If you navigate through your buddylist you will see what your friend and family share with you. If there’s something interesting, you just click the “download file” button, and the file will start downloading as soon as it is available.

The extension works pretty good, although the download process is still a little buggy. 20% of the files I tried to download stopped or disconnected for no apparent reason (friend was online), but hey, that’s why it’s a Beta.

Overall I’m absolutely positive, but I must admit that I expected more of Allpeers than it is at this point. In my opinion there are a couple of things missing (ability to download torrents) so I asked Matthew Gertner, Chief Technology Officer at Allpeers about their future plans.

TorrentFreak: A lot of people were assuming that allpeers could be used as a “regular” BitTorrent client (downloading torrents). Are you planning to integrate this functionality in a later stage?

Matthew: Actually we already support standard torrents. We haven’t added a user interface for this yet because: a) there a still a couple of issues we want to iron out and b) we still want to add features that make it competitive with leading BitTorrent clients (such as the ability to turn on/off individual files in a torrent). We’re 100% focused on getting out the AllPeers public beta and (soon afterwards) the 1.0 version. We’ll finalize our support for standard torrents after we’ve gotten this
squared away.

TorrentFreak: Are you considering releasing an “allpeers lite” extension, without the social stuff (just a client)?

Matthew: We haven’t made a decision about this but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. In any case, we’re planning to open source AllPeers later this year, so I assume someone could do this themselves afterwards.

TorrentFreak: Is there any bandwidth managing going on “under the hood”, so you will have upload speed left to browse properly? Are you planning to integrate a settings/options menu so people van set this, and other options, manually?

Matthew: We don’t do any management of this type at present, but it’s a high priority for us. It won’t be in the first public beta, but the plan is for the 1.0 release to have full support for throttling both upload and download speed.

TorrentFreak: One of the great features of BitTorrent is that it “saves” bandwidth. For example, if A shares a file with B and C, and B will share with C as well if they download at the same time. Is this integrated in the extension?

Matthew: Yes, that’s exactly why we’re using BitTorrent. If I share a large video with my whole family, for example, everyone who has started to download will be available as a source for everyone else.

TorrentFreak: BitTorrent is designed to transfer files between large groups of people at once. Are you planning to integrate “open” and searchable groups in the future (the option for people to create open groups, and a searchable directory within the extension), so people can get the best out of BitTorrent?

Matthew: Absolutely. We have big plans for letting people set up peer-to-peer communities and share files within them. Once again, this won’t be in the 1.0 release but it is something that we are very excited about.

TorrentFreak: What are the selling points of Allpeers, and how does it differ from for example DirectConnect?

Matthew: AllPeers is designed for sharing specific files with specific people in your buddy list. When you share, metadata about all the files is sent to the recipient, so they can immediately see thumbnails, file sizes, etc. without having to search for anything. This approach is inherently ill-suited to sharing huge numbers of, say, MP3s with a bunch of people.
Note also that sharing copyrighted content is not allowed according to our Terms of Service. The bottom line is that people who are expecting AllPeers to be the ultimate darknet tool are going to be disappointed.

On the other hand, people who are looking for a way to share files conveniently and efficiently with their friends, family and colleagues will find it to be a very compelling product. We also understand that there are legitimate reasons why people might want to share lots of
files with lots of people, and we plan to add features specifically targeting this type of use later in the year (as I described earlier).

TorrentFreak: Thanks

Matthew: You’re welcome

Matthew’s answers took away my main concerns and t seems that the future looks bright for this extension. In March Allpeers received significant funding by two venture capital firms that also backed Skype in the early days. The Allpeers Beta program started this April, around the same time they were crowned “Guidewire Group Global Innovator” at the Innovate!Europe event.

You can sign up for the Beta program at Allpeers.com

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

Azureus is currently implementing a “content layer” where commercial downloads will start to appear. Users will be able to search for certain keywords, or browse through the available content by tags.

Azureus is downloaded almost 2million times every month, and it has a strong and dedicated community. This spring they received an award for “most popular open-source software” at the first annual SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards. However, it is unclear how the public will respond to the paid content that will start to appear in Azureus.

A video presentation of the Azureus 3.0 and the new features is available here.

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

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

In an attempt to decrease the bandwidth generated by BitTorrent traffic, ISP’s started to shape and throttle BitTorrent traffic on their networks. By throttling BitTorrent traffic the speed of BitTorrent downloads decrease, and high speed downloads are out of the question.

While other popular clients decided to implement encryption to protect BitTorrent users from being slowed down by their ISP’s. Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol and the developer of the mainline BitTorrent client did not think that encryption was the solution, and found a more ISP friendly alternative.

The mainline BitTorrent client rather uses caching instead of encrypting. The “Cache Discovery Protocol” allows ISP’s to detect the most popular torrents, cache the data, and seed it. ISP’s like it because it’s cheaper to use bandwidth within their network than to use external traffic. So in the near future it could be that you’re downloading your favorite torrents from your ISP’s server instead of some random seed or peer at the other side of the globe.

Ashwin Navin from BitTorrent inc reported to slyck:

“Transparent caches are sophisticated pieces of hardware, they perform deep-packet inspection to detect the frequency of certain files. If a file shows up on the network frequently, the cache stores that file so that its seeded in the network rather than by peers. ISPs appreciate this because their access networks are terribly congested with P2P traffic. Caches are legal and covered explicitly in the DMCA.”

So are these developments good or bad?

Well that’s hard to say at this point. It is unclear if it will increase or decrease speeds, it is unclear how this will affect ratio’s and what the legal consequences are.

BitTorrent 4.20

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

Starting in the next beta series, LimeWire will feature BitTorrent integration and a custom DHT. Keep a look out for what’s next!

Interesting…

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

WizBit started as a I Computer Science (actually Internet Computing, but it’s almost the same) project at Exeter University, and definitely looks like a promising project.

More info on Wizbit

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

V1.0 is expected soon.

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

Other changes:
- GUI Bugfix: chat user list is removed temporarily
- Core Bugfix: fix the bug that the play button doesn’t work after click stop button in task preview window
- Core Bugfix: fix the bug that unable to seek continous when preview avi/rm file

Download Bitcomet

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

Btqueue, another BitTorrent based piece of software won in the clustering category.

Check out the results

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

including:

Encryption bug fix
Faster crash recovery hashing
Reduced the # of windows popping up at once on first run after installation
Fixed startup when config files corrupted
Data transfer from slow peers improved

Changelog
Download

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