Best P2P Torrent client.

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-03-21 02:39am

I am wondering what people see as the best client for use in a P2P setting within the Bit Torrent network.

I've got both the BT standard client and Azureus and am wondering if I am missing out on something better.

JLTucker · Post by **JLTucker** » 2006-03-21 02:42am

Bit Comet is great, I have connected to well over 300 peers with Bit Comet.

Spanky The Dolphin · Post by **Spanky The Dolphin** » 2006-03-21 02:55am

I recommend BitComet as well. That was recommended to me here after I could no longer use BitTornado at home when we got our broadband router. In addition to working with router firewalls, its interface and options are also great.

JLTucker · Post by **JLTucker** » 2006-03-21 03:05am

I have a program that changes the connection limit in tcpip.sys. So now I connect to over 200 seeds, when the amount is available.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-03-21 04:00am

µTorrent. It's absolutely tiny (150-ish kilobyte), use very little resources, has all the basic features you need, and it doesn't choke your connection when you're downloading at 300+ KB/S.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-03-21 04:04am

I use uTorrent on my server.

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-03-21 04:14am

The problem I'm finding is that the current BT clients I'm using seem to be influenced by me browsing the net, despite the fact that there's a full 1.5mb connection for it to be using, its capping at around 12-15kbps with up to 200 connections enabled.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-03-21 04:17am

weemadando wrote:The problem I'm finding is that the current BT clients I'm using seem to be influenced by me browsing the net, despite the fact that there's a full 1.5mb connection for it to be using, its capping at around 12-15kbps with up to 200 connections enabled.

If you're on a router, have you forwarded the correct ports ? Is the firewall and BT client properly configured ? Have you tried other torrent files, since even fairly healthy torrents can have slow speeds ?

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-03-21 04:25am

I'm guessing a lot of it will be my router/firewall/client having issues with each other.

As I'm new to the whole setting up a home network w/internet connection thing some advice on making it work well would be greatly appreciated.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-03-21 04:29am

As I'm new to the whole setting up a home network w/internet connection thing some advice on making it work well would be greatly appreciated.

What router do you have ?

Basically, what you need to to is look in your client's options menu to see what port(s) it uses, then access your router's control panel and forward those ports to the same port on your local IP. Look for a "port forwarding" or "virtual server" menu.

ETA : µTorrent's setup wizard can automatically check if the problem is with your router or firewall. Try downloading it, see what it says.

Post by **weemadando** » 2006-03-21 04:37am

Cool. Sounds like uTorrent and BitComet are my best bets.

Also, assuming I've got very large downloads half done is there any way of migrating them to a new BT client?

Archaic` · Post by **Archaic`** » 2006-03-21 07:22am

Just open the torrent file with the new client, and make sure you save directly over the existing file. It should notice that you've already partially downloaded it automatically.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-03-21 07:24am

Archaic` wrote:Just open the torrent file with the new client, and make sure you save directly over the existing file. It should notice that you've already partially downloaded it automatically.

There *might* be a problem if the client adds it's own extension (like *.BC! for BitComet), but that can be changed easily.

Datana · Post by **Datana** » 2006-03-21 11:20am

I'd recommend µTorrent. Very lightweight, configurable, and relatively feature-rich.

BitComet is acceptable for versions over 0.60, but that version and below don't play "nicely." Among other tricks, they'll repeatedly send the same piece to the same person to raise their ratio (wasting bandwidth on both ends), hoard unique pieces, hammer peers with requests (hoping to exploit optimistic unchoke), and ignore the DHT flag (thereby jumping into torrents that they shouldn't be authorized for). When combined, this can double the amount of time needed to initially seed a torrent, and so (when combined with the DHT issue) resulted in it being banned from private trackers for some time. It finally cleaned up its act at 0.61.

Azureus is extremely heavyweight in terms of resource consumption, but is the only client that doesn't choke on non-ASCII filenames that I've encountered. A certain plug-in (Stuffer) also allows banning specific clients. These aren't things that many people need, but they happen often enough for me that I keep both this and µTorrent on-hand.

JLTucker · Post by **JLTucker** » 2006-03-21 11:22am

Just enable DMZ.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2006-03-21 08:07pm

JLTucker wrote:Just enable DMZ.

Big security risk - that exposes every single port to your computer.
I also endorse uTorrent. I used to use Azureus, but after giving uTorrent a try, I decided to stick with it.

Hamel · Post by **Hamel** » 2006-03-21 08:42pm

I use ABC and it crashes at least once a day with retarded python24.dll errors. Once I finish off this amateur buttsex torrent I'm getting something else.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-21 08:47pm

I use Azureus. Aside from massive footprint it does everything I want.

Ando, make sure to change the client to a random high port: many AU ISPs (*cough*Telstra*cough*) don't like P2P and do nasty stuff to traffic on standard ports. I use a 50,000+ port, and I don't have any problems.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2006-03-21 09:42pm

Azureus for me. Lots of features and works on Linux. Rather heavy on a PII-400, but that's the server so eh. Set and forget.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2006-03-21 10:02pm

I now use Azureus since I can't run my former client, BitComet, on Linux. It's a bit of a resource hog, but any files I download with it are sufficiently big as to warrant using it at night when I'm away from the PC anyway, sleeping. The benefits of a Java based application are many if you can spare the CPU time and RAM to keep it alive, otherwise, BitComet.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2006-03-22 02:21am

I used BitComet then I switched to uTorrent, it's just so fast, swift and lightweight.

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2006-03-22 07:08am

I use Azareus as I had problems previously with slow downloads with BC. I still have some problems with phantom ports being displayed as closed when they are open - but when things are working perfectly I can download at speeds I never came close to with any other client.

Oh and it's a resource hog I should add. Can take up to 10 minutes to load with plug-ins!