Today’s report is based on data from over 17,221 unique users in a few dozen public BitTorrent swarms, collected by the Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology.

The results in the table below show the market share for each individual client. In common with our previous reports, only 5 clients reached the 1% threshold, the remaining 14 that were encountered are grouped in the ‘other’ category. Some clients were not identified by libTorrent (rakshasa) and those ended up in the unknown ‘category’.

The changes in market share compared to our September report are also included, and these show some interesting trends. First of all, uTorrent extended its user base and now has a massive 60 percent market share. Vuze, BitComet and BitTorrent’s Mainline client all lost market share.

Transmission, on the other hand, keeps on growing. Its market share increased 23 percent and might take over BitComet’s fourth place soon. More on this in our December report.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today we present our second report based on data from over 165,000 unique users in more than 400 public BitTorrent swarms. The data for this BitTorrent client comparison is collected by a researcher known as ‘xXx’ of the Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology.

The results in the table below show the market share for each individual client. In common with the June report, only 5 clients reached the 1% threshold, the remaining 20 that were encountered are grouped in the ‘other’ category. Some clients were not identified by libTorrent (rakshasa) and those ended up the the unknown ‘category’.

The changes in market share compared to our June report are also included, and these show some interesting trends. First of all, uTorrent kept its dominant lead and even extended its market share to 56.81 percent. BitComet – ranked fourth again – is this month’s loser with a drop of 38 percent, falling from 6.50 to 4.71 percent market share.

On the winning side we see gains for Transmission and Vuze. Transmission’s market share increased to 44 percent and may move up a few spots if it maintains this growth rate. More on this in our October report.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Today we present a more robust report based on data from over 150,000 unique users in more than 400 public BitTorrent swarms. The data for this BitTorrent client comparison is collected by a researcher known as ‘xXx’ of the Tribler P2P research team at Delft University of Technology. The research team will continue to supply TorrentFreak with bi-monthly updates so we can discover new trends and shifts in the usage of the different clients.

The results in the table below give the market share for each individual client. Only 5 clients reached the 1% threshold, the remaining 19 that were encountered are grouped in the ‘other’ category. Some clients were not identified by libTorrent (rakshasa) and those ended up the the unknown ‘category’.

Both uTorrent and the third placed mainline client are developed by BitTorrent Inc, meaning that the company holds an impressive two thirds of the market. The only main contender at the moment is Vuze, formerly known as Azureus, with nearly 17 percent. BitComet, which used to be a major contender, is in fourth place with just 6.5 percent.

The data also gives us more insight into the size of the BitTorrent ‘network’. In December we reported that uTorrent had 28 million unique users a month, and based on this figure that might have grown even higher in the recent months. It is safe to say that there are roughly 50 million active BitTorrent users on the Internet.

It will be interesting to see how the market share of the clients changes over the coming months. Will uTorrent be able to keep its dominant lead? What will happen to Transmission’s market share when they release their Windows version? Will there be any new clients to compete with the top three? Lots of questions that we hope to answer in the future.

Stay tuned!

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The open source client runs on various operating systems with the notable exception of Windows, and according to the developers was designed to offer functionality without bloat. It is now the default BitTorrent client on Ubuntu.

Windows users who favor uTorrent as their BitTorrent client have had the ability to control their torrents from a webUI (web user interface) for some time now. The webUI for Transmission is known as ‘Clutch‘. This additional software makes it easy to monitor and control torrent transfers remotely, from any web browser connected to the Internet, anywhere in the world.

Previously, Transmission and Clutch had to be obtained separately but with the arrival of new Transmission releases (v1.30 and v1.31), that has changed.

‘Gimp’, a Clutch developer explains: “We are pleased to announce the Clutch project has now merged with Transmission. There will be no more releases of Clutch on its own, from 1.30 onwards it is bundled inside Transmission. You can still download Clutch 0.4 from the clutchbt.com website if you need clutch for an older version of Transmission, however that release is no longer supported.”

The latest version of transmission now runs the JSON-RPC protocol. This protocol makes it possible for other applications, even windows based clients, to interact with the transmission backend. Other additions and improvements to the latest Transmission versions include:

- Ability to add and remove tracker addresses
- Ability to create .torrent files with multiple tracker URLs
- Support for HTTP/FTP seeding

Clutch can be enabled by finding the ‘Remote’ tab in the ‘Preferences’ section.

Finally, here is ‘Gimp’ again with a call out to the community: “Although it has merged [with Transmission], Clutch is still a very new project, and thus there are still a few bugs and a lot of features missing. This message is also an open call for people to test Clutch all they can, and please, please submit patches and improvements! Right now clutch does not have a developer with enough time to push it forward to the place we all want it at, so anyone with the experience, and time, is welcome to help out.”

Gimp can be contacted on the Clutch forums.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Transmission has gained a lot of popularity over the last year, and is considered to be one of the fastest and lightweight BitTorrent clients. It is an Open Source project, and the application is currently available on almost every operating system except Windows. Similar to uTorrent, it focuses on being lightweight, while including all the features a demanding BitTorrent user needs.

The Transmission team describes it as follows: “Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight, yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat.”

Transmission uses little resources, and we’ve heard of people running it on their routers, NAS devices and even mobile phones. There is also a great WebUI for Transmission, called Clutch. With Clutch you can easily monitor and control your torrents remotely. Today, the Clutch team has released version 0.3, and instructions on how to get started are over here.

Downloads and more information about Ubuntu Hardy Heron can be found in the Ubuntu Wiki.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

David Watanabe, the developer, has now released Xtorrent 1.1 (beta). Here’s what’s new:

Interface changes
Xtorrent has gotten what the developer calls a “newly refreshed user interface”. New, sleeker-looking toolbar buttons that resemble those in the Leopard Finder, including a number of other interface tweaks have been added.

Selective Downloading
What was one of the most requested features, followed by encryption, is the ability to pick and choose which files you want to download from inside a torrent. Xtorrent finally lets you do this. Up until recently, Azureus was the only Mac BitTorrent client that could do this. Transmission added the feature a few weeks ago.

File Prioritisation
You can now tell Xtorrent which files in a torrent you want to give more priority to and have downloaded first. This was another oft-requested feature, according to Watanabe.

Xtorrent is quickly becoming the uTorrent of the Macintosh. Not uTorrent Mac, which we gave you a preview of, but the Mac equiavalent of uTorrent Windows. It’s light, has many important features and has a pretty UI. The only difference is that Xtorrent is shareware and uTorrent is not. But it’s widely known that the Mac community is a lot more open to shareware than most Windows users.

Unfortunately, Xtorrent still has its drawbacks. Its intrusive shareware policy is still very much there, rearing its ugly head at people without licenses. And some popular private trackers explicitly ban Xtorrent from connecting to torrents and downloading them. OiNK, possibly the most exclusive private BitTorrent site, whose invites are highly sought after, and till they banned the practise, were auctioned off on eBay for ridiculous amounts of dough, has banned Xtorrent. Here’s the message OiNK users who try to download with Xtorrent get:

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.