BitComet vs. µTorrent

[Isamu Daisen]

I have one downside to µTorrent. In my house, we have two PCs for my brother and me. Both of our computers are connected to the internet thru a hub. We both download torrents in our PCs. My brother uses BitComet and I use µTorrent. But everytime we simultaneously download torrents, my brother's BitComet gets more bandwidth than my µTorrent. I love µTorrent bcoz of all its features, userfriendliness and less CPU/RAM usage. I have tried everything with regard to changes in advanced/connection preferences and still he's BitComet gets more bandwidth even if my torrents got more peers and seeds than him. So reluctantly, I tried using Bitcomet also. With Bitcomet, I get roughly equal bandwidth with him and sometimes even more if I got more peers/seeds. Therefore, I'm forced to use BitComet now just to compete with my bro's BitComet. the features of BitComet suck compared to µTorrent. you can't even sort the features in BitComet.lol. But because of this problem, i have no choice but to use BitComet. Is there any solution to this problem? any suggestions would be really helpful. Thanks in advance. I miss using µTorrent!!!

Isamu

[Keloran]

make your brother use uT

[Firon]

yeah, make him use it

[Isamu Daisen]

Hehe, I wish I could but he says BitComet download and seeds torrents faster than µTorrent. The d/uload speed is more stable and less sporadic compared to µTorrent. Oh well, i'll try to compare again when new versions of µTorrent come out and maybe by then µTorrent can beat BitComet.

Thanks

Isamu

Btw, Is there any logical or scientific reason for this problem?

[boo]

BitComet sometimes appear faster because it cheats.

A good quote about BitComet:

"BitComet is like a runner who trips all the other runners"

[Firon]

and BitComet kind of lies about its speeds, it was showing 1.8 MiB/s on a connection that could physically only do 1.2

[1c3d0g]

Yeah...that's pathetic! Cheating is bad, no matter how you slice it. Make your brother be aware of that (and I'd slap him a few times if I were you) and he'll use µTorrent as well.

[ClaudiuS]

The problem is still that many people uses BitComet, and BitComet prefer uploads to other BitComets!! Try it yourself. FInd a torrent that is dominated by BitComets or entirely with BitComets, and I guarantee you'll have a lousy speed when you get started. That is ofcause, IF you get started at all.

BitComet is a fu... bastard prog that is deliberately pushing it to the limit to get own download good, and fu.... the rest. The client is banned on most closed trackers and should be banned all over. If you're a selfish egoistic bastard, this is the client for you

[Isamu Daisen]

Great news, guys. After much persuassion and deliberation, thanks to your help, my brother has finally seen the light!!! He has stopped using BitComet! And I have reverted back to my favorite µTorrent. Yey! Unfortunately, he's using Azureus now.lol. But, its damn better than BitComet right? At least know we share the same bandwidth relatively when it comes to downloading and seeding. I and my brother wouldn't have known about BitComet's unfair practices without my post here. Thank you again for you help and I wish you all the best! Happy new year to all!

Hail µTorrent!

Isamu

[davesnothere]

Besides, MY experience with BitLord (BitComet in disguise, I understand) is that many private trackers have or soon will be banning its use anyway, because it, in a way 'cheats' them too, in regard to not cooperating with the logging of transfer amounts which such tracker operators care about.

That was why I tried uT, and so far, I'm pretty happy with it.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

Great news, guys. After much persuassion and deliberation, thanks to your help, my brother has finally seen the light!!! He has stopped using BitComet! And I have reverted back to my favorite µTorrent. Yey! Unfortunately, he's using Azureus now.lol.

Just curious, Why does he want to use that resource-hogging dreg? Seeing I've heard people with 2GB RAM complaining that monster Azureus being a drag, it is hard to believe he won't feel the Azureus Choke at all...

The problem is still that many people uses BitComet, and BitComet prefer uploads to other BitComets!! Try it yourself. FInd a torrent that is dominated by BitComets or entirely with BitComets, and I guarantee you'll have a lousy speed when you get started. That is ofcause, IF you get started at all.

I know. The only way in those cases I've found is to "prime" the torrent with BitComet for an hour. If you've got a pool under you, more people would want to talk to you, even BitComet clients, and you can finally get started and get out of BitComet Pinch.

Sometimes, I wonder if Azureus has a smaller tendency to do that too. Again, priming seems to be the only solution.

(changed Azureus "Pinch" to "Choke" to get the correct feel b/w the drag imposed by BitComet and Azureus).

[Isamu Daisen]

@Kazuaki Shimazaki

Well, my brother's PC is more advanced compared to mine in terms of CPU speed and RAM so I guess he doesn't care about the resource hogging of Azureus yet. But who knows, maybe in time he'll convert to µTorrent as well. Btw, whats "prime"? I'm still kinda of a newbie in Bittorent jargon.

Also, I noticed, thru my lovely µTorrent detailed info feature, that most of my peers/seeds of the torrents I'm downloading are using BitComet and Azureus as their clients!!! It even says "Fake BitComet". lol. I'm the only one using µTorrent. I hope this doesn't affect my speed significantly in a negative way...

Isamu

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

@Kazuaki Shimazaki

Well, my brother's PC is more advanced compared to mine in terms of CPU speed and RAM so I guess he doesn't care about the resource hogging of Azureus yet. But who knows, maybe in time he'll convert to µTorrent as well. Btw, whats "prime"? I'm still kinda of a newbie in Bittorent jargon.

As I understand it, it'd take a VERY powerful computer for you not to feel the Azureus choke. What kind of megacomputer is he using?

"Prime" is my personal phrase. uTorrent isn't really slower, in my experience, in most situations, but it is slower to ramp up and there is no doubt in my mind that BitComet (you've noticed this too, eh?), for instance, is more aggressive (I think Azureus is more aggressive too) in getting the stuff.

As an aside, while no doubt annoying to other clients, I don't consider things like constantly reconnecting to get an Optimistic Unchoke cheating, just aggressive. It is technically legal in BitTorrent to choose to reconnect. A bit of favoritism to BitComet isn't exactly raising my ire either. A client's job is to get the download for its user ASAP (hopefully without stopping his computer in the process). Everything else waits. (I do, however, set the line on BitComet lying about what it is uploading and downloading, and I do agree they should not be allowed to deliberately leech).

uTorrent also doesn't have a banlist (you can go edit ipfilter.dat, but that's a relatively pain), and while there may be ethical issues with a banlist being abused, it does, on the consumer level, improve your performance if you use it ruthlessly. One can always be generous after he gets the file...

On a weak torrent, there are few peers and even fewer seeds. DHT and Peer Exchange (the latter uTorrent does not have) and sheer aggressiveness of your client determines how fast (or even if) you can finish your download.

Add that to the fact that the beginning of your torrent download is where you are weakest. No peer list, nothing to share. You are basically begging to be let in. And uTorrent is apparently quite unaggressive. Basically, this means your weak torrent will not start filling for a long time. Problem worsens if many of the guys on said torrent are BitCometers, which for some reason seem to be particularly abundant on weak torrents (probably because it is aggressive or they just don't know better).

The only way around it is to get BitComet to do its aggressive bang-on-the-door thing. It gets the peer list (take it down for manual input later) and a small pool of trading data. Or use Azureus and see the guys on the Azureus DHT system (take down their IP:port numbers). In other words "priming" - special preparations.

After 1 hour of being unable to use your computer, quit Azureus/BitComet and transfer the torrent to uTorrent (do the Hash Check and then go). While uTorrent spools up (uTorrent's ramp-up is slow), enter that list of IP:port numbers using the "Add Peer" function. Not all of them will connect, but by the time you finish entering that list, you should be getting some real flow, and soon it should accelerate to a reasonable speed that in my experience will be quite favorable even to BitComet - but only if you "prime".

Also, I noticed, thru my lovely µTorrent detailed info feature, that most of my peers/seeds of the torrents I'm downloading are using BitComet and Azureus as their clients!!! It even says "Fake BitComet". lol. I'm the only one using µTorrent. I hope this doesn't affect my speed significatly in a negative way...

Fake BitComet is probably BitSpirit - I've used it. Good client in functions, don't know if it cheats or not. But definitely a bigger resource hog than even Azureus.

One of the nicest things about BitComet is not having to worry about upload slots. That and aggressiveness. Most people aren't aware of it cheating. They may note that it is particularly aggressive, and that's GOOD for most people - getting a download is priority.

I honestly have no idea why people want to use Azureus, though. Its DHT is supposedly great, but I had little trouble with BitComet's too. Maybe they heard BitComet cheats and want to do the ethical thing... and they hadn't heard of uTorrent yet.

Besides, uTorrent has something of a bad rep out there. In BitComet forums about the time of my switchover, they talked about it being buggy. This immediately puts a lot of people off because the #1 thing most people want, beyond even speed, is simple reliability - they don't want to think about their file not coming out right, especially if a weak torrent means they may only have one shot at this. And indeed, uTorrent (v1.3) is the only client I used where a torrent ever came out corrupted (see my Testimonial in chat). There's no problem in the new beta, but this kind of thing scares people off.

Anyway, most of the time as of now, uTorrent guys are in the minority. Everybody has different experiences on what that means around here, but for what its worth here's mine again: If BitComet/Azureus is a gas-turbine engine, uTorrent is the steam turbine that takes half an hour to work up to full speed, but both will work up to 80KB/s in the end for me on a good day. In fact, the new version of uTorrent gets me some of the best sustained speeds (eventually working up to 100-150KB/s) that I had. And you can actually use your computer.

Even if it is slower like the detractors say, what would you prefer - 48 hours downloading in which you can't use your computer, or 72 in which you can? Note that your 48 hours may become 96 or even 120 if you need to work because you simply HAVE to stop the download to get any real work done, especially in Azureus and you might want to stop in BitComet as well.

Sorry for being kind of a mouthful, but there's a lot I wanted to say.

[Firon]

Kazuaki: BitSpirit is based off BitComet, so it's not much better

And I have to say that the new betas have improved the speeds a lot, it's become more aggressive.

[chaosblade]

BitLord is BitComet 0.5x sourcecode bought and changed around, mainly in GUI and no code changes at all.

BitSpirit seems to based on BitComet aswell, im guessing in the same manner, though it does seem like more work has been put into it. It's still is, though, one of the worst clients ive seen. And any clients that implements peer id faking fails by default.

[Jon]

I think to a very limited degree is the chat function in bitcommit and some of the others is nice, but not something I would use often. Yea bitcommit cheats, and I think thats why so many people want to use it, they don't care how they get it, just so long as they get it fast and it's hard to blame them for that. I wish µtorrent was a lot more aggressive, it's a baby kitten compared to Azureus as far as getting started goes. I had no trouble running Azureus I just perfer µtorrent. I doubt banning bitcommit will get rid of the really determined people though they will just fake it's name many times I've seen clients with oddball names and just a bunch of ۞π ██--α‰ so a an easy ban or maybe a throttle feature that you could limit it 5KB to keep the abusers in check, that would be great.

I am using 1.3, I have not tried any of the beta as I spent years doing beta testing and just got sick of buggy software, and now you have large companies like sony and microsoft releasing beta2 software as final retail versions so you wind up beta testing software you paid for.. µtorrent 1.3 has never crashed on me, I've left it running for 3-4 days and it just keeps going.

Everyone keeps talking about how much better the beta is, so maybe I'll give it a try.

[Firon]

Well, some people have issues with the betas, but for a lot of people it works better.

[Kazuaki Shimazaki]

I don't think you have to worry. By the time you get to Ver 1.3.x, the worst any beta should give you is minor glitches. Which is why I will never forget the Ver 1.3 Official Release. I'd have to remember to beg Ludde to replace Ver 1.3 with something, anything. Just let one former BitComet converter-candidate get the tragedy I had with Ver 1.3 Official Release and it'd scare off 10 BitComet users forever

Lesson 1: uTorrent betas are generally OK

Lesson 2: Getting the "official release" is no guarantee things will work, especially for uTorrent which still seems to be in a rapid development phase - the difference b/w betas and official releases is almost academic in such a situation. IIRC, Ludde added more things into the 1.3 Release even as he fixed bugs he knew about - exactly as what happens with each of his betas.

[chaosblade]

No, It's not hard to blame them. Id very actively blame anyone who cheats on purpose KNOWING he' screwing other people around.