BitTorrent-er?

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Sep 1, 2009

Filed under: Random 109 comments

Pardon me, but can I abuse the privilege of having a large audience and just ask you guys a question rather than digging around and doing research?

Garry’s Mod is back. (Whew! Thank you, Garry.) I found a bunch of really cool models that could lead to some great comics, but they’re only available on torrents. Now, I realize that to you young hipsters this is like admitting to being a 40 Year Old Virgin, but I don’t know anything about using torrents.

I’m a bit curious as to what client to use. I’m worried about malware, and about getting a program that’s going to jump up and down in my system tray like a yappy dog. I know how easy it is to get into trouble when you don’t know what you’re doing, and so I thought I’d solicit some advice.

 


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109 thoughts on “BitTorrent-er?

  1. Nick C. says:

    If you want to stay away from something tray-hoppy, avoid bitcomet at all costs. It comes packed with hidden software and junk, and annoying things pop up constantly. I’d suggest Utorrent.

  2. Grim says:

    Well, how about µTorrent (also spelled uTorrent) ? A small program (single executable, single settings folder) that does the job, no more, no less. Plus the included chm is full of hints and guides. Yay torrents !

  3. Silfir says:

    I’ve got utorrent (Technically, “mu” torrent, as the u is written like the Ancient Greek “mu”) installed. Downloaded OpenOffice.org with it. It’s a small program and refreshingly unobtrusive. I don’t think it even told me when my downloads were done. It was just sitting there in the system tray, waiting to be hovered over or clicked. But it has been some time since I downloaded OpenOffice.

    EDIT: And while I was typing this, two guys went and made the same suggestion, and one even managed to type an actual µ (which I shamelessly copied).

  4. Illusionary says:

    I second (fourth?) utorrent – simple, basic and no malware or things hanging around when you close it.

  5. I believe that µTorrent is good.

    My husband also uses Vuze on his Mac.

    Leslee

  6. Narkis says:

    I second (third. Damn) μTorrent. Very light and easy to use, with no pesky side effects.

  7. Test. Test.

    Why are my posts disappearing after I hit the “Submit” button?

    Leslee

    1. Shamus says:

      Leslee Beldotti: I see your posts ok….

  8. Mark says:

    For Windows, the standard is µTorrent. It’s extremely featureful, but comparatively resource-light (aside, of course, from network resources). By default it hangs around in your system tray and pops up a notice when a download finishes, but this behavior (along with nearly everything else) can be configured without much difficulty. It’s a safe download – too many downloads by too many security-conscious individuals for there to be something sinister lurking in it – and, as long as you don’t need it to run on non-Windows, should be exactly what you need.

    Remember to be polite and seed beyond a ratio of 1.0 after your download has finished.

  9. Ross Bearman says:

    Got to be μTorrent.

  10. AGrey says:

    uTorrent

    N-ed

    where n is the number of people before me +1, because i am too lazy to count them.

    but not too lazy to type all this, apparently

  11. Adam says:

    uTorrent, and if you’re on a vaguely respectable tracker site, you’re 90% safe from malware.

  12. unitled says:

    Another thumbs up for uTorrent. The only problems I had with it were when the torrents themselves had something dodgy in them, and that’s not the fault of the client software.

  13. antsheaven says:

    Yep, another vote for utorrent here. Though if you already have a download manager program like Flashget or Free Download Manager, you can just use its built-in torrent client.

  14. Punning Pundit says:

    uTorrent. Is there anything else?

  15. felblood says:

    If you don’t need any advanced features (which you don’t, since you wouldn’t know what to do with them) uTorrent is the way to go.

    There are bigger, bulkier clients that do certain things better, but none of those do anything for a guy who’s just starting out. uTorrent is pretty much the perfect thing for starting out.

    Fair warning, with the power of torrents in your hands, the siren song of piracy can get pretty strong. Steel your will.

  16. Peter H. Coffin says:

    The Opera browser has had a torrent client built in more more than a few versions now.

  17. Chris says:

    I like Azureus (renamed Vuze) once all the Vuze crap is turned off. And a long time ago I used to use ABC. From what I have seen in my connections, uTorrent seems extremely popular, which corresponds with the comments here.

    Really, any Free Software client is going to be safe.

  18. Greg says:

    Rather redundant to post this by now, but like the others have said, uTorrent definitely sounds like what you’re after.

  19. Eldiran says:

    Definitely uTorrent.

  20. Nick says:

    I personally use Vuse (formerly Azureus), but it definitely isn’t small. uTorrent seems popular for a small torrent client, though. :)

  21. Graeme says:

    I’ve used Azureus Vuze for awhile now without much problems, but it’s become afflicted with feature creep and they’re trying to turn it into an actual content provider vs. torrent downloader. It is a nice place to find trailers for games/sci-fi movies and some actual episodes from web series as well. Again though it’s become somewhat bloated and as always the major thing to watch for are the sites themselves that you download from.

  22. vdeogmer says:

    You want to use uTorrent. It’s simple and lightweight.

    The only thing it’s going to do in your tray is popup a notification when your downloads are done.

  23. Jazmeister says:

    To answer the broader question: Torrents are files that hash larger files. Garry’s files are seeded (a seeder is someone who keeps sharing after they’ve downloaded, essentially hosting the file) by Amazon, so there’s no risk of malware (the file is genuine – it’s not drugs disguised as delicious GModels).

    If you were downloading, say, a pirated movie, there’s no way to know you’re not actually downloading a horrible virus until it’s done and you’re neck-deep in it. That’s where the (very founded) suspicions come from. Hope that helps!

    (I use uTorrent. PCG UK package it with their cover disc, so it’s always handy if I’ve just installed Windows.)

  24. zimboptoo says:

    μTorrent is my torrent application of choice when on a Windows system, for all the reasons listed above. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been ported to linux yet (though there is a Mac beta). So I usually end up using bittornado or Transmission (though I hear KTorrent works really well for those using KDE). Azureus is well featured and works on all OSs that run Java, but it’s a resources monster.

  25. mark says:

    utorrent!

  26. jokermatt999 says:

    I suggest rTorrent.

    Nah, just kidding, n+1 for uTorrent. It does notify when torrents finish, but it is really lightweight and unobtrusive. It’s a really damn good program.

    As for malware concerns, there are virtually none. Since torrents rely on people also sharing them, malware is actually more difficult to find than legit files. I can’t think of a single instance of problems I’ve had with malware from torrents. Obviously it’s not bulletproof, but it appears to work well.

    1. Shamus says:

      Okay, to stop the torrent of uTorrent suggestions: I got it.

      It works.

      It’s SLOOOOOOW.

      10MB file. It’d be a 10 second job via HTTP. Right now it’s been going for 15 mins and has over an hour to go. An hour and a half. For 10MB. I think this is this slower than a 14.4 modem.

  27. vdeogmer says:

    Torrents are always slow to start with, once you start seeding a larger portion of the file yourself, your download speed will go up to more reasonable rates.

    Depending on the seeders, of course.

  28. vede says:

    :/

    I guess I’m weird. I use BitTorrent.

    Works fine for me, and it’s never done anything against my wishes.

    Shamus: Yeah, on torrents, you’re at the mercy of seeders, who are able to control the speed and number of people at/to which they upload, and a lot of people will limit their speed and upload slots to avoid destroying their standard internet usablity.

    You gotta sacrifice having a big server to download from, for… um… Hrm. Well, they tend to be safer and easier to find than direct downloads when you’re trying to pirate things… And for a lot of recent/popular games, the number of seeders is good enough to make the speed about the same as a direct download.

    Of course, I don’t think you plan on pirating much, so I expect uTorrent will go unused for very long periods of time between uses for you…

  29. Pimterry says:

    Yeah, torrents aren’t so quick to start with. To be honest, anybody using them for a 10mb file is a damn fool, for that much data it’d almost be quicker to just phone around the swarm and write down numbers together.

    Hmmm… I think I hear an RFC brewing…

  30. Ciennas says:

    Well, in addition, Ubuntu comes bundled with Transmission, which serves my needs just fine.

    It’s even integrated ro work with the preinstalled firefox.

    I haven’t used any others, but it let’s me choose which files within the torrent, the download speed roof, max number of peers, and can raise or lower priority for individual files.

  31. Julian says:

    µTorrent is the way to go. Lightweight, safe, and doesn’t use up any resources.
    As for trackers, I recommend either btjunkie.org, thepiratebay.org, or isohunt.com (a metasearch engine).
    I mostly use bittorrent to share files among tons of friends, watch a movie before it hits theaters here in Argentina, or play a game for which there is no demo, or of which I’m unsure about buying (for instance, while I liked Mirror’s Edge, paying $60 would be a ripoff)

    Do make sure the torrent you’re downloading has a good ratio of seeders (people with the entire torrent downloaded who are also sharing) and leechers (people still downloading, but, ideally, still sharing what they’ve got).

    It helps to think of torrent like this:
    Imagine 5 people all want the same book, which is 100 pages long. Each of them is sitting at a round table and has a photocopier. Person 1 has all 100 pages, while the rest don’t have any. Person 1 starts copying random pages of the books and gives them to Person 2. Person 2, although he doesn’t have the entire book, can still make copies of the pages he already has. Person 1 is a Seeder: constantly sharing, while 2-5 are Leechers: dividing their attention between getting pages for their own book and making copies for the rest.

    ALSO: if you have a static IP, make sure uTorrent’s listen port is forwarded properly, and play around the settings to avoid using all your bandwidth on uploading.

  32. Agaib says:

    I think speed is probably more limited by the file you’re trying to download than the actually torrent client you’re using. I think you’d get similar speeds with any other program trying to download the same file.

  33. Jericho says:

    Torrent speed is entirely dependent on seeders. Few seeders? Slow download.

  34. Guy says:

    μTorrent.

    How’s the weather on Mars?

  35. You have utorrent: Now make it faster with a little configuration help. The most important part of this guide deals with getting your ports forwarded correctly and tuning your upload limits, cable connections in particular lose their download speed when the upload is saturated.

    http://gizmodo.com/5187630/how-to-use-bittorrent-like-a-pro

    Also, I’m bored and have the bandwidth to spare. If you throw up links to the files in question, I’ll hop on and help out the swarm.

  36. Peter Olson says:

    edit: All my talk has already been fully described above. ;-)

    So the short story I was trying to say is, torrents start slow, speed up, but will only go as fast as there are people sharing it.

  37. Blake says:

    I guess that makes me the fifth person to suggest µTorrent. It’s like < 300 KB for the whole application. Extremely nice lightweight client.

    Edit: And by 5th, I mean 500th or so

  38. DmL says:

    You have to make sure you’re accepting connections on your ports.

  39. hevis says:

    Shamus: Go to uTorrent’s Speed Guide (ctrl+g) and pick connection type that’s closest to yours. (I think default is 28.8k dial-up..)

  40. Factoid says:

    I know the “torrents start slow and get faster” and “uTorrent is awesome” comments are both done to death by now, but they are definitely true.

    I will throw my different two cents in though and say some clients seem to do a better job at accelerating the seed/peer hunting process.

    I used to have great luck with Azureus. if you can find an old version before it became Azureus Vuze I still think it’s the best torrent client I’ve used. Good features, lots of useful information available, etc…but they ruined it by trying to turn it into a media hub, which it’s exceptionally terrible at and now it’s bloated and lacks focus. The old versions can still be found, though.

  41. mc says:

    @Chris: utorrent isn’t free software* like Vuze, though.(If that’s what you meant.)

    *: ‘free software’ in the hippy-dippy sense.

  42. NCarlson says:

    You might also want to check your settings; port forwarding is the biggie, but upload slots and speed can kill download speed as well.

    Having never used p2p and being in µTorrent my suggestion is to just do whatever the speed guide (ctrl+g or under options) tells you (theres actually a button to auto set it to recommended).

  43. Benjamin Orchard says:

    Okay, I KNOW μTorrent is well-suggested at this point.

    There’s a reason why.

    I won’t clamor about that anymore, but consider this a bit more: it’s also one of the more feature-rich clients without doing anything *else*. It doesn’t try to VIEW files, it doesn’t try to be anything other than a comprehensive CLIENT for downloading torrents (VUZE I’m looking you!!!). It remains, therefore, very lightweight while allowing you to selectively choose which files from an archive you download, providing several other nifty features that other more bloated clients lack.

    I wish μTorrent was available for OS X (PPC) 10.4.

    Oh well…

  44. SatansBestBuddy says:

    I use BitComet. >.>

    I’m weird I guess, even though my main internet browser is Opera, which can torrent files as well, but I’ll still open pretty much all torrents with BitComet.

  45. Unbeliever says:

    Ditto, utorrent.

    Ditto, you’re at the mercy of the number of seeders and the bandwidth they’re willing to sacrifice.

    Torrenting isn’t about speed.

    Torrenting is about downloading files that (due to obscurity or legality) no big-bandwidth website is willing to host…

    Embrace the slow… :)

  46. ngthagg says:

    I think there’s a bit of misunderstanding about torrents here: the “start slow, finish fast” rule is not much of a rule at all. In fact, it only applies when a torrent is first released (ie, when there is only one seed), and then only if there are lots of leechers. For new releases, there is only one copy of each chunk of the data, so download rates are limited by the upload rate of the one seeder. As pieces get spread around the leecher crowd, however, you can connect to many different people and have access to the entire file.

    But if there are no fellow leechers, then the download speed at the start will stay slow the entire way through. Your only choice then (assuming there’s no direct download available) is to let the torrent chug away until it’s done. One nice thing about torrents is that download management is built into the system, so you can stop and start your download whenever it’s convenient (ie, download at night when your computer would otherwise be idle).

  47. errolian says:

    Dare I say µTorrent :)

    You will have to forward the right ports and set-up your connection speed, and after that should whiz along nicely.

  48. Diremongoose says:

    Torrent speeds are often limited by the country in which the other seeders/peers live. If you you live outside of the US, as I do, this is usually the case. Sometimes, even with hundreds of seeds/peers, a relatively small download can take days or weeks.

  49. kobyov says:

    Another good idea with uTorrent is to set outgoing encryption to forced. Depending on how good your ISP’s DPI gear (assuming they have it) is, this can help minimise the effects of traffic throttling.

  50. TehShrike says:

    Torrenting just means downloading files from more than one computer at a time (usually, the computers of other people like you).

    There’s no more risk of getting a virus than there is from any other method of getting files – if you’re downloading an image file, there’s nothing to worry about (unless you have some crazy image viewer that interprets pixels as operating system commands, which would be freaky).

    Generally, the more you seed (let people download from you) the faster you will download things (as you will get seeded to yourself more readily).

    Of course, if you’re downloading a torrent that has many people seeding, and not many other people downloading, you’ll get the file pretty quickly regardless.

    If you want to download something (illegal or no), but you’re afraid some copyright-monger might catch you in the act and try to make something of it, install PeerGuardian – it’s a simple blacklist software, that comes with some very hefty blacklists of IP addresses that you probably don’t want to connect to, no matter how much you do or don’t pirate.

  51. Yar Kramer says:

    I recommend this explanation of How Bittorrent Works, if you’re that unfamiliar with the mere concept.

  52. Just to be contrary, I’ll put out there that I use ktorrent over utorrent. This is entirely because I’m a linux user, and it comes in the default kde packages. Also, as free-as-in-speech software, I trust it to be malware-free.

  53. Telas says:

    Has anyone suggested uTorrent yet?

    ;-)

  54. Jabor says:

    Wow, looks like I got in late to the party.

    I used to use Azureus, but about the time they released Vuze I switched over to microTorrent (yes, that’s what the “µ” prefix means).

    Also, did someone say crazy image viewer that interprets pixels as operating system commands?

  55. ZomBuster says:

    If your torrents are slow just google “utorrent speedguide” or something and you’ll get plenty of guides how to setup the client for maximum speed.

  56. Henebry says:

    I often find torrents are fastest in the middle of the download. Toward the end, it seems like you’re hunting for the last, rare card in a new Magic release.

  57. WILL says:

    Guys I think Shamus is downloading the nude Zoey mod.

    *looks around suspiciously*

  58. bbot says:

    µTorrent is fine, sure.

    If you’re a wuss.

    Like all gentlemen of a finer caliber, I use rtorrent, a refined torrent client, from a more civilized age. I bury in in a screen tab, and tell it to watch my downloads directory for new .torrents, and to automatically start them. Check back a couple hours later, and my perfectly legitimate music files and distro images are downloaded.

    It is, of course, for linux only.

  59. Shamus, its slow because your port forwarding hasnt been setup in all likelihood. Youll want to follow all teh steps in the Utorrent Setup Guide here:

    http://www.utorrent.com/documentation/connection-setup

    which involves ports and other optimizations. Once this is all set, you can verify that you are good to go by the green icon in the bottom statusbar of the utorrent window. if its a red or yellow icon then youre not optimal yet.

    theres also a menu option to test port forwardoing and another to check connection speed – use those.

  60. Graeme says:

    In regards to a slow download speed, it might depend on your own settings. At least on Azureus you can set limits on your max upload/download speed. I don’t know about µTorrent, but I suspect it’s the same. So if your download limit is set too low it’ll slow things down no matter how fast or how many seeders there are. The problem I’ve had with torrents is it sucks up all the bandwidth when it downloads… which tends to piss off your roommates.

  61. Rosseloh says:

    Definitely µTorrent. Small, unobtrusive, easy to shut off when you’re not using it.

    Your download speeds are dependent mainly on the seeds you’re connected to and whether or not your ports are forwarded (you can customize which port in the program). I don’t think it’s µTorrent itself, I’ve gotten nearly 1Mbps at times. Of course, you could be an anomaly…. :P

  62. The Ocho says:

    Anyone mention uTorrent yet? Kidding kidding.

  63. pwiggi says:

    Just to provide an alternative to µTorrent:

    If you’ve got a Linux machine around you can use torrentflux, a web-based torrent client. You can just send torrent files to it from your browser (via a firefox plugin). Then you can shut down / reboot your desktop without even pausing the torrents.

  64. Sho says:

    Huh. Everybody loves their uTorrent.

    I hate it. Most torrent programs wreck my internet and make everything run slow, but uTorrent actually crashes my network when it picks up speed. I mean it does get awfully fast, hundreds of kilobytes a second (which is fast for me anyway…), but I end up having to reset my connection every ten minutes. BitTorrent doesn’t have that problem for me.

    It’s not just me though (well it is according to these comments). A few people tell me that uTorrent runs awful for them, but they like BitTorrent. I haven’t had any problems with BitTorrent, but I rarely ever use torrent programs anyway.

  65. BaCoN says:

    Pretty much everybody uses uTorrent, yeah. uTorrent works fine for me(we can download on two computers and have the PS3 up and going, while we’re both playing Champions Online, no probs), but we have a really good connection, too, so I dunno.

    I used to use BitTorrent, but I honestly prefer uTorrent for being able to pick individual files(which BT used to not be able to do, dunno about now) and throttling your speed to keep your ISP from perking its ears in your direction.

  66. fenix says:

    Too many comments…

    I recommend Transmission. Very light weight and has all the options right in front of you.

    Look for torrents that have lots of Seeds. Peers (or leechers) are people who are in the process of downloading it and will be competing for download speed (but will also (hopefully) be sharing data as well.

    Do the community a favor and have a share ratio of at least 1 for all your torrents. A healthy share ratio leads to a healthy community.

    Welcome to bittorrent (assuming this foray doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth).

  67. Gregory Weir says:

    In case you’re interested, Shamus: Generally, BitTorrent is not used for speed, but to reduce the bandwidth costs for the original file publisher. If a million people download that 10mb file via HTTP, then the publishing site uses 10 terabytes of bandwidth. Via bitorrent, in an ideal situation, each user, including the original publisher, would only use 10mb of outgoing bandwidth. This is done at the cost of speed, often. It’s a communal model of file transfer.

    Also, have you heard of a client called uTorrent?

  68. Debaser says:

    Utorrent is the best for stability and minimalism.

  69. Jabor says:

    Of course, sometimes people do use BitTorrent for speed.

    Namely, instead of their server just serving up the file normally, it acts as both a tracker and a seed sharing the file over BitTorrent.

    Anyone who can connect to the server gets at least the same download speed as they would normally, plus whatever extra bandwidth they can grab from the rest of the swarm.

  70. Turgid Bolk says:

    @bbot: utorrent supports that very thing as well. It’s under the “Directories” section of the preferences dialogue, you can specify where to load the .torrents from, where to move finished .torrents to, and whether to keep or delete .torrents once you have the files. Quite handy.

  71. Alan De Smet says:

    If a torrent is popular, it will be fast as lots of people are participating. Popular torrents are the only thing I download that actually saturates my download bandwidth. As it gets less and less popular it gets slower and slower. The degenerate case is that only one person is “seeding” the file, and you’re down to their upload bandwidth.

    But.

    Bittorrent is designed to force you to play nice and share yourself. If you play nice, other people let you have more bandwidth. If you don’t place nice, you are essentially quality of serviced to the end of the line; you’ll get the bits, but don’t hold your breath. The kicker is that “playing nice” means “other people can connect to you”. If you’re behind a firewall or NAT, other people might not be able to connect to you, and you end up not playing nice without realizing it. And of course most people with home networks are behind a NAT. The solution is to punch a port or two through to your download machine. How to do that will depend on the router implementing your NAT. Which port or ports to open will depend on your Bittorrent client. My recollection is that Vuze is pretty good about telling you which port and providing guidance. (It’s been a while since I needed to sort it out.) I can’t speak to uTorrent.

  72. BK says:

    I’m guessing from all the responses that µTorrent is fine, but I’ve never had occasion to use it myself. Instead I’ve just stuck with BitTornado for about five years now.

  73. MuonDecay says:

    uTorrent is the popular option.

    If you want something more lightweight, trustworthy, and free then try Halite. I would honestly recommend Halite myself. It is very simple and utilitarian and therefore a good option for someone who wants it to Just Work.

    Either way though you’ll need to know how to forward a port in your router settings, but that’s no big deal to you. Set the port to use in your options menu in the client, and then forward that port to your PC of choice in the router settings.

    You’ll want to change the port the client uses away from the default. Many ISPs throttle connections on the default bittorrent port range, because they suffer from the unfortunate delusion that the bittorrent protocol is inherently illegal regardless of its usage.

    If you don’t forward your bittorrent client’s port properly, seeders (your peers on the net that are hosting a full copy of the file you need) won’t be able to effectively detect that your client is seeking the file, and you’ll be limited to whoever your client can connect to by seeking connections.

    With your ports forwarded, your client will initiate connections, and other people in the same swarm will also initiate connections. This makes the whole process much faster. Without ports forwarded your client has to do all the work of making connections, and this hamstrings the process.

  74. Shamus – torrent speed depends on the number of people that are downloading with you. If there is only few people out there you can only download as fast as they can upload – and since most people have asymmetric bandwidth (up slower than down) and usually limit their torrent client to connect to a limited number of peers not to max out their bandwidth completely you will likely have a round robin kind of thing going on. So if there are 10 people in the swarm, you will probably only get connected to 2 or 3 of them at the same time and probably at 756Kbps because that’s their Up speed. It will be slower than straight HTTP.

    On the other hand if the torrent has 600 seeds you will always be connected to bunch of peers and sucking down different pieces of the same file at once. It will end up much faster than HTTP because it’s bit like parallel processing for downloads.

    Also, infected torrents are bit of a myth. Torrent sites are usually very safe. A lot of them have comment sections where people will warn you about potential infection or let you know if the file is a fake. There is also the self-moderating effect – when people figure out the file is fishy, they stop seeding it and eventually the torrent dies off. There is just no point in downloading a file with 1 seed and 2 leaches on it – so eventually even the original seeder will give up and go cause trouble somewhere else.

    I’ve been downloading from public torrent sites for years, and I have yet to see a well seeded, popular torrent that turned out to be a virus trap or a fake.

  75. Anachronist says:

    Shamus: Torrent downloading is slow if the number of seeds and/or leechers is small, and you won’t complete a download at all if the swarm consists only of leechers with no seeds. A “seed” means a complete copy of the file you want is located at the seeder. You are uploading packets you have already downloaded to other leechers while you are downloading other packets (that’s what makes BitTorrent so efficient), and you automatically become a seeder (upload-only) the moment you have completed a download.

    Torrents with a large swarm of participants (say at least 50 or so) will typically be fast. However…

    Many folks use Azureus/Vuze (including me), which has a ton of settings to throttle upload speeds and connections to individual leechers, force some leechers to connect to other leechers to get packets I already sent, kick and ban connections based on various rules (including the client identity), etc. Also if you have no sharing record, the tracker won’t let you download fast until your send/receive ratio becomes reasonable. Furthermore, some of those others you connect to may be on dial-up.

    The real advantage to BitTorrent is that it doesn’t tie up network bandwidth on the server side if you want to distribute a file to a large audience. For you (the client), you will see an advantage in download speed only if you try to download a torrent from a large swarm AND you have established a good sharing record.

    It’s good practice to keep your torrent running after you have downloaded the complete file, until your share ratio is 1:1. If everyone did that, then every torrent would have a seed, and there would be no orphans. Unfortunately, too many people quit sharing and disconnect as soon as they have snarfed the entire file from the swarm.

  76. Nick says:

    Another vote for uTorrent, but getting fast speeds has a lot to do with the configuration, make sure you run the speed guide (is it still called that?) in uTorrent and tell your NAT/firewall/port forwarder to let port 6881 through to your computer.

    The BitTorrent network rewards generosity, the more/faster you upload, the more you can download, if you can afford it, set your upload to unlimited.

    Also, if you want to use uTorrent as a portable app, just create a settings.dat file in the uTorrent.exe directory (or copy an existing one), it will then store all its files in that directory.

  77. Nick says:

    @sho, you probably have your max connections set too high. If you have a consumer-level ADSL router (ie. not Cisco) then uTorrent is probably trying to open so many connections that the router can’t handle it and hangs. This used to happen to me all the time until I set my max connections to 80, works flawlessly now.

  78. Zaghadka says:

    http://www.bittornado.com/

    Has lots of settings to tinker with and allows you to download only selected files from a torrent if you choose.

    Of course, this is only if uTorrent doesn’t work out for you.

  79. Tobias says:

    Besides setting up your router properly for port forwarding, there’s a second thing you can do to greatly improve BitTorrent speed – assuming you’re on Windows.

    Since Windows SP SP2, all versions of Windows have a built-in limit on half-open TCP connections, and that limit is very, very low (10). You should definitely adjust that – this link should help with that. Even if it doesn’t improve BT speeds greatly, it should remove problems you might encounter while surfing the net at the same time.
    (If you’re on Vista SP2 or Windows 7: Relax, they don’t have the limit)

  80. Rattus says:

    I’d agree to use µTorrent, which is not used only by linux geeks and people having way too much RAM that are using azureus.

    And if you don’t wan’t to have client running all the time you can use this java applet – http://www.bitlet.org/ – just to download the few files you want.
    Pros : nothing except java needs to be installed and works from everywhere.
    Cons : not as nice as uTorrent

  81. Hirvox says:

    I’m currently using Vuze, partially because of the bloat. Among other things, there’s a plugin that parses RSS feeds for torrents and automatically downloads stuff according to my filters.

    One important thing to understand about torrents is that while the protocol is explicitly designed to combat the slashdot effect: A small host trying to handle a large number of downloaders. It may not provide an individual downloader with optimal speed, but it’s much better than queueing, because the downloaders are recruited as co-hosters as they download more and more of the file. To reward co-hosting, the protocol favors users who help host the file. The faster you upload, the faster you can download. If you’re behind a NAT or a firewall, other users also protected by NATs and firewalls can’t download from you, which in turn reduces your download speed. That’s why it’s important to set up firewalls and port forwarders properly.

    Also, the protocol checks each chunk of the file against a checksum to make sure that none of the recruited hosts are uploading corrupted or downright malicious data.

  82. enigmax says:

    +1 for uTorrent from me ;)

  83. Simplex says:

    “I'm currently using Vuze, partially because of the bloat. Among other things, there's a plugin that parses RSS feeds for torrents and automatically downloads stuff according to my filters.”

    Just a factoid – uTorrent also has this function, despite not being bloated.

    From which you can probably infer that I am recommending uTorrent :)

    As for port forwarding it does not have to be port 6881, it can be any port. Enabling uPnP can also simplify port forwarding procedure but can also make your network more vulnerable.

  84. neolith says:

    I use Azureus/Vuze.

  85. David says:

    I say uTorrent. What they all said, plus, it has Tetris.
    No joke. Click on “Help” “About uTorrent” and press the “T” key.

  86. Jaedar says:

    I use BitTorrent, but I hear uTorrent is good too.

  87. Ralph says:

    I use transmission, I have it running on my file server, and use the web interface to add torrents (just copy and paste the url)

    But like others have said, for quick torrents, whatever client you use, make sure you have your network/port forwarding set up so it can receive incoming connections. Also more active torrents should go faster, post the links here if they are slow 8-p *

    *in the case of one seeder and you, this might make it even slower if the seeder is maxing their upload just to you, but usually more people means faster.

  88. Rob says:

    nth comment supporting utorrent, especally because it has a handy scheduler allowing you to chose when and how much you are downloading/unloading. Keeps the girlfriend from swearing that I’m ruining City of Villains by hogging all the bandwidth.

  89. Vladius says:

    utorrent!

    Or so I’ve heard…

  90. Jattenalle says:

    [redundant]µTorrent[/redundant]

  91. Conlaen says:

    I use mininova.org for tracking puproses. And well, obviously µTorrent.

  92. Gildan Bladeborn says:

    I’ve always just used the BitTorrent client myself, as it’s not particularly obtrusive (by default it opens itself minimized in the system tray) and was easy enough to use that I could figure it out without doing any research. It gets the job done, doesn’t crash my computer or itself, etc.

  93. Josh says:

    I recommend µTorrent, Shamus.

    PS: Sorry, I hadn’t read the rest of the comments. But really, µTorrent is the way to go.

  94. Chris says:

    @mc: My comment about uTorrent popularity was meant to be independent of the Free comment, but I probably should have been more precise. Thanks for making it more clear. :-)

  95. Simply Simon says:

    Having been an enthusiastic user of torrent files I can say that I’d recommend you to not use bitlord, since its very slow, and instead try (lé gasp!) µTorrent. It’s about three or four times faster to my experience.

    And for the slow download; it can either be that the person uploading the file has a slow upload speed and that many people are downloading the file at once, or that, as some have suggested, you have put the wrong settings in and have limited your download speed a bit to much.
    Also, bittorrents usually are slower that http. My download speed record is about 200kb/s

  96. Maldeus says:

    Deep meaningful discussions on the symbolism found within the Path struggles along to just over seventy comments. Simple technical information that could be resolved in a single page of text hits nearly a hundred. Twenty sided…I am disappoint.

  97. Tausney says:

    Shamus, the lack of speed is most probably due to your router holding up the traffic. Torrents really need properly configured ports to be effective.

    http://www.portforward.com/english/applications/port_forwarding/Utorrent/Utorrentindex.htm

    The link above is a step by step how-to that will sort you out. Just pick out your router from the list and follow the instructions.

  98. Jabor says:

    Into the triple digits overnight?

    I guess it just goes to show that tech posts (particularly those asking for recommendations) are going to get a crapton (or is that craptonne?) of comments.

  99. James Pope says:

    I think it’s obvious you should give up torrents and stick with hand transcribing the mod with pen and paper from smoke signals and reading tea leaves.

  100. Klay F. says:

    I personally use Vuze. Its not small, but its not too big either. When you first download it it can be pretty obtrusive, but you can turn all the obtrusive stuff off via the Settings.

    As for the torrents going really slow, I don’t really know. I guess it depends on your internet connection. I share mine with 2 other people and I can still download around 12GBs worth of video in about a day (around 200 kb/s).

    Also, make sure you seed after you finish downloading. Leechers are pieces of crap in my opinion. Just keep uploading until you reach a share ratio of about 3.00.

  101. LCV says:

    Nevermind, #62 got it covered already.

  102. Jon_tooth says:

    Written by a mate:

    http://www.bittorrentguide.co.uk/

    Torrents are only slow if:

    1. You’re port forwarding is not set up (this isnt always necessary).
    2. There are few seeds.

    ps: micro-torrent (utorrent) all the way.

  103. ima420r says:

    I use Vuse, and have never had any issues with it. Though, after reading some of the above comments, I think I will give µTorrent a try.

  104. tussock says:

    What everyone else said. utorrent is good for windows, open your 6881, and ktorrent is much the same for kde if you don’t like the look of utorrent on wine.

    And yes, torrents are some poor sod asking you to share the upload bandwidth, so 1.00 minimum share ratio is nice, especially if you’ve got a nice upload speed. Personally I try use 2.50 or more, but that’s just me being 2cool4scool.

  105. Justin says:

    I won’t mention a client since it looks like you’ve chosen one, but I will say this: I get excellent search results from Isohunt. Generally I just Google whatever I’m looking to acquire and add ‘Isohunt’ at the end. Isohunt also has a rating system so that you can pick one that other people have enjoyed (presumably) safely. And your site was right: I didn’t read all 107 comments (at the time) before I posted…

  106. Badger says:

    Another vote for μTorrent, even though I’m late to the party. And it’s pronounced “microtorrent”, as the ‘μ’ is used in scientific notation to represent the prefix ‘micro’. As in, μF, etc.

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