µTorrent Joins the BitTorrent Herd

[ToM]

Since BitTorrent's introduction to the file-sharing world, many developers have jumped at the opportunity to create their own BitTorrent clients. Their aim is to improve upon the simple Python-based application written by Bram Cohen.

We've seen clients ranging from Python-based mods such as BitTornado to fully-featured java-based clients like Azureus. C++ applications in the form of BitComet have also spun off from the original client.

While feature rich, Azureus' major downfall is its java-based core which requires a significant amount of computer resources in order to run stable. Those who have lower-end PCs or those who simply don't want to dedicate the majority of their resources to one application turn to lighter, more suitable clients for their needs.

Until now, BitComet has been one of the most popular alternative clients to Azureus. It contains enough of Azureus' features to satisfy those searching for a decent torrent manager while keeping a low CPU and memory footprint.

It's this sacrifice of unneeded features over performance that can be a deciding factor when choosing a client. Now, BitTorrent users have one more choice in the growing fields of lightweight torrent clients - µTorrent. This new client brings additional competition as µTorrent appears to be the lightest application in the BitTorrent scene.

While running the application, µTorrent peaked at around 4K memory usage. This low footprint is over 10K lower than that of BitComet, which not only benefits the end user but offers additional benefits to the BitTorrent community. Its low resource consumption allows users who would otherwise close their download to continue seeding while continuing with other tasks.

The addition of µTorrent to the BitTorrent world has been warmly received by many avid torrent users. A brief exception to this occurred when an early bug caused µTorrent to send incorrect statistics to the invite-only music tracker Oink. The µTorrent developers quickly responded to this by releasing version <a href=http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?t=391 target=_blank>1.1.3</a>, which squashed this bug and placed the client back in Oink's <a href=http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?t=438 target=_blank>good books</a>.

In a market of freeware applications to choose from, µTorrent has certainly found a niche that will continue to attract a growing userbase and earn itself a rightful place in the BitTorrent community.

[crackerjacker]

i am actually going to try it later on.
sounds good.
good story u wrote there.

hmm got to find a screenshot for this

[Andu]

Is there more information concerning the client? How exactly is it different from the original Bittorrent client?

[Eeyore]

I have used it recently and was very, very impressed with it. It is basically Azureus without Java, some of its features and DHT. It looks very similar and preforms in a similar fashion.
Screenshots
Tom is correct in saying that more users will Seed with this client. I always have used Azureus and won't seed for a long time because it slows down my already slow computer too much. I didn't even notice it was running and could Seed as long as I wanted to.
I highly recommend it.
Now if they could only make a Linux version and incorperate Azureus' DHT.

[Macker]

It sounds good but I think I'll stick with Azureus hasn't let me down yet

[Fusen]

hmmm, everybody always bashes azureus, try updating your age old pc ;X

I'm on quite a mediocre setup now since hardware has jumped quite abit since I bought my hardware and I can easily run azureus in the background and it wont get in the way of my normal tasks

if azureus really is hurting your pc you might need to think about upgrading

[maseratiprogram]

very positive reviews i shall give it a try . <3.

[buddymander]

I used bitornado for a long time then got azureus which was great but as time gos on i notice its slugishness more and more which happens with all programs but i like to surf while im downloading and seeding, hopefully this will replace azureus, i just miss the not having to worry about it when surfing heavy sites, it was a peaceful feeling.

[puzzlepants]

Very nice story, but isn't it a bit old? I saw this on digg almost a month ago. I cannot say I have used the client because I stick with BitComet. It has a small enough footprint that I am plenty happy with it, and I have another computer I run all my downloads on anyways, so I don't even have to be concerned about that.

[IceCube]

I tried uTorrent and Norton Firewall then told me every time I started the program, "Trojan blocked" I've been far from impressed with it either way and don't plan on using it. I'm definitely sticking with Azureus. Was quite happy about it.

[sonnentier]

impressive how light a bittorrent client can be..
doesn't even install.. one 89k .exe thats it

gui is fast (doesn't lag), looks nice, i like it. should even work well on a pc manufactured 1999 or before.

nice to see a minimalist "tinyapp" for bittorrent

imo they should include dht in future versions

(what i dont like with bitcomet, it would connect to "chinanet" servers. If you block that traffic, it floods with reconnection trials (many per second) - at least it's like that with PeerGuardian2, causing the log file exploiding in size)

[Moloko_Plus]

Great program!!! Started using it to seed a few torrents and wow, amazing!

[lordofmidnight01]

What do you all think of ABC as a bittorrent program? I've been using it for a while and like it but my experiance isn't as broad as yourselves. Thoughts?

[Assyrian]

hmmm, everybody always bashes azureus, try updating your age old pc ;X

I'm on quite a mediocre setup now since hardware has jumped quite abit since I bought my hardware and I can easily run azureus in the background and it wont get in the way of my normal tasks

if azureus really is hurting your pc you might need to think about upgrading

running on p4 3ghz 1GB ram, i was using AZ, i'd rather save my memory for other applications i use, not everyone only uses 1 program at a time you know, you can upgrade your hardware as much as you can but its still not enough for AZ. only reason why i used it was because i needed a schedular, but now Utorrent is enough for me, its for everything i need.

about time i saw an article on this, it deserved it, well done Tom.

[redbricks]

utorrent ROCKS. as soon as they give us dht ill be uninstalling azureus

have u ever tried playing doom 3 with azureus running?? ive got a good high range system and azureus really bogs it down

thanks for the heads up with this

[Assyrian]

exactly! try loading up a game while having AZ running!

[IceCube]

I've had AZ AND Emule running in the background while running Fruity Loops Studios and havn't had too much of a performance issue.

[frogfroggy]

ahh come on -_- Azureus is good, it does slow down the computer a little bit but for my games ( I play Sc;Bw ) its totally fine and I have a 350 mhz and 192 ram computer dude if your computer slows down and bla pff what do I have to say ?....

But utorrent is nice ^^ but I will stick with Azureus

[IceCube]

The interesting part is that if it can improve itself over time, it would be hard to beat the kind of development uTorrent has to offer short of the RIAA changing some laws and banning it. I think this thing does need some time to actually prove that it's going to be the next "super-good" app.

[neongod]

I just installed this today. After I downloaded the < 100KB file, I assumed it was some kind of setup file that would connect to their server. Nope! This client uses a trace of physical and virtual memory, and its interface is VERY similar to Azerus (which I have used for a long time). I highly recommend at least giving it a try. It's doesn't d/l as fast, but it loads instantly, it's barely noticable, and it doesn't have an installer. It's just an exe.

About the NAV warnings, get rid of it! I just installed the latest McAfee and it cuts my login time by half, with auto-protect ENABLED (which was something I never did with NAV). Symantec products are bloatware. Plus it leaves behind all kind of registry entries and "Application Data" files upon uninstall.

My $.02

[Charles]

Really really impressive app. I wonder how they do to package so much in a so small application size. My hat off to them and I heard there would also a mac os x port, good news!

Seems Ludvig Strigeus (programmer) is a genious, utorrent is most welcome to the current P2P standup.

[Trev0r269]

v lightweight, clean interface, no crapware


yeah def a cool thing. as a biology student i must say, diversity is better

[Assyrian]

to those saying "downloads slow"

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/818/torrent2lq.jpg

thats downloading of a private tracker. remember, it mostly depends on the seeds/peers

i've hit the 600kbps+ (same as i used to get on BitTornado)

we're on AZ only 400kbps+

[bkman]

From my tests, it does download a little slower than competing clients, and also connects to peers at a slower rate.

I'm sure that this will be corrected in subsequent versions, however.

Also, the memory footprint will rise to levels that are very close to BitComet's when multiple torrents are added, so it doesn't really hold the memory advantage.

[LANjackal]

Decent attempt at a new client. It's also portable, which is great because you can run it from removable media on any PC. In addition, it shows more details about your peers than most other clients do: their country of origin and the domain name they're on. Not very useful info to most users, but interesting nonetheless.

On the other hand, it's SLOW compared to BitComet by a factor of at least 2 (on the torrent that I tested it on). And yes the test was as fair as I could possibly make it. I started the torrent in uTorrent, ran it for a while, then stopped it. I then immediately started the same torrent in BitComet with the file saved to a different location (so that BitComet would be forced to start the download from scratch). Uploading also seems to be a problem.

Additionally, uTorrent doesn't explicitly support the Bittorrent DHT tracker (which BitComet does, Azureus uses it's own unofficial DHT implentation if I remember well).

I think the above speed shortcomings are probably due to uTorrent's UPnP implementation coupled with the lack of DHT support.

Conclusion: if you REALLY need the system resources, uTorrent might your ticket. However, if you have resources to spare, choose BitComet every time. Unless you really want a LOT of control over your torrents in terms of options, or you run a non-Windows OS, don't even consider Azureus. Bittorrent is very CPU intenisve by its very nature - your PC has to maintain connections to many other peers simultaneously while constantly downloading from a suitable subset of those, uploading to a suitable subset of those, checking for errors and checking what parts of the file the other peers have. Coding all that in notoriously slow (but interoperable) Java was never a good idea in terms of program execution speed. Even Limewire drops the ball in the performance department on that one - it's GUI is slow.

BitComet's still the reigning champion, folks, but we're happy to have other players on the field.