (released on April 20, 2004), these objections were addressed.
Official Website: www.LimeWire.com
Adjacent image shows LimeWire splash screen.
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Opera: The browser is the BitTorrent client
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Okay, so Opera is not exactly a BitTorrent client app. Opera is actually a cross-platform web browser and Internet suite which handles common Internet-related tasks including visiting web sites, sending and receiving e-mail messages, managing contacts, chatting online, viewing widgets, and downloading BitTorrents. If you feel a little intimidated by the complicated trappings of the BitTorrent protocol, we suggest that you just install as your primary (or secondary) browser and use it to search for whatever files you wish to download from the Internet.Opera will take it from there; all you have to do is wait until your download is finished.
Opera is proprietary software developed by Opera Software based in Oslo, Norway. It runs on a variety of operating systems including many versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. Amazingly, Computer Buzz has discovered that Opera is clearly the easiest major browser package to install on the moribund BeOS (v. 5.0.3). It is also used in mobile phones, smart phones, PDAs, game consoles, and interactive televisions.
Official Website: www.Opera.com
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Transmission
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Transmission is a lightweight BitTorrent client. It features a simple interface on top of a cross-platform back end. It is free and open source software, mostly licensed under the MIT License. Transmission runs on Mac OS X (Cocoa interface), Linux, BSD, and BeOS/ZETA.
Transmission uses a smaller amount of system resources than many other BitTorrent clients (such as Azureus) in an effort to strike a balance between functionality and feature bloat. For this reason, Transmission is less fully featured than other clients. Keeping the interface simple and intuitive on all platforms is a key design goal.
Daily OS X builds and source tarballs are available online. The project has a forum where users can discuss support issues and make features requests.
Version 0.6.1 of Transmission did not strictly adhere to the complete BitTorrent specification. This resulted in the banning of that version from many private trackers. The issues were resolved in the subsequent 0.70 release.
Computer Buzz has evaluated Transmission (with Mac OS X), and we have found it to be one of the most straightforward and reliable BitTorrent clients of all. We recommend it highly.
Official Website: www.Transmission.com
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ABC: Another BitTorrent Client
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ABC is a free, open source BitTorrent client based on BitTornado. It supports a queueing system with priority, global, and local (per torrent) preference setting for downloading torrent (including upload and download rating limit), 3 upload options to do with a completed file, and a system named Upload Rate Manager (URM) to force torrents out of queue if there is not a pre-set amount of upload activity. There is also an extensive web interface in ABC, allowing for other applications to view and change torrents and preferences remotely.
It is written in Python using wxPython. It supports Windows but not Mac OS X. We're not sure about Linux or Unix.
Not tested or evaluated by Computer Buzz at this time.
Official Website: www.pingpongabc.net
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Anatomic P2P
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Anatomic P2P is a decentralized peer-to-peer network based on the BitTorrent protocol. All software that forms a part of Anatomic P2P is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Anatomic P2P consists of various scripts and applications, including the tracker (or node) script, supertracker (or supernode) script, planter applications, and the client. All the applications are written in Python.
The client is written in Python and PyGTK which means it can run on Windows, Linux (and presumably Unix/BSD), or Mac OS X (with X server). The client was based on BitTornado. The client supports torrents using a single tracker or torrents planted on the Anatomic P2P Network.
Not yet tested or rated by Computer Buzz.
Official Website: www.AnatomicP2P.com
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BitTornado
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BitTornado is a BitTorrent client programmed in Python for platform independence. It is developed by John Hoffman, who also created its predecessor, Shad0w's Experimental Client. It runs under Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Unix/BSD.
Based on the original BitTorrent client, the interface is largely the same, with added features such as:
-upload/download speed limitation;
-prioritized downloading when downloading batches (several files);
-detailed information about connections to other peers;
-UPnP Port Forwarding (Universal Plug and Play);
-IPv6 support (if your OS supports it and has it installed);
-PE/MSE support as of version 0.3.18.
Super-seeding mode and web-seeding were originally developed by the BitTornado group. BitTornado developer John Hoffman decided to ban BitComet users from accessing his client because it exploits super-seeds.
Not yet tested or rated by Computer Buzz.
Official Website: www.bittornado.com
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BitTyrant
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BitTyrant is a BitTorrent client modified from the Java-based Azureus 2.5 code base. BitTyrant is designed to give preference to clients uploading to it fastest and limiting slower uploaders. It is free software and cross-platform, currently available for Windows, OS X, and Linux.
BitTyrant is a result of research projects at University of Washington and University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The paper describing how it works, "Do Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent?" sought to challenge the common belief that BitTorrent's "must upload to download" transfer protocol prevents strategic clients from gaming the system.
As a client app, it has demonstrated an average increase in download speed by 70% over a standard BitTorrent client. Non-BitTyrant leechers in the swarm generally receive a decrease in download speed. Even so, if all clients are BitTyrant, high capacity peers are more effectively utilized, allowing for an overall increase in download speed. However, there is a caveat; if high capacity peers are involved in many swarms, low capacity peers lose some performance.
Like Azureus, BitTyrant also supports the use of plugins. Plugins from Azureus, such as 3D View and Safepeer, can be used.
Not tested or rated by Computer Buzz at this time.
Official Website: www.bittyrant.com
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Deluge
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Deluge is a BitTorrent client, created using Python and GTK+ (through PyGTK). Deluge is currently usable on POSIX-compliant operating systems including most Linux and Unix/BSD machilnes. It is intended to bring a native, full-featured client to GTK desktop environments such as GNOME and Xfce. An official Windows port is also in development. The program uses the libtorrent C++ library.
Deluge was created by two members of ubuntuforums.org, Zach Tibbitts and Alon Zakai.
While under early development, Deluge was known as gTorrent, because it was to be a BitTorrent client for GNOME (the "g" in "gTorrent" stood for "GNOME"). When the very first version was released to the public on September 25, 2006, the client was renamed to Deluge to avoid implying that the client was GNOME-only.
The 0.5 release is a complete rewrite from the 0.4.x code branch. This was to do away with some of the coding conventions in the earlier versions, aiming for a cleaner, more polished result.
Recently, work has been done to bring Deluge to other operating systems. Starting with version 0.5.4.1, Deluge is available for Mac OS X via MacPorts, and it has an official Windows installer.
Not yet tested or rated by Computer Buzz.
Official Website: www.deluge-torrent.com
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Torrent Swapper
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Torrent Swapper is an open source BitTorrent client for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and Unix/BSD.
Their SourceForge home page describes the program thusly:
"Lightweight python based 4th. generation bittorrent client with social networking, recommendation, tag-based navigation, moderation, and real-time streaming based on the Tribler BitTorrent client (www.tribler.org)."
The program is used to download files using Peer-To-Peer technology, in this case using the BitTorrent protocol. Torrent Swapper is comparable to Azureus, which is Java-based but boasts some unique features such as Amazon-like recommendations to get interesting files, doubling the download speed by using the upload capacity of friends, real-time P2P file sharing with P2P video streaming, and showing the locations of seeders/leechers of the same content with city-level accuracy on a world map.
Not tested or rated by Computer Buzz at this time.
Official Website: http://bit-torrent.sourceforge.net/
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Qbittorrent
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QBittorrent is a free Bittorrent P2P client coded in C++/Qt4 and developed by a university student (Christophe Dumez) from France. It is based on Libtorrent. This project is built with the Qt (toolkit) programming language and was created in March 2006.
QBittorrent is free software that is designed to have a small footprint and be powerful, intuitive, and visually attractive. It runs under Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X but not Windows.
Not yet tested or rated by Computer Buzz.
Official Website: http://qbittorrent.sourceforge.net/
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