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uTorrent Reaches Milestone With 2.0 Release

The uTorrent development team officially released the long awaited version 2.0 of their popular application today. The release hopes to optimize the download experience for uTorrent users while eliminating the need for ISPs to manage, block or limit BitTorrent traffic.

utorrentuTorrent for Windows saw its first public release in September 2005 and soon became the most widely used BitTorrent applications. The client is used by more than 50 million users worldwide and this number continues to rise.

Today, uTorrent version 2.0 was officially released. This new release is built to be more network friendly thanks to the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP) which aims to mitigate network congestion caused by poorly configured BitTorrent clients.

uTP is a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be more network friendly than its predecessor. The current implementation often causes interference with other applications. This is one of the main reasons why ISPs try to slow it down, or even stop it altogether. uTP aims to solve this problem.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management is quite proud of the end result, and told TorrentFreak that most ISPs have also responded positively to the implementation of the uTP protocol.

“In general the ISPs who we have explained the technology to have been quite pleasantly surprised. There are occasional noisy skeptics who think its something evil, but they are generally poor confused souls who are more interested in selling a centralized vision of the internet rather than the distributed egalitarian system we have today,” Morris said.

“I’m excited about uTP finally arriving at a full scale deployment on the internet and I really hope that ISPs take the time to understand the potential benefits to them before they take decisions about how to manage this new class of traffic on their networks,” he added.

Aside from being gentle to the ISP’s networks, uTorrent 2.0 might also have a beneficial effect on the download speeds of individual users. Since there is less congestion, uTorrent users will experience no slowdowns in web-browsing.

Less congestion and a more efficient use of the network may eventually result in faster download speeds, which means that it will be a win-win situation for both ISPs and uTorrent users.

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  • tbonez

    yeyah!

  • Hannah

    Sweet, I’ve been using 2.0 for a while, the download speeds are as fast as before, but I can browse the net and download at the same time now :D

  • e7

    Awesome!

  • guyfawkes

    win-win user and isp
    win-fail user and riaa

    hahabahbahab

    bittorrent: pwoning antipiracy groups since 2005

  • Simon

    Sounds good :)

  • Atuika

    This is so much lie coming from them. If your max download speed is 500k/sec and you download a torrent at that maximum speed; well guess what, you will browse the internet slow. If your upload max speed is 80k/sec and you upload at 80k/sec on a utp torrent ; well guess what, everything else will be slow. Learn to manage your bandwitdh. They think utp will solve something but it won’t. ISP hates utorrent because the upload bandwidth is way more costy for them. If you always upload at your max speed, no matter the protocol it won’t change anything at all. Nice try but nothx.

  • DemonMachine

    Can’t wait to download it

  • DJDANKVT

    Interesting read……..win win….sounds too good to be true.

  • http://www.eZee.se www.eZee.se

    My client of choice… so I’ll check it out.
    Curious to see how it manages my 100mbps connection and if I’ll feel any difference.

  • Anonymous

    fu ck yeah!

  • Anonymous

    My understanding was that part of the way that utp allows for faster browsing is that it never actually maxes out your connection. Seems pretty pointless but I sware I read it someware.

  • Verthik

    Been using 2.0 for about 4 months now and it runs great. Well worth the upgrade.

  • Anonymouse

    #6 is wrong.
    As network congestion decreases with the use of uTP, less routers are needed to handle the same load, cheaper for ISP to extend their networks. Of course bandwidth is part of the cost, but don’t forget the infrastructural benefits.

  • Gordon

    @6 who said: “ISP hates utorrent because the upload bandwidth is way more costy for them. If you always upload at your max speed, no matter the protocol it won’t change anything at all. Nice try but nothx.”

    The ISP sold that upload speed, and the customer may use it however they see fit. If the ISP didn’t want it used, then they shouldn’t have sold it. You are a troll.

  • EEE of the BitTorrent protocol

    Embrace, extend, extinguish.

    Well at least the first two E’s apply here.

    The uTP extension to BitTorrent protocol is of very closed nature that cannot be much of use to other BitTorrent clients.

    uTorrent – thanks, but no thanks.

  • Gordon

    No ISP needs “BitTorrent protocol enhancements”. They just want other people to do their work for them. AT&T insists on selling more capacity than they have, and not putting their profits into increasing capacity. Just look at iPhone 3G service complaints. AT&T has offered only 6Mb DSL for years now, while Verizon has been offering continually increasing FIOS speeds, and Comcast has been offering 12Mb+ cable. There are many other ISPs that do the same at AT&T. People need to quit kissing AT&T’s ass (and similar providers’ asses), and sue them for false advertising, misrepresentation of capability/usability/suitability, etc.

  • Bryant

    wow utorrent should get a medal or time man of the year for this one. its running so smoothly right now and there is NO lag on my connection right now. this only further proves the ingenuity of people to improve on their inventions and have a positive impact on millions of others around the world. utorrent, you have rightfully earned the respect and admiration of myself and your internet brethren.

  • io

    6 is right.
    isp hate bandwith vampire app like torrent. utp is useless to solve the problem.

  • Anonymous

    ISP’s do hate upload bandwidth, especially on Cable. It puts a lot of strain on the network. Especially if a lot of people in the same area, using the same node are uploading to there full bandwidth potential. This should help eliminate the problem, as uTP can recognize when a network is strained, and can then throttle back to ‘unclog’ it, and put less overall strain on the network.

    Good Work uTorrent!

  • Lothor The Evil

    I’ve been using uTorrent since 2006 and love it.

  • redbaron

    ISPs usually suck. Because they don’t want to upgrade their networks (because it costs money) to be modern. Instead they expect for other people to do their work. If the hardware suck, no software can do any good whatsoever! And actually ISPs really don’t like lots of traffic on the network. Yes, you’ve paid for bandwidth but that doesn’t mean that the ISP is pleased when you download TBs of data every 2-3 days with a great speed. Because the more traffic there is, the more probable it is that the old turned inside out hardware gives up and a problem (or problems) occur that need repair etc. etc. All that costs money, which nobody wants to give. It’s not only the ISP. This is practiced everywhere around the globe – you pay but they try to give you less than you’ve paid for. As for the uTP – I hope they manage to integrate it into other clients too.

  • LoC Big Dog_

    I will upgrade next year if I think my Bittyrant http://bittyrant.cs.washington.edu software needs an upgrade. Atm I run 2 clients and see no problem as for I have 2 machines running 1 each.

  • jason

    i’d use it if they’d make a linux version. utorrent with wine is awful.

  • lol

    i don’t know why people are complaining so much.. so what if it doesn’t help.. its called the development of technology.. if you don’t like it make something better..

    seriously.. stfu unless you are a programmer/network analyst, otherwise download the new version, help the progress of technology.. and keep your unqualified face shut.

  • Cory

    i may be unqualified #24, but my concern is for members (like myself) of private, ratio oriented sites. the whole reason i’m seeding 100+ torrents is to upload as much data as possible. this new feature lets utorrent automatically limit my maximum upload speed when need be, does it not?
    you can say i’m bitching and whatnot, but i feel like it’s a legitimate concern for private torrent site users.

  • lilars

    I’ve been using 2.0 for a while now and my upload speed has gotten much better.The faster you upload, the faster you download and that’s the way it works.I can still surf the net as fast as I could before.

  • Alrock

    So….
    If the network is under strain then utorrent v2 will throttle your upload…..

    That’s fine & dandy for helping the ISPs out but if there are lots of people using different clients they won’t be getting throttled, putting the network under strain causing you to be the only one throttled….

    ergo….
    This is only good news for users of other clients as all the poor sods using utorrent v2 will be getting throttled to make more room for the non utorrent v2 users.

    Q.E.D.

  • Anonymous

    I would like to try that!

  • MeH

    I think the uTP protocol is more than just limiting connections…

    I maybe wrong about this being apart of the uTP protocol – It was meant to be able to organise peers so that the ones that are on the same network as you, you are more likely to connect to and share the torrent files with. Then move down a list.

    Well we will to wait for actual tests to see if its allowed by the private sites first. Lets see what happens =]

  • Hannah

    Good News Everyone: In a stunning and landmark decision, iiNet has won the case in Australia. Judge: “The law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another”

  • Ninja

    Using 2.0 for a while no and I haven’t seen any speed issue. In fact my ul is always maxed if I don’t limit it. Downloads also work wonders although I can’t seem to max it to the full 6mibts but 5.73 isn’t bad at all. And I have also noticed that I can actually browse without problems now – before it didn’t matter if I were using bt at max speed or not, I’d always experience poor navigation.

    Nice work utorrent!

    On a side note TF surely is an utorrent fanboy huh? xD

  • Han

    Even with managed bandwidth my friend and I both saw lag and general crap with uTorrent 2.0 (alpha/beta) and we reverted to 1.8. Now we both use rTorrent… says quite a bit about the direction of uTorrent, imho.

  • techy

    Breaking News iiNet has won against AFACT! YES!

  • Obedient

    !!!The new uTorrent will be “calling home” and sending info about what we’re downloading to the MAFIAA……..!!!
    (Just kidding!)
    Can’t wait to try it out!

  • Voice of History

    For everybody that cares, stop spreading uTP FUD and read the BEP 29 – http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html

    “The overall goal of the uTP congestion control is to use one way buffer delay as the main congestion measurement, as well as packet loss, like TCP. The point is to avoid running with full send buffers whenever data is being sent. This is specifically a problem for DSL/Cable modems, where the send buffer in the modem often has room for multiple seconds worth of data. The ideal buffer utilization for uTP (or any background traffic protocol) is to run at 0 bytes buffer utilization. i.e. any other traffic can at any time send without being obstructed by background traffic clogging up the send buffer. In practice, the uTP target delay is set to 100 ms. Each socket aims to never see more than 100 ms delay on the send link. If it does, it will throttle back.

    This effectively makes uTP yield to any TCP traffic.”

    Extremely ingenuous, and most competent clients should start implementing that, just like DHT. By the way, this is no “EEE” as some random troll said – The whole stack is detailed there, and any mildly competent programmer should be able to implement and start using that.

  • http://neuron2neuron.blogspot.com Ben Jones

    @ 25 (Cory)

    The more torrents you have active, the more overhead you use keeping them active and so the less ACTUAL bandwidth you have to distribute data. It’s one of the amusing things about most private trackers, that they ‘suggest’ you configure your clients as poorly as possible. Their guides don’t help, but hinder, because they are based on a poor knowledge of how the protocol works.

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  • Yatti420

    #6 is obviously a newbie torrenter….

  • Yatti420

    #18 is obviously another newbie torrenter….

  • Yatti420

    #22..

    Considering your client is blocked from almost every major tracker you might aswell upgrade now..

  • Yatti420

    Any other advanced settings to tinker with? Let me know..

  • Cujo

    @ Yatti420

    in my case i would have to run through a vpn if i allowed 20 tcp/ip half open connects in the client cause my isp has a limiting filter rigamajig ,, 30 or 40 he told me??

    also vista sp2 and win7 has no limit ,, been removed by ms

  • Anonymous

    This protocol is closed sourced, so it’ll just slow down other clients. Unless you really have a problem downloading, please don’t use it!

  • dtl

    i’ll be disabling that shit.
    is this the only benefit to upgrading to 2.0? what about falcon?

    f uTP

  • omfg

    no linux client ? snafu

  • Snedra

    Sweet, looking forward to this :)

  • AnarchyNow

    Where’re the sources? Nowhere? it’s not open-source? ah then don’t use that shit that the n$a & the mafiaa will certainly (if not already) insert some backdoors in it.

  • bloat

    Ever since the original developer sold uTorrent to Bittorrent inc, we have noticed our favorite client not improving with each release but getting some annoyances and bloat.

    I’m really worried about version 2.0 however i know that soon the private torrent sites will ban the 1.x series of uTorrent and I’ll be forced to upgrade anyway

  • guy

    damn i really want this for mac

  • Pingback: uTorrent 2.0 ya está disponible para descargar | Bitelia

  • haz09

    downloaded the 2.0 version from utorrent but after installed it, it still says 1.8.5 version?

  • DarkStar

    Been running 2.0 for a little while now and there’s definitely a noticeable improvement in web browser speed while utorrent is running. Before I generally had to stop my downloads if I wanted to go on the web, but now there’s hardly any delay when browsing even if utorrent is hammering my connection.

    As mentioned in post 35, the improvements especially noticeable if on a dsl connection. On a friends adsl connection the improvement isn’t as obvious, but then BT never seemed to effect his browsing as much before. I’d never swap though, it’ll be years until adsl can match current dsl speeds here in the UK.

  • Firon

    The whole uTP protocol is available, and the other client developers are well aware of it. Anyone can implement it.
    http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0029.html

  • Whatever

    #6 is right about that you will never get any more speed than your maximum set by the ISP.

    However the idea seems to be to give the torrent traffic the lowest priority in your computer. Other clients can still connect though if it is only a change in the buffers of your own client.

    How it solves congestion elsewhere i dont know but probably because less packets are sent saying “try again later”.

  • Pingback: Giovdi.it • Disponibile uTorrent 2.0

  • Voice of History

    By the way, for everyone saying this sucks because there is no OS version… Get off your butts and implement it. Or use what uTorrent is offering. It’s a free protocol, anyone can implement it.

  • Alex

    No link to uTorrent from article? Grrr I had to type..?

  • Pingback: uTorrent 2.0 listo para descargar

  • Julian

    This is an article on the web, and there are zero links in it! Thank you for making me type µTorrent in the adress bar myself.

  • Pirate Dave

    The good: uTorrent 2.0 allows me to surf and gives priority to other software downloading.

    The bad: uTorrent 2.0 is uploading and downloading at approximately 20 percent less speed than before.

  • Scooby

    Yay uTorrent on Windows, Boo uTorrent on OSX! (Just kidding. I love it on both boot partitions of my Hackintosh netbook. But on OSX there’s no importing of trackers for existing torrents. Awww. :( sniff)

  • pirateprideWW

    Why is uTorrent being dumbed down with each new version? At best, this “network shaping” stuff should be optional and not the default with version 2.0. Don’t force this crap on us.

    20% reduction in speed, and some of you are cheering about it? C’mon.

  • user113

    I use the new version since alphastage. uTP is plain crap! Unstable up- and downrates. Not worth it.

    Use cfosspeed or other traffic shaping software with tcp if you want the ultimate surf experience and maxed out up- and download.

    If you want the behavoir as in 1.8.5 go to advanced options

    bt.transp_disposition: 13
    bt.tcp_rate_control: false

    and you are again good to go! Have fun

  • EEE of the BitTorrent protocol

    I am no random troll, I am very non-random and while a bit troll-ish, I said the truth!

    Seriously, BitTorrent Inc. once said (IIRC, during uTorrent acquisition) that it will use uTorrent as a platform to develop proprietary extensions to BitTorrent protocol. Well, if uTP is standartised and open, as one (non)-troll said here, it might not be the case. Still, there are safer (in terms of proprietary control) clients, such as Deluge.

    What will ya say to that, pal?

  • antifeature

    500kbs of bandwidth is still 500kbs of bandwidth even with utorrents new “feature”

    I don’t want my torrent client to try and save my ISP money/bandwidth.

  • Pingback: uTorrent Releases Version 2.0 - P2P Talk?

  • v zxkjvbs

    def a win win result, thanks for this version =]

  • Jasper van Weerd

    No quotes from ISP’s?

  • djnforce9

    @Atuika: I thought that was the very problem uTorrent 2.0 would prevent. Naturally I am well aware that this happens and therefore I am always forced to cap my upload speed at something that WON’T slow down downloads and/or browsing. Therefore, wasn’t uTorrent 2.0 supposed to detect this “network congestion” and throttle the speeds automatically for you? I haven’t tested this behaviour yet and maybe I’m wrong about it but it certainly would be a nice feat so I don’t have to alter my cap based on whether I am away or not.

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  • timeless

    #47…

    You consider uTorrent bloated??!?

    It’s a fine example of tight code! It’s an extremely efficient, yet surprisingly full-featured app.

    Go play with iTunes if you want to get a grip on what bloat is!

    I’m very curious about uTorrent 2.0, but will wait for the private trackers I use suggest we switch to it.

  • liono

    thanks

  • 42Adult

    Swarm might be bigger in some situations.

    I have over 7 pc’s in this room, and 18 total in my home, at times if I want to grab a file from my local pc’s and I am lazy to login/dir change/copy/paste/etc/etc.. I will just grab the .torrent file and transfer it via uTorrent.

    I have been running beta 2.0.17290 since it was released, I have had 0 crashes atm. I cant say its faster, just more stable.

    When it comes to speed, I run as few torrent files(transfers/downloads) as possible. When I notice that my full d/l bandwith is at -10% then I will look at the number of seeds check out the peers and the max that they can send, if they are all maxed then I just make my active number of downloads higher.

    Some major tweaks to the uTorrent settings can “keep you” at 100% download rate.

    If you run into DISK OVERFLOW ERROR, a serious problem I had in 1.85 was solved by messing with buffers and at that time I was sending data to a 1.5tb usb drive. USB=slow, now I save to mt internal drive or to memory (8gig installed, set aside 4gig for utorrent) then dump file to usb when complete. (power outage will wipe memory and you will have to restart all…) Use that at caution, small files is best, put large movies direct to you drive. set iTorrent buffers from 24mb upto 128mb or 256mb.

    Allow same ip = true
    bt.enable tracker = true
    bt multiscrape = true
    first last piece = false
    compact allocation = false
    ban threshold = 24
    gui date = false
    here is a big one… rss_update_interval = 4200… why ping rss feeds and waste bw.

    You can play with QOS in your router to bump your local network traffic (linksys makes it easy).

    Set your windows QOS to 1% if you run 100% torrents vs streaming video(hulu etc).

    *** the above settings work for me, your best settings my be different, check out the uTorrent boards for some quality setups.

    # of seeds makes uTorrent faster… Do your part and have a good upload/download ratio, Torrents work only when everyone helps each other.

    Play Nice :)

  • esé

    i’m using 1.8.2 for some time now and it still looks good.

  • networkguy

    For those saying no this will not work, I say you do not have a true understanding of network protocols. uTP is being optimized so that it is less chatty and creates less network overhead in turn. This will allow for the same great upload/download speeds and the ability to browse the net at the same time w/o seeing a speed decrease. If you don’t believe try uT2.0 for yourself and browse the web, if you still don’t believe after experiencing it compare wireshark logs with old uT and new uT. If you are still not convinced you are indeed a moron and should probobly go back to school.

  • na

    µTorrent
    .. not uTorrent
    … not youTorrent

    µTP
    .. not uTP

    its MICRO(µ) not YOU(u)!
    big difference!

  • Tony

    I do like some of the areas where Utor is going especially with the streaming option in 2.1 beta but it just doesn’t seem to be working well with private trackers. Any connection made over uTP just doesn’t seem to be showing up in the announces.

  • Adam

    this sounds like UDP….is it? Or just some new fancy abbreviation that resembles that of “UDP”? lol.

    But yea, this does sound good. I know as a newb, I’d turn on all the logging and see all the “chattering” – and yea, the bittorrent protocol sure is “noisy” – sending all these “Hey I got this, Ok, nope, I don’t need this, send me this piece, OK, go here for this piece, OK, this guy is choked, try this guy instead….”

    All consumes a lot of un-necessary bandwidth…

    I honestly think these “messages” could be moved to UDP, and leave the file transfers to TCP (for the speed)….since I’ve read UDP is not a “guaranteed transfer” – BUT, on the flip-side, UDP file transfer has a lower bandwidth footprint.

    But it’s kind of a “shot in the dark” – in UDP, your client says “send this here” but since UDP is extremely basic, there is no “checking” or “verifying” that the data actually made it to where it’s supposed to be.

    But, the badnwidth usage is a big plus.

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  • lol

    Mass adding more than 5 files manually in 2.0 or 2.1 beta means everything gets thrown in the default folder rather than allowing you to choose the location for each file individually.

    They say this is because of stability issues and will up this to 20 at a time in later builds.

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  • utorrent all the way

    utorrent 2.0 is good for those with slower internet.
    Those with 1MB(apx 8 mbit/s) or higher upload are much better with utorrent 1.8.5

    2.0 version is quite naive in handshaking.

    1.8.5 will be very generous with the generous peers.

    With 1.8.5 I can upload my max 1MB while download 400-500 MB(or even more if there is a super generous peer) on an open tracker.

    2.0 version sleeps, I hardly could upload 500kB/s while download 80-100 kB/s.

  • Anonymous

    Now my web browsing doesnt work
    Thanks

    “Address Not Found
    http://www.google.com could not be found. Please check the name and try again.”

    “Connection Interrupted
    The document contains no data.”

    Back to good ol 1.6….

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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