µtorrent unreliable client?

[mikeos]

There has been some discussion on the Dimeadozen forum about µtorrent. Dime moderators are discouraging users from using it, saying that it has many of the same faults as Bit Lord, namely "hammering" the tracker and unreliable reporting of stats. Some trackers have already banned µtorrent. Any truth in this? I'm interested because I use Dimeadozen almost exclusively.

[boo]

In older versions, µTorrent did some agressive announceing + it didn't have the ability to use keys that was required on some trackers. But all that is fixed, it shouldn't be a problem.

The admins of the Dimeadozen forum are to quick to judge the client.

µTorrent is new and is still needs more developing, but lot of things has been fixed.

Tell the admins that they should allow people who use µTorrent 1.2 and later(even 1.1.7.2 should be ok, if the tracker doesn't use keys).

[Firon]

The faulty stats was fixed a LONG time ago, and the abusive announcing was fixed as of 1.1.6. The mods on Dimeadozen are misinformed.

[mikeos]

Thanks guys, I'll be pleased to copy this info on to the Dime forum.

Mike

[chaosblade]

Oh, We had a long discussion about Dime's faults (Use the damn private flag instead of banning DHT enabled clients).

In the end we came to the agreement that older dime torrents were faulty, new ones use the private flags and that no current updated client is banned (some older azureus versions are, i think).

[mikeos]

Oh, We had a long discussion about Dime's faults (Use the damn private flag instead of banning DHT enabled clients).

In the end we came to the agreement that older dime torrents were faulty, new ones use the private flags and that no current updated client is banned (some older azureus versions are, i think).

Here's the latest response from the Dime mod.

"We do not disallow BitComet/BitLord or µTorrent; we discourage the use of BitComet/BitLord because they're not only hammering the tracker but also mess with users' stats and we do not give any technical support for them."

[DomZ]

Why do they discourage µTorrent though?

[slayers]

By reading that sentence they do not discourage uTorrent.

[nightshifted]

Thanks, everyone. Then we'll be advising users with µTorrent issues to come here or to the wiki, or to upgrade to the current release, rather than to change clients. Unless one of us DIME moderators gets to be personally familiar with it, though, we won't try to provide support ourselves.

One question: where Boo spoke about "using keys," was that about DHT keys, which don't apply to our torrents anyway? If not, Boo, what definition of "keys" did you mean?

Nightshifted, Dimeadozen.org moderator

(EDIT: All compliments to Rickard Andersson! This is the first forum software I've used in years that doesn't require mad gyrations to put double spaces between sentences or make it impossible altogether.)

[Ultima]

The 'key' thing that boo was speaking about was the key field that some torrents have (and some trackers required). It was not supported in previous versions until v1.1.8.

[nightshifted]

Ah, thank you, Ultima.

[ColdArmor]

man, wasn't that problem waay back in 1.1.2? wow, so long ago. o.O

[Animorc]

The key issue was fixed in 1.1.8 (or 1.2 since 1.1.8 wasn't released publicly)

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=2063

[chaosblade]

nightshifted: Thats quite well, We will be happy to help any user with problems regardless of where or how he uses the client ;]

[nightshifted]

Very generous of you, Chaosblade.

This matter of a "key" field is new to me; it wasn't used on any of the handful of trackers I got to be familiar with before the moderating workload narrowed my BitTorrent usage to EZT/DIME alone. OK, then, off to look that up.

[Ultima]

When µTorrent was first banned for not supporting this 'key' field, the tracker banning µTorrent that they had just implemented the new policy of banning such clients. Maybe it's a relatively new thing?

[nightshifted]

Is that the key field under discussion here? Identifying the peer's account with another key in the .torrent file instead of using personalized announce URLs? Erwe (DIME's admin) turned that concept down immediately, for exactly that reason: there's no way to force all clients to include it when they announce. When we heard about personalized announce URLs, he went for the idea immediately and had EZT (as DIME was known then) converted to them five or six days later.

So it sounds as though µTorrent 1.1.7.2 would be fine on DIME.

For the record, we've never blocked any client from the tracker entirely; the only barrier is using Azureus 2.3.x.x on torrents added before midday May 13, 2005.

EDIT, 2005-12-13: Since I wrote the preceding paragraph, there have been changes. Effective 2005-12-24, BitComet (all releases) and BitLord will be banned there. Also, µTorrent 1.2.1 and later, which are DHT-aware and do not honor the private=1 tracker response flag, are blocked from the same older torrents as Azureus 2.3.x.x. Earlier releases of µTorrent that were DHT-unaware, and version 1.2, are allowed on all DIME torrents.

[Simon]

Just go to filemp3, No idiots running the show.

[castle]

I don't know what that is supposed to mean, Simon, but dimeadozen is a great place for legal live music bootlegs and concert video that will not be found where you are pointing people to... which, to the best of my knowledge, is not restricted to legal content and probably shouldn't be mentioned here.

[Ultima]

@nightshifted: That's the 'key' field that boo was talking about, but not one of the reasons that mikeos was talking about for the tracker admins discouraging the use of µTorrent. As for the stuff that mikeos was actually talking about, I believe they were all resolved in previous versions already (even before 1.2 was released). Since the key field was never the reason for discouraging the use of any clients at dimeadozen, then yes, 1.1.7.2 should probably be fine.

[nightshifted]

(edited in consideration of Ultima's edit)

As for the stuff that mikeos was actually talking about, I believe they were all resolved in previous versions already (even before 1.2 was released). Since the key field was never the reason for discouraging the use of any clients at dimeadozen, then yes, 1.1.7.2 should probably be fine.

Yes, understood from when you and Boo said it previously. Still, if someone is running a version older than 1.1.7.2, we'll recommend upgrading all the way to the current release (1.2 as of this writing, for anyone reading this thread down the road).

to Castle: Thank you, but I think comments like Simon's are best ignored.

[Ultima]

My apologies, that's not what I meant (I was just typing away without giving it too much thought xD). Post edited =P

[nightshifted]

In that case, Ultima, I'll edit my own.

_______

EDIT on 2005-12-05 (it's over three weeks, but double-posting is not permitted)

Erwe has asked me to post the following in this forum:

Please do me the favour and post there a "Thank you very much" in my name for their really tiny but extremely useful client they wrote. Especially, the scheduler feature is something I've always missed a lot. Now, it finally unearthed -- for me it boosts µTorrent a lot above any other client.

Actually, I really think, µTorrent is the best BT client out there and we should start mentioning it first in our recommendations.

So we've done a 180 from our former opinion based on the aggressive announcing in some earlier releases.