Kazuaki Shimazaki

HK PCCW Netvigator might also be starting to throttle. Up until the day before yesterday, I could download at least half of full rate (over 300KB/s) from a good torrent. All of a sudden I'm down to <20KB/s class (my DL is averaging maybe 10 right now). Of course, I'm talking torrents with seeds in at least the dozens and the peers in the hundreds and thousands, new torrents. The possibilities are: 1) Coincidence. 2) Some cable broke in the Pacific (again) which slowed things down. 3) PCCW Netvigator is starting to punish me for excessive DLing by throttling me. Yes, of course I've got encryption on (but not Forced and I'm still accepting "Legacy" connections). Can any other users of Netvigator confirm or refute? UPDATE: Well, for awhile, I thought maybe it is some kind of general problem, but I've seen my other connections going at a 300KB/s clip, while my well-seeded torrents are tooling around at 100KB/s with large up and down dips (one of them, anyway, the other is going <10KB/s right now).

I'm sure you are very touched, xpack. However, next time, you might want to be more discreet about exactly what you are downloading

Working real well here. Only nit is that for some reason the anti-standby function still doesn't work for me, so I have to disable the autostandby whenever I'm downloading myself (so my computer doesn't standby when I close the laptop lid). I know these things are particularly tricky, but it'd be nice if one day it worked...

Not everyone has your massively fast hard drive, Firon. I'm sure I told you what happens to my computer at that speed.

I'm estimating it off the Rate readings. If it is reading five times/second off the cache and only one time off the disk, then presumably the other five times it drew from data already in the cache, so it must have guessed correctly and saved my drive heads from having to maneuver. Or am I reading this wrong? In terms of total data read, I may be losing or I may be winning if everyone just wants similar data, but I would have thought the concerns over disk wear would be over the number of times the heads have to maneuver. If they are doing a few big reads rather than many little reads, in principle I should be ahead in terms of disk wear. Or am I getting this thing wrong. For now, I think I'd force it to activate for a bit longer so I can actually get some experimental data... since I'm going to bed, I'd force the read cache up to 32MB (no worries over RAM or resource consumption now...) manually and see how it does tonight. APPEND: I think I'd stop the experiment. Yes, I know I said the above only 10 minutes earlier, but I just realized from reading the Task Manager display that pretty much the entire cache went onto virtual memory (i.e. my hard drive). In fact, I think I'd stop using caches - what's the point when the program reads from my HDD and just copies it over to the VM part of my HD?

I just managed to find out about 458, and wonder why Ludde is so shy about putting it on - it works perfectly. Yeah, I'm sure it doesn't work perfectly for someone, but I don't exactly see a lot of screaming, and really it isn't like the official releases work for everyone anyway (a long line of complaints in Troubleshooting and Found Bugs testify to this). The new disk cache works like a charm, though the AI might need some work. I had to manually disable the write cache and force the read cache to activate. Apparently, the fact I was Pure Seeding didn't impress the AI. The disk cache took just under TWO MB and seems to vary between 60-100% effective with an average of around 80% (preliminary estimate with some tendency to improve over time). I don't know exactly how harmful all the disk reads are, but if I can eliminate 80% of disk action with a measly TWO megs of RAM, I'd pay it. IIRC, BC's cache claims around that efficiency, and it requires at least 6MB, escalating to 50... Good work, Ludde!

I'd disagree. It is actually better to make a new thread. This is a 90 degree tangent off the original. Wrong analogy. In this case, scientist already released his finding and product, and for free. Ultimately, it all comes down to trust. How do you know that the open-source code is exactly the same as what was published? Or what if I publish one version of the code, and then publish an "update", and I delay the updating of the published source code for a while. Of course, eventually I republish a clean version and source code before people catch on, then more dirty versions, and so on... And if you have to carefully check the real opcodes or analyze behavior to be really sure, than what's the difference between open and closed source? But why must he show his hobby to anyone else? Why should he be forced to publish his secret game-winning strategy? "Greatness" in a program is defined by function and efficiency. In both respects, uTorrent is top class. If I make a study of open source vs close source based on BitTorrent clients, open source would look like a direct path to bloat. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually, I'd disagree somewhat with the concept that a program's greatness is based on an Appeal to Popularity. I prefer objective measures like efficiency and function. True, but two counters: 1) Only a very small minority in an open source community has the technical expertise to make real changes, so in both cases most of the community can only suggest and pray. 2) Why should Ludde help you destroy his vision? This is an important point. Apparently more than his main competitors, Ludde has a set of principles, which manifest in decisions as to what features to enter. For example, Ludde will never implement a Right-Click-Ban feature, or BitComet's (unmentioned) Rapid Connection Recycling, and of course any leeching features. AFAIK, he wants his client to be "torrent-friendly". One can see that any uT-derived thing, made by more cynical and less idealistic people, will likely incorporate these features. And it'd be popular too. I've heard of at least a few guys say that they would switch to uT and rid themselves of the Azureus Deadweight if not for the lack of Right Click Ban. Ludde's supporters here may argue good reasons for not including any of these, but if a uT variant appeared boasting these as options, it'd look very tempting... Ludde can't stop people from using Azureus and BC. But why should he be forced to make it easier for people to do things that he does not personally like? As far as he's concerned, if you really like Right Click Ban, you can pay by killing your computer with Azureus. That he should be expected to make it easier for people to have Right Click Ban without paying that price must have been shocking to him... No security can ever be perfect. That does not mean one should not try to make it a little tougher on the bad guys. So, is Azureus (open-source program) a loner for not supporting Mainline DHT network?

I can't register on that stupid site for some reason. I'm sure I typed in that stupid card correctly, and they still won't let me register.

Not much for functionality? The beta introduced 2 things: 1) PEx - great for weak torrents and arguably patches the last major uTorrent deficiency vis-a-vis the giants of BC and Azureus. 2) Genuinely functional PE. I do think, however, the icons accounted for like 9K (I swear uT was 141 or so the version before the icons and the version after those icons was >150K). Considering that the two giant features above used only 10K between them, I'd have to agree with you those icons weren't the best investment of valuable space. It was about then I gave up on my anti-bloat position.

I do know that uTorrent's encryption schemes are more advanced and thus will presumably take more CPU power (assuming similar coding efficiency). There's also the point that there are many more BC clients with PHE than uTorrent clients with PE running out there.

Peer Exchange: A function that gets you a few more peers by trading peerlists around with the guys you did connect to. I suppose I don't have to say how knowing about the existence of a few more peers helps you, especially in crap torrents. Protocol Encryption: A function that encrypts your BitTorrent data. That way, maybe you can fool those "evil" traffic-shaping ISPs.

I suggest EDITED. Try and find whether the stuff you want may be on a public tracker. I tend to avoid private trackers unless I have to, and I've only been forced to use one just now.

[site name removed for content] is apparently a private tracker. Well, private trackers these days are banning BC left and right. Have you ever tried signing up? Because of DHT and BC's rather uh ... liberal interpretation of said DHT, you may have been able to get files from [site name removed for content] even without signing in. It is probably the biggest thing (though apparently not the only thing) that got it banned. The "no entry" sign means it cannot connect to the private tracker. Now, after signing up, turn off anything that says "Antivirus" or "Firewall". It doesn't matter if you think there isn't a problem - just turn them off for a go anyway. Now start your download again. If it actually runs turn your antivirus and firewall stuff back on. If the download continues, great, if the download stops after this, come back.

Really. Do you know what kind of system is he trying to implement? From what little I see, Ludde is against anything that can be abused, and as far as going for limiters seems to be going mostly for behaviorial detection (features like trying to detect if BC threw away the requests or banning for consistently providing bad hashes). Which is good (in a "for torrent" way rather than for user - users want "Kick and Ban" available on a right click), but no doubt makes it hard to implement.

There is. It is called "Options->Torrent Options". To a new user, he's probably going to select his speed and go with the recommendation for awhile, before tweaking it which will be done there. If he is an advanced user that thinks he knows better, he probably won't use a Wizard anyway... APPEND: I just realized you might mean the box marked "connection type," and you want them to be able to select arbitrary uploads and downloads. The problem, I think, is that those are just simple locked presets - IF Connection Type A THEN Recommend Setting A. Allowing someone to just type in his own connection's downspeed/upspeed limits will be somewhat dishonest because all uTorrent will do is round it to one of those presets (and Rounding Algorithm = Extra Code). I can understand about wanting to kick people off if you are maxing out your connections but not your bandwidth, but why do you care what they are giving you if your bandwidth itself is maxed out? uTorrent is supposed to drop totally inactive guys if it needs the connection. But I'm relatively new and I already think Ludde doesn't want to implement something that would kick away guys that are merely slow - same reason why we are never likely to have a conveniently placed "Kick and Ban" switch.

Too bad there is no title bar on this board system, or it would have been titled "My Search for a Usable Torrent Client" From an ex-user of many different torrent clients. Prologue I discovered BitTorrent thanks to Underdogs.org, a site which specializes in maintaining archives of stopped games (technically illegal, but no one seems to be suing them...) They started mentioning switching to "BitTorrent" based systems. I decided to get onto the BitTorrent website they are linking to. But I didn't yet discover how torrents are everywhere and thought that there was nothing I might want to get from it, so I kept it on the back burner. Of course, the day came when the only way I could get something I wanted was on ... a torrent. Head back to site, downloaded that minimalist official client (forgot what version it was all the way back then). Back then, my Torrents suffered from a horrible condition - it will keep kicking off my WLAN connection. After a certain number of such disconnects, the WLAN would refuse to reconnect at all - restart. This is not only annoying, it kills the idea of automatic downloading. Each time I'm forced to restart, the official client goes and checks all my pieces, one by one before resuming. Seeing by then I've noticed that there are 4GB torrents out there. Obviously, when I have to recheck when it is 3.9GB done, it would be a nightmare... I asked around, went to BitTornado. My connections still kept kicking off, and as far as I can tell, BitTornado at the time also has no provision for skipping rechecks. It had a few more features but as far as I can tell it is very minimalist. Those two clients took up about 3 days of my now year long BitTorrent using life. BitSpirit Someone recommended BitSpirit. Downloaded it. This was a much heftier client, and the first one I used with a lot of features and setups. I set it up according to the book and started. I practically cried with glee when I realized that it had a "Skip recheck" provision. It didn't solve my disconnection problems, but I swear it was a little less acute, and "skip recheck" minimizes the inconvenience. Eventually, I realized the only way to stop all the disconnections is to go to wired LAN connections. It wasn't that convenient in my old flat, but my new flat allowed my LAN/WLAN hub to be right next to my computer, and so I now just plug a hard line. Everything seemed to work better on hard line anyway. Now, BitSpirit, at least on the user level, wasn't bad (at the time, "cheating" clients are totally unknown to me even in a theoretical sense). It had a fake peer function, bandwidth usage regulation, part download capability ... etc. It was about at the time when I realized some clients don't like each other, or maybe trackers don't like some clients (or else why have the faking function). I leave that one on BitSpirit most of the time (don't lie when you don't have to), and if that doesn't seem to work well I'd try pretending to be "BitTorrent" (if we are going to fake, faking to be the official client seems to be a safe bet). It wasn't slow too. I had 300KB/s level download rates on BitTorrent less than 10 times in my life, and those don't last long. I think 60% of them were on BitSpirit. But then, I used BitSpirit for 6 months of my now year long BitTorrent using life. Of course, it had its crawls too, but that happened to me with every client so I'm not exactly complaining. Azureus I eventually left BitSpirit for a few reasons. For one thing, BitSpirit is the first time I realized that clients have a nasty tendency to demand everything on your computer and then some. Even stopping all the torrents and leaving it up is a measurable drag. I swear I can still feel it from Windows rot AFTER I quit the program - the only way to get out of its shadow is to restart. Besides, one doesn't dare stop connections on a weak torrent for fear they'd never get it back. They are lucky that they aren't selling this. They promised us low CPU and low memory usage. If they were selling this stuff, they would sued into backruptcy, I swear, for Fraud... Then I noticed that BitSpirit seemed to have problems digesting some new torrents that are coming out. I remember someone recommending Azureus back then. I also can see my peer lists and realize that a h*ll of a lot of people (most) were using Azureus. Well, that many people can't be all wrong, eh? I think they were up to about 2.3.0.4 (they were at that for months) when I downloaded. The hardest thing with Azureus is agonizing over the upload slots. It was the first time I had to set my upload slots manually, and I constantly agonized between sending more to fewer peers and less to more peers - which one would get me better returns? Azureus, as some others have attested, is a computer killer. I think it is a bit better than BitSpirit but that's like saying a tortoise is faster than a snail. Still, it was popular and functional, and I suffered with it for 3 months. BitComet My first experience with BitComet was with version 0.60, and I was forced into it. By then, I already knew that BitComet had something of a bad rep - it is not awfully generous in giving out to other clients. As far as my limited observational ability could tell, this part at least seems likely. Still, one day Azureus' was very slow in getting flow on a weak torrent (so far I've been sticking to strong torrents with at least a dozen seeds). I notice that it is completely dominated by BitComet users. I wanted that file. I went to BitComet's site to see what they have to offer. They swore that they had fixed the bugs that were giving BitComet a bad rep in their boards. Besides, I can't care less at this point. I think BitComet wasn't going to screw its own users. I downloaded and installed BitComet. The theory worked superficially - I soon got flow and managed to complete the file. Azureus had DHT, but I used strong torrents on it. BitComet also marked my foray into downloading rare, weak torrents with 1-5 seeds and maybe 10-20 peers. The trackers used for them were utterly unreliable (10 trackers listed; lucky if one works). That was when I really realized DHT was God's gift to BitTorrent... For some reason, all these weak torrents are dominated (or even monopolized) by BitComet users. Virtually all my weak torrents had been completed partially or completely with BitComet. I don't really care if it cheats - getting the file has a higher prioritization. Besides, as I said, everyone on those torrents are BitComet guys, so it isn't like it doesn't even out. I then realized that I can still work on my computer with BitComet downloading. Imagine my ecstasy. I also noticed that at least I was uploading to some Azureus guys (according to the program). Maybe they did fix the "cheat' problems after all? The final real plus is that the upload slot thing was automated. uTorrent Several weak torrents later, ironically, BitComet's forums introduced me to uTorrent. Their comments on it weren't so great, particularly the buggy part. I can survive a lot of things, but not a buggy automatic downloading system. The last thing I need is my files coming out corrupted. Still, it was only a 105KB download at the time. To be generous to it, I waited for a strong torrent that I wanted. Overall, my experience with uTorrent was good, but it isn't as uncheckered as the average seems to be here. The first thing I noticed is that it is a slow starter. Definitely. It takes much longer to get connections and work up to speed. Still, if it can get up to speed it wasn't slow, and with strong torrents I can wait a little for it. Its real selling point is that it is indeed "small". For all of everyone elses promises of being easy on CPU and memory: 1) I can't do anything on BitSpirit even with a single file up. 2) With Azureus I can do something in an emergency if I set its Priority to Low (in the Task Manager) and download only a single file - I wait 5 minutes per move; really an emergency procedure only. 3) With BitComet I can get into my word processing program and type, but it is definitely there. 4) With uTorrent I can play GAMES involving 3D models (OK, it is a sub simulation and not fast moving like a fighter game, but it is a rather complicated program, and my video card isn't that great). This greatly increases the amount of time I can leave it up, and more than compensates for it being a bit slow. I resolved to use it on strong torrents. A few days later came the time I had a weak torrent for a test. The results are really rather disappointing. It was extremely slow to connect and unwilling to get flow after connecting. I sighed and turned on BitComet... This was about when I developed my little workaround of priming. The weakest time of any torrent in my experience is when you are just starting, with no peerlist and nothing to trade with. By using a strong downloader like BitComet to prime the torrent and get a few pieces of trading data, I can switch to uTorrent. Maybe if I waited two hours uTorrent would have gotten something, but why wait when I can use those two hours to prime the torrent. uTorrent also can't see in DHT nearly as well as either BitComet or Azureus in my experience (I now know they use different DHT systems). The workaround allows me to see what Azureus (especially) can get and write down all their IPs for manual transfer (Yes, I type as many as dozens of IPs). Version 1.3 was a disaster and should never, IMO, have been allowed to make it out as a non-Beta, or even as a Beta. By the time you are up to Version 1.3, your software should have been pretty much debugged. Any beta over Version 1.3, at most, minor, noncritical flaws on your new features. In any case, this is not even a beta. Even though the fix came quickly, it was the only client I EVER used with a fatal flaw which threatened the integrity of my files during partial downloads. And it persisted after I turned off Sparse Files and Compact Allocation - I downgraded to very conservative settings and the thing still went corrupt on me. Do I have to mention how important simple Reliability is in the eyes of the average person. Right now, the new betas have no critical flaw I can detect, but it still isn't quite clean. The new anti-Standby function still doesn't work the last time I tried it and a new bug sprang up where if I activate the automatic Monitor Power Management functions and activate/deactivate my trackpad while uTorrent is running, it does some funny flickers. Still, they aren't critical, and these ARE betas (albeit a beta one has to use to avoid critical flaws in the official version), so I'd with-hold judgment until Version 1.4 comes out. Right now, uTorrent is my favorite client. It ain't perfect as my lengthy review up there as mentioned, but it still is very good and has a lot of potential. Besides, it has the 2nd most critical aspect for me besides basic reliability (as of latest beta and all other versions sans 1.3) - low resource consumption, and that alone can make it the best thing I used. APPEND 10-Jan-2006: This new guy Talay has reminded me to put in my testimonial some praise for how well Partial Allocation works in the newest betas of uTorrent. The NTFS Sparse File +PartFile allocation method is dramatically superior to the "Incremental" method in Azureus and whatever method is used in BitComet. Unlike them, there is virtually no wasted space with uTorrent - if you downloaded 4 pieces totalling 1MB, that's exactly how much room the file would take. This is not the case with any of the others. APPEND 27-Jan-2006: I just found out today that they hadn't managed to fix the issues with Compact Allocation after all. All I can say is use SparseFiles+PartFile... UPDATE 30-Jan-2006: BC and Az users must be getting jealous. I remember catching onto the uTorrent bandwagon sometime between Ver 1.2.2 and the first betas leading to 1.3 (cough, cough), which means I must have gotten it just a few days at most after Nov 25 given the speed Ludde moves. I also remember posts about how Ludde doesn't seem to think PeX is a high priority. Now, we finally have a perspective - just 2 months and 5 days (+/-1 day) after DHT, we get PeX, and Protocol Encryption (I don't need it right now, but I know there are people that do). Oh, so this is the response time for low priority... I see... it won't be very long before Ludde cracks Azureus DHT now... not very long to anybody except uTorrent users, who are being spoiled to expect updates 2-3 times a week, if not more.

If I weren't running torrents, I'd WANT my computer to sleep when I close the lid, would I I was running three of them, and all of them were getting flow up and down too. Not a LOT by some of the stories here (my max effective upload is about 60KB/s, and even with a strong torrent I can only get about 60-80KB/s down on a good day; I had flows of over 150KB/s about 3 times in my BitTorrent using life and none of them lasted over 20mins, and flows of over 100KB/s are rare too). So far, I'm up to 3 total failures (with torrents running, of course) and 1 partial failure as described in my last post (with the torrents running). That was when I gave up, got into the Power settings, and told the computer to do NOTHING when I close the lid (disabling the feature).

I suppose this is addressed to me. Yes, it says "None". Am I supposed to set it even if I don't need any boss key? BTW, as a nit, I see Beta 380 gained another KB of "weight" (I think it gained 20KB or so from version 1.2). Extra features are well and good, and I know that BitTorrent would probably become obsolete before uTorrent gets even a tenth as "fat" as the other clients, but let's not forget the roots - SMALL and useful program. Oh well, when all the bugs are weeded out of uTorrent, I guess I can just use an older version if this really bothers me...

The build is working very well for me too. Except for one thing. I set no boss key. When I try to activate or deactivate the trackpad on my Compaq Presario 2100, the uTorrent program has acquired a tendency to pop up. If it is already activated it sometimes blinks out of site. My annoyance is only matched by the impressive speed of the popup or hiding - few Windows programs can redraw themselves that fast on my computer! I've also seen it happen when I click other One-Touch action buttons (little buttons above your keyboard that you can set to take you directly to your browser, E-mail ... etc) It only appears some of the time, but I figure I might as well put it up and see if any other people have something similar.