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BitComet 0.61 built in deception


Dark Shroud

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I'm currently using BitComet 0.61 to download 2 very large & very slow torrents. This is my first time using BitComet for more than 2 minutes to check out how new versions. Anyway, it reports to the tracker as Mainline Bittorrent 3.4.2. And I cannot find an option to turn this off. Now I did have version 0.60 installed previously. But I have not installed any cheater patches to it. I find this disturbing.

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Yes, it's starting to annoy me at the two private trackers I use. Granted I had started to use 0.60 to leech off a torrent that I've been downloading from for 3 weeks already, it's almost 22gig in size with only one seed & 15 peers. But I upgraded to 0.61 when it came out. I send out pms through BitComet's nice chat feature telling people to upgrade and I'm ignored. These people just don't want to play by the rules. So I block 0.60 back to 0.56 in Azureus and I don't feel bad about it.

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While there are a few features in bitcomet that makes it the only choice for some people (NAT Traversal for people with no control over their port-forwarding, Proxy Authentication, etc), Most of them simply dont want to switch because they know bitcomet will give them the 'best speeds', regardless of how those speeds are obtained.

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While there are a few features in bitcomet that makes it the only choice for some people (NAT Traversal for people with no control over their port-forwarding, Proxy Authentication, etc), Most of them simply dont want to switch because they know bitcomet will give them the 'best speeds', regardless of how those speeds are obtained.

You notice all the leeches coming out of the woodwork on here? In uTorrent 1.4, there was a requirement of upload at more than 5KBps or your download speed is capped. Have you seen the leechs' outbursts here? If you think people who use uTorrent are any better, a look at the release thread of 1.4 will show you otherwise. The only reason these leeches have switched over to uTorrent is because uTorrent uses less system resources. These damn leeches who are complaining about having to upload at more than 3KBps are precisely the people you're describing. All they give a crap about is how to get their own "best speeds", regardless of how the speed is obtained. BitComet is great because of its better implementation of DHT and Peer Exchange feature. If you live in a country where the government bans certain sites/trackers outright, then it is critical to move BT to a trackerless world. These stupid private trackers are making it harder for the BT world to move into a trackerless world. I've grateful for BitComet and it's ability to bypass the need for central trackers. Peer Exchange is the wave of the future. Trackless BT is the wave of the future.

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Um... I sorta see a contradiction there... without central trackers, who's going to be regulating these leechers that you so despise? Also, BitComet is a leeching client, and by allowing outside people to connect to private tracker users, isn't it allowing others to leech off the private trackers' resources and community?

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These stupid private trackers are making it harder for the BT world to move into a trackerless world. I've grateful for BitComet and it's ability to bypass the need for central trackers. Peer Exchange is the wave of the future. Trackless BT is the wave of the future.

AntiLeech I do hear you but where there is money to be made........That wont go away easily......

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Um... I sorta see a contradiction there... without central trackers, who's going to be regulating these leechers that you so despise? Also, BitComet is a leeching client, and by allowing outside people to connect to private tracker users, isn't it allowing others to leech off the private trackers' resources and community?

That's precisely why I've always advocated for the regulating mechinism to be imbedded within the BT protocal and within the BT client, not the tracker as so many of these private tracker advocates. I was originally against private trackers because they are easy targets for bring down by the MPAA/RIAA/local law enforcement. But now I'm even more against private trackers because of these stupid for-profit crap sites which are popping up left and right. If you believe BC is a leech client, then get the author of BC to implement certain features to force all users to upload and upload at a faster rate. Just because BC has peer exchange and a better implementation of DHT doesn't make it a leech client. What happens when all these private trackers are brought down by lawsuits? Where will you be then? With a trackerless paradigm, the swarm can still exist and continue even when the tracker is brought down.

A trackerless BT swarm is definitely the wave of the future.

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I agree AntiLeech, some good ideas. Trackerless is the way to go, it's too easy to to I.D and close all these torrent sites, and I am hearing rumors about a few of the big sites going away as they are being sued and threatened out of existence. I never considered BC a leech client, I am using my max upload speeds as we speak to seed some files. Heck, ANY client can be set-up to leech.

/Please don't quote the post right before yours.

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Just because BC has peer exchange and a better implementation of DHT doesn't make it a leech client. What happens when all these private trackers are brought down by lawsuits? Where will you be then? With a trackerless paradigm, the swarm can still exist and continue even when the tracker is brought down.

A trackerless BT swarm is definitely the wave of the future.

DHT and PeX is not why BitComet is getting blasted. Heck, many of us want Peer Exchange and better DHT (including Azureus DHT or a new universal DHT) to be implemented soonest in uTorrent. Apparently, it is BitComet's disregard of anti-DHT flags that's the reason for criticism. No matter what you think of the flag, if someone decided to set it for any reason, I would think it should be respected, not ignored.

regulating mechinism to be imbedded within the BT protocal and within the BT client

Considering your attitude in the other thread and this statement you have here, I'm surprised you like BC.

You see, even the present BT protocol and implementations have some regulation. Most people, for example, tend to have their download eventually slowed if they crimped their upload too far. It is not perfect, far from it in fact as we both know, but it is there.

I'm not an expert on BC's every alleged violation, but its leech client reputation, AFAIK, comes from investigations that conclude that its implementation often Degrades the BT protocol's own natural regulatory mechanism - for the user's own advantage. Among the most egregious is the charge that BC falsifies data in ways that would convince trackers to give it disproportionate priority. Another complaint is its Rapid Connection Recycling, which makes a mockery out of the Optimistic Unchoke protocol - imagine BC getting everyone to unchoke to it using this method. There are a few others, which I'm sure Firon would be more than happy to talk you through, but this is why AFAIK BC has a bad rep.

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BC obviously has some features to harm the BT swarms. It does everything in it's power to get a higher priority from the seeders' side by constantly disconnecting until getting optiistically unchoked. It also refuses to upload to highspeed peers by ignoring piecerequests reaching over 100 or so. I don't really see this as a non-seeding client though, since it is fairly easy to get it to upload at any desired rate as long as there are enough peers for it.

However, any client can be made a leeching-client either by using some external netlimiting application or by using an external (or internal in many cases) IP-blocker.

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Kazuaki, it's too bad BC is not open source. If it were, then people can really see what's going on. Because it's a closed source client, all these claims and accusations can't really be substantiated very well. I don't like leech clients. If indeed BC does all these leeching tactics, then I would be against it. But I will defend BC because it has peer exchange and a very good implementation of DHT.

You say the private flag should be respected. I'm not sure if I philosophically agree with you on this. I am for a trackerless BT world. I don't think there should be private torrents at all. I think everyone and anyone should have access to any torrents. If you want to send private information for a few select people, there are other methods to do so. BT should be used for the mass distribution of information. In this mass distribution paradigm, there should not be any private flags. I'm not sure I agree that it should be respected. I tend to believe it should be ignored.

uT must implement a Peer Exchange function; then I probably would support uT as the best client out there.

I currently am stationed in a country where the government will ban/censor certain sites/trackers outright. That makes trackers and centralized trackers very difficult to deal with. With BC's peer exchange feature, I can always get around the censorship and join the swarm. With uT, I'm stuck on the outside, not being able to join along. uT's implemention of DHT is not done very well. I should in theory be able to join the swarm through DHT, but in many cases I cannot. If I switch over to BC, I immediately join the entire swarm because of BC's peer exchange feature. BC is an extremely powerful client. It's unfornate that it has these purported leeching characteristics.

Just because BC has peer exchange and a better implementation of DHT doesn't make it a leech client. What happens when all these private trackers are brought down by lawsuits? Where will you be then? With a trackerless paradigm' date=' the swarm can still exist and continue even when the tracker is brought down.

A trackerless BT swarm is definitely the wave of the future.[/quote']

DHT and PeX is not why BitComet is getting blasted. Heck, many of us want Peer Exchange and better DHT (including Azureus DHT or a new universal DHT) to be implemented soonest in uTorrent. Apparently, it is BitComet's disregard of anti-DHT flags that's the reason for criticism. No matter what you think of the flag, if someone decided to set it for any reason, I would think it should be respected, not ignored.

regulating mechinism to be imbedded within the BT protocal and within the BT client

Considering your attitude in the other thread and this statement you have here, I'm surprised you like BC.

You see, even the present BT protocol and implementations have some regulation. Most people, for example, tend to have their download eventually slowed if they crimped their upload too far. It is not perfect, far from it in fact as we both know, but it is there.

I'm not an expert on BC's every alleged violation, but its leech client reputation, AFAIK, comes from investigations that conclude that its implementation often Degrades the BT protocol's own natural regulatory mechanism - for the user's own advantage. Among the most egregious is the charge that BC falsifies data in ways that would convince trackers to give it disproportionate priority. Another complaint is its Rapid Connection Recycling, which makes a mockery out of the Optimistic Unchoke protocol - imagine BC getting everyone to unchoke to it using this method. There are a few others, which I'm sure Firon would be more than happy to talk you through, but this is why AFAIK BC has a bad rep.

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Trackerless torrenting is nice, but it moves BitTorrent towards becoming yet another distributed p2p network (yay, Gnutella, eD2k, FastTrack).

Sure it has some advantages over these but the only reason I use BitTorrent sites is so I can download from private trackers. The ratio management gives brilliant speeds every time. And for the record, the site I'm on does not "force" or provide benefits for donating in any way, though it does have a donate button.

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Kazuaki, it's too bad BC is not open source. If it were, then people can really see what's going on. Because it's a closed source client, all these claims and accusations can't really be substantiated very well. I don't like leech clients. If indeed BC does all these leeching tactics, then I would be against it. But I will defend BC because it has peer exchange and a very good implementation of DHT.

Actually, at least some of the claims can be substantiated via observation of tracker and client logs so I'm inclined to believe them. As an aside, Az and uT both have easily accessible loggers, while if BC had one I never found it. For example, the Rapid Connection Recycler is supposedly very fast, as many as 10 cycles per second, so it might leave something like this on the log:

HH:MM:SS

00:00:00 IP123.123.123.123 connects to IP234.234.234.234

00:00:00 IP123.123.123.123 disconnects

(Repeat x10)

00:00:01 IP123.123.123.123 connects to IP234.234.234.234

00:00:01 IP123.123.123.123 disconnects

(Repeat x8 - presumably, this was when he got the optimistic unchoke and opted to stay connected)

If you keep seeing something like this, and the 123.123.123.123s all happen to be BitComet users, how long would it take for you to come to a conclusion? Another one that must have been easy to see is the over-requesting of announcements - the tracker can hardly fail to note announce requests and their frequency.

You say the private flag should be respected. I'm not sure if I philosophically agree with you on this. I am for a trackerless BT world. I don't think there should be private torrents at all. I think everyone and anyone should have access to any torrents. If you want to send private information for a few select people, there are other methods to do so. BT should be used for the mass distribution of information. In this mass distribution paradigm, there should not be any private flags. I'm not sure I agree that it should be respected. I tend to believe it should be ignored.

First of all, you should understand that while a large percentage of global torrent traffic is on illegal goods, the system was not created to make it easy for illegal distribution.

What it is meant for is the large scale distribution of legal goods (obviously, a few select downloaders may use something like FTP). Imagine a legal good mass-distributed using BitTorrent - thus saving substantial shipping and FTP server fees: US->HK shipping fees for software are so hefty said shipping fee is more expensive than the software itself! You pay money by credit card, and a password gets sent to your E-mail box for log-in to a private tracker. You log-in and start downloading.

Now imagine if BitComet ignores the private flag and starts DHTing and PeXing the file all over the Internet. That's why the private flag is here to stay and why it must be honored.

About the stereotypical private tracker - the kind that distributes fansubs and pirated software. Ignoring the morality of pirating the stuff in the first place, a private tracker is basically an additional agreement. For the good of all in the group, all agree to maintain certain seeding ratios (that's the general condition). To make such an agreement effective, all users must be monitored to ensure compliance. Allowing DHT leaks kills off this monitoring ability.

You are under no obligation to adhere to this agreement and most of the stuff is on a public tracker somewhere as well, though private trackers tend to have some torrent quality assurance a public one doesn't. But if you signed an agreement, you have an obligation to stick with it, no? The problem with BC0.60 is apparently that you cannot even choose adherence to the agreement - under certain circumstances, even you ordered DHT to be disabled, BC uses DHT anyway, spewing the file all over the Internet. Now ain't that a problem?

uT must implement a Peer Exchange function; then I probably would support uT as the best client out there.

Read my previous message again, and rest assured that many people would agree with you. The only argument is whether Ludde should put Azureus DHT or PeX first. Either way, we win and most eventually want both.

I currently am stationed in a country where the government will ban/censor certain sites/trackers outright. That makes trackers and centralized trackers very difficult to deal with. With BC's peer exchange feature, I can always get around the censorship and join the swarm. With uT, I'm stuck on the outside, not being able to join along. uT's implemention of DHT is not done very well. I should in theory be able to join the swarm through DHT, but in many cases I cannot. If I switch over to BC, I immediately join the entire swarm because of BC's peer exchange feature. BC is an extremely powerful client. It's unfornate that it has these purported leeching characteristics.

You have my sympathy. In theory, DHT is the same Mainline system in both BitComet and uTorrent. It must be the PeX, but people on this board also tend to agree BitComet is somehow very good at getting peer lists. If you are desperate, you can do manual peer transfer - search for the word "priming" and my username to see how this is done - I think I've said it ten times on this board already and don't intend to pull a 11th encore.

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uTorrent is way better off implementing Azureus DHT in addition to mainline one. PeX is just one of many badly designed and broken features of Bitcomet and supporting it just keeps people moving off to alternative and better clients.

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uTorrent is way better off implementing Azureus DHT in addition to mainline one. PeX is just one of many badly designed and broken features of Bitcomet and supporting it just keeps people moving off to alternative and better clients.

Without knowing tumu, and I will beg for his forgiveness if he turns out otherwise, but I have to assume he is one of those too often met general users who just accept the dogma of the high priests and regurgitate what he's been told. Peer Exchange is the BEST concept that's ever come out of the BT world, besides the original BT client itself. BC's implementation of Peer Exchange is absolutely awesome. BC's cheating/leeching characteristics notwithstanding, it's ability to aquire peers is absolutely unmatched.

I have done repeated tests between BC and uT to see how many peers each client can acquire and let me conclusively state that BC is so much better at acquiring peers. My situation is especially optimized to test this because certain trackers are completely banned/censored here and I can definitely notice how well Peer Exchange works in BC.

Just last night, I was trying to get this file. With BC, I was able to get 24 peers immediately. With uT, I was able to acquire 4. I let uT sit for 10 minutes to see if it could acquire more but 4 was it. I wasn't able to connect to the tracker.

Between DHT and Peer Exchange, you really don't need a tracker with BC. That's actually the world BT will evolve to.

KS, for legal and commerical distribution of software and entertainment media, I can see in principle how one would want a private flag and the ability to enforce it. But I'm sure you would agree that the current BT protocal isn't secure enough to do such transations. If some commercial enterprise is going to use BT--the current publicly available BT--to distribute their commerical products which their customers have paid for, then I think that enterprise needs to seriously rethink. BT is not a secure method of distribution at all. It was never intended to securely and privately distribute information--hence no encryption of the data being transferred at all. I would suggest that before encryption of the data being transferred is incorporated into the BT protocal, that commerical distribution of media via BT is very, very premature. So this private flag issue is still irrelevent now.

But I do see your point. I suppose I simply disagree with its use in the BT p2p world.

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KS, for legal and commercial distribution of software and entertainment media, I can see in principle how one would want a private flag and the ability to enforce it. But I'm sure you would agree that the current BT protocol isn't secure enough to do such transactions. If some commercial enterprise is going to use BT--the current publicly available BT--to distribute their commercial products which their customers have paid for, then I think that enterprise needs to seriously rethink. BT is not a secure method of distribution at all. It was never intended to securely and privately distribute information--hence no encryption of the data being transferred at all. I would suggest that before encryption of the data being transferred is incorporated into the BT protocol, that commercial distribution of media via BT is very, very premature. So this private flag issue is still irrelevant now.

But I do see your point. I suppose I simply disagree with its use in the BT p2p world.

Do you even understand what you are talking about? That is what BitTorrent was created for. Here is a quote directly from Bram Cohen's Official site:

What is BitTorrent?

BitTorrent is a free speech tool.

BitTorrent gives you the same freedom to publish previously enjoyed by only a select few with special equipment and lots of money. ("Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one" -- journalist A.J. Liebling.)

You have something terrific to publish -- a large music or video file, software, a game or anything else that many people would like to have. But the more popular your file becomes, the more you are punished by soaring bandwidth costs. If your file becomes phenomenally successful and a flash crowd of hundreds or thousands try to get it at once, your server simply crashes and no one gets it.

There is a solution to this vicious cycle. BitTorrent, the result of over two years of intensive development, is a simple and free software product that addresses all of these problems.

The key to scaleable and robust distribution is cooperation. With BitTorrent, those who get your file tap into their upload capacity to give the file to others at the same time. Those that provide the most to others get the best treatment in return. ("Give and ye shall receive!")

Cooperative distribution can grow almost without limit, because each new participant brings not only demand, but also supply. Instead of a vicious cycle, popularity creates a virtuous circle. And because each new participant brings new resources to the distribution, you get limitless scalability for a nearly fixed cost.

BitTorrent is not just a concept, but has an easy-to-use implementation capable of swarming downloads across unreliable networks. BitTorrent has been embraced by numerous publishers to distribute to millions of users.

With BitTorrent free speech no longer has a high price.

www.bittorrent.com

And for the record, Bram Cohen does not approve of Peer Exchange. Because it's moving BitTorrent more and more in the direction of Kazaa, eDonkey, etc... And that is not what BitTorrent is supposed to be. If you still do not understand that read the above quote again. If after reading it a second time you fail to understand the purpose of BitTorrent then you're using the wrong program for your illegal file sharing.

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Another problem with Peer Exchange and DHT (especially Azureus' implimentation) is the background "noise" of ip connecting goes up. These are currently of UDP type and many routers, modems, and even nic cards simply get swamped by the excess connections.

These connections don't all quit when you exit µTorrent. Hours, even days-weeks later, they retry your ip hoping you're still there. This is a beast that Sysadmins of ISPs want killed, and perhaps with good reason. Imagine having to pay a toll to other ISPs for every connection made to or through them regardless of whether the connection is short-lived or not.

On Win 9x/ME and Win XP SP2, making outgoing connections for the sake of DHT has another problem as well -- bumping against max connections and outgoing half-open connections. Alot of connections are being made with only a very low average usefulness. It's very useful if you're on torrents where the tracker goes down alot. It's marginally useful on weak torrents -- assuming it can even find someone via DHT who wants or already has that torrent. And on very large torrents, you've already got more peers/seeds than you can use unless you're on a multi-megabit line.

The problem with being on a file-sharing network where you can search for file/s among 1 million users is 1 million users can also search for your files...potentially all at once. DDoS attack! OUCH!

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