Recently, BitComet started to exploit the super-seeding procedure, an invention by Shad0w that is also implemented in other popular clients like uTorrent. A super-seed detects peers that efficiently distribute data to other peers, and rewards them by sending them more data. This technique speeds up the overall speed of the swarm, and all other users benefit from it. However, not if it was up to the BitComet developers.

Shad0w explains, “When BitComet games super-seed, it induces the seed into thinking that the BitComet peer is very efficient at spreading data. As a result, the peer downloads faster than the rest of the peers, and typically doesn’t share that data as efficiently, costing the rest of the peers a lot of download time.”

The continuous efforts of the BitComet developers to cheat the system made Shad0w decide to ban all BitComet users. “Since BitComet has proven itself to be a harmful codebase, and since they have forced me to take steps I’d rather not have, I will also be banning connections from that client to my own client and tracker codebases. Should the BitComet developers decide to remove the exploitation code from their client, I will reconsider this decision.”

People may question whether it is a good decision to ban all BitComet users, but I think it is a wise one. In general, BitComet users are not the sharing type, so my prediction would be that it is more likely to speed up downloads, than to slow them down.

I’m with Shad0w on this, and I seriously hope that BitComet stops cheating, and will become more BitTorrent friendly in the future. I’ve used Shadow’s BitTorrent client for quite a while myself, and Shad0w is one of the most dedicated BitTorrent client developers around.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.