BitTyrant: The “Selfish” BitTorrent Client
Written by Smaran on January 03, 2007BitTyrant is a new “selfish” BitTorrent client based on Azureus. The developers claim that it speeds up downloads by up to 70% by connecting to the peers that have high upload speeds, and peers that give you the best send / receive ratio.
BitTyrant is based on the Azureus 2.5 code. While inspecting the contents of the application I noticed that even though its icon is different from Azureus’, it is still named “Azureus.icns”.
BitTyrant is selfish because it focuses on the optimal speed for the individual, although it might hurt the overall performance of the entire swarm. The key idea is: selecting peers that give you the best overall download speed. This is done by adding two features to the client.
1. It connects to peers that give you the the most data back. So invest a small amount of upload speed, and get the most back.
2. It connects to peers with the best upload speed.
Selfishness might work for a single person, but if everybody starts to use BitTyrant, performance will decrease. So, as the makers of the client put it: “When all peers behave selfishly, average performance degrades for all peers, even those with high capacity.”
It is clear that BitTyrant will optimize the speed for a single user if only a few use the client, but the makers of the client also found that peers with less bandwidth available will be worse of. In their research paper we read:
“We found that BitTyrant improves performance for all peers that use it. Nevertheless, in practice, BitTyrant will hurt the performance of individual swarms as high capacity peers reach a point of diminishing returns and are incented to either withhold their upload contribution or invest it in other swarms. Low capacity peers do not enjoy such a luxury. As the majority of peers have low capacity, they will see degraded performance compared to BitTorrent today.”
Just like Azureus, BitTyrant is cross-platform due to the nature of Java, the platform independent language it’s coded in. Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows versions of the client can be downloaded from the BitTyrant homepage, but I don’t recommend that you do.
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I have been exploring the site and attempting to download a copy, but with no luck. The program from what I have read looks pretty neat, and could be a lead to interesting developments in the future, but I think that it my be banned in a short period of time from most private trackers.
I will be hopefully testing this software tonight if I can get a copy of it and comparing it to uTorrent (my personal favorite :P )
[quote comment="36059"]
I will be hopefully testing this software tonight if I can get a copy of it and comparing it to uTorrent (my personal favorite :P )[/quote]
There’s a .torrent for the Windows version over here
http://www.mininova.org/tor/534634
[quote comment="36059"] I think that it my be banned in a short period of time from most private trackers.
[/quote]
I predict less than 48 hours.
a new bully in town, or what?!
I think that you’re misinterpreting the second feature. You state that “It connects to peers with the best upload speed.” This would seem to imply that BitTyrant preferentially downloads from clients with high upload rates. Meanwhile, the homepage states that “BitTyrant dynamically adjusts its send rate, giving more data to peers that can and do upload quickly and reducing send rates to others.” This would mean that BitTyrant actually preferentially *uploads* to clients with high upload rates.
The two features of the client should really then be summarized as:
1) It downloads from peers most likely to upload to you the fastest
2) It uploads to peers most likely to upload to others the fastest
When put this way, it doesn’t sound quite as bad as you make it out to be. Of course, it will probably still hurt download speeds, as noted in their paper.
Actually to further clarify this point, this would mean that BitTyrant isn’t really trying to be the “selfish” BitTorrent client that you make it out to be. BitTyrant is not in any way trying to minimize uploading, but rather preferentially uploading to peers that would most likely be able to quickly share data with others. To quote BitTyrant’s homepage, “Our goal is to improve performance, not minimize upload contribution”
By preferentially uploading to peers with high upload speeds, BitTyrant isn’t trying to optimize download speeds for a single user, but rather for the whole swarm. It appears that the goal of BitTyrant is to very rapidly increase the average availability of files in a swarm.
The reason that this might be harmful is not because BitTyrant is selfish. Rather, it is because many users have limited upload capacity. Using the BitTyrant algorithm, these users have a much lower probability of being uploaded to (since clients preferentially upload to peers with high upload speeds). To reemphasize this point, BitTyrant is harmful not because it’s selfish, but rather because the algorithm is disadvantageous to users with low upload capacity.
The quote that you draw from the research paper does not actually support your conclusion that BitTyrant is selfish. Rather it highlights the fact that high capacity peers have a large advantage over low capacity peers. Because the majority of swarms are composed of low capacity peers, this means that BitTyrant will be harmful in the end. On the other hand, if the majority of swarms were to be composed of high capacity peers, than BitTyrant would actually be theoretically beneficial.
i cant see how this could hurt bittorrent, besides from the leechers will be getting slower download speeds which i dont really think is a problem anyway… anyone that thinks different?
Oy, insert foot in mouth :P Upon rereading, it appears that I have subtly misinterpreted what BitTyrant is doing. BitTyrant doesn’t preferentially upload to peers with high upload capacity, but rather to peers that are specifically uploading quickly to your client. The rest of my conclusions are therefore somewhat right, somewhat wrong. Oh well, we all agree that BitTyrant will probably be harmful, which is what’s is important.
nice i’ll give it a try.
it lays it out here, how it cheats and breaks the bittorrent protocol:
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/piatek/papers/BitTyrant_affiliates.pdf
if you’re using azureus, you can use the stuffer plugin to block these clients, by using the string: BitTyrant
“Good news everyone” or “This is the end of bittorrent”? I don’t now. The paper itself says “it could harm the swarm - maybe”. So what? Sit back and wait what will happend? Is it a good idea to block this client using the stuffer plugin for azureus by useragent?
Wow this is insane i’m getting amazing speed. Although what i find weird is that i’m getting 15kb/s on a axxo torrent.
This is almost an exact copy of the way eDonkey/Overnet’s Horde works. Some eMule mods also exibit a similar tit-for-tat “trading-partner” behavior.
It’s not exactly a leech client, but compared to standard Bittorrent, it does hurt a file’s propagation speed (and reduces the effective size of a download swarm) because only the few fastest uploaders are able to download. If everyone suddenly started using BitTyrant, users with 0% of a file will have to wait in queue much longer before being able to download.
The potential problem is that the few people with high upload bandwidth will finish the file quickly, then drop off and quit seeding, and with no seeders remaining, the torrent’s lifespan might be much shorter.
The Bittorrent algorithm was designed to maximize the spread of a file, not to make the fastest uploaders finish in the least possible time.
In short, BitTyrant is not file sharing, it’s file trading. Does it hurt the network as a whole - the Bittorrent swarm? Absolutely!
It won’t be the end. That’s for sure.
However, this is basically harmful IMO for this reason: it does not share with everyone, only the select.
I usually seed all night, and I would rather help out everyone, rather than be seized by BitTyrant’s users.
My 2ยข
Pfft. Seems to be a newer BitComet. I believe this wont last long.
“2. It connects to peers with the best upload speed.”
Doesn’t bittorrent clients already do this? That’s why I’m downloading so slowly a torrent with 150+ seeders. But let me understand… what are the algorithms behind uTorrent peer connection?
There’s plenty of reasons you’re downloading so slowly. I don’t think it’s the algorithm :-).
I stick to Utorrent… old, known, on my usb stick, etc…
Avoid seems like a weapon the MPAA would use to kill file sharing.
Yes the main reason i download slowly is that my upload sucks (20 KB/s) but still i don’t get how uTorrent (or other clients) choose the peers to connect to. Is it a random thing?
bnoise: http://wiki.theory.org/BitTorrentSpecification
Everyone was happy with how bittorrent worked… now people start to get greedy, and bittorrent as we know it might change to something else. There’s always someone playing the smartass, and what seems like a good idea now might become harmfull for the great majority of bittorrent users when everyone starts to use clients lihe this one.
From a couple of smartasses to a zillion of dumbasses is just a short step away.
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