As it turns out, the operator of 1337x was forced to abandon the popular TCP-based tracker and trade it in for a more efficient one using the UDP protocol instead. This means that for millions of torrents the main trackers stopped working.

“Sadly we got turned away from 3 data centers in the last 2 months due to the massive amounts of bandwidth we were consuming. Sologigabit even called it a ‘broadcast-storm’ due to the massive number of concurrent connecting IP-addresses,” 1337x’s admin told TorrentFreak.

Apparently the huge amount of connections were crippling the various networks, and there was no cost-efficient alternative available through which the old trackers could continue.

“They put us on our own dedicated switch but could not handle our traffic effectively. So it was necessary for us to abandon the old TCP in favor of a new UDP based one,” the 1337x admin told us.

The decision to change to a UDP-only tracker means that older torrents will only work if users have DHT enabled. All new torrents downloaded from the 1337x website, however, are automatically updated with the new tracker address.

1337x is not the only tracker to have gone UDP only, OpenBitTorrent has also dropped TCP support to save resources. This means that two of the three major BitTorrent trackers no longer support TCP connections.

The admin of OpenBitTorrent told TorrentFreak that TCP trackers are killing central hosted services, and he suggests that BitTorrent clients should actively direct users to UDP in order to save resources.

“I would be great if BitTorrent clients could make a list of popular trackers and direct all queries to the UDP version. That would lower the demand in resources but still make the tracker dual protocol,” he added.

PublicBitTorrent is currently the largest tracker that still supports TCP, and it will continue to do so in the future.

The main reason to continue supporting TCP is to give torrent site owners an easy option to list seeder and leecher statistics. “A lot of torrent sites are only capable of getting the stats via http, so we keep both open which is quite expensive,” the PublicBitTorrent admin told TorrentFreak.

It means that they use five times more bandwidth than the other trackers, but PublicBitTorrent believes they offer a vital service to torrent site owners.

“We have no plans on going UDP only, simply because we want to make sure all the torrent sites can easily access the stats,” TorrentFreak was told.

For users, the switch to UDP is not going to have much of an effect. That is, if they make sure to use a recent version of a BitTorrent client that supports UDP tracker connections. According to the 1337x admin, this is not the case for everyone.

“I’m finding many people are still using the older clients that do not support UDP. There is really no advantage to staying with the older clients so all BitTorrent users should be encouraged to update their clients,” we were told.

BitTorrent users who want to check if their BitTorrent client supports UDP can take a look at this list. Also, it never hurts to have DHT enabled just in case one or more BitTorrent trackers go offline, something that still happens on a regular basis.

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

With uTP, uTorrent has become more ‘network aware’ as it will throttle itself if congestion is detected in the network. The uTorrent teams hopes this improvement will eliminate the need for ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic, while its users should see less interference with other local applications and possibly faster downloads.

As advertised, uTP does indeed sound like a much-improved version of BitTorrent, but the reality is more nuanced. Over the past month there have been a lot of complaints from users who have seen their speeds decrease dramatically due to the implementation of the new protocol and not all developers are that exited either.

Increased overhead compared to the older protocol is cited as one of the reasons for the speed issues and some ‘fixes’ have been suggested on the uTorrent forums. There is a great upgrade guide submitted by community member Rafi which tries to solve these issues, but in the end uTorrent should address these concerns themselves. By default, uTP should perform equally well or better than its predecessor.

One of the steps to improve the implementation of uTP has been taken this week as BitTorrent Inc. decided to open source the code. By doing so they are inviting other BitTorrent developers to help improve uTP and to implement it into other BitTorrent clients to increase compatibility.

“uTP continues to evolve, and open sourcing the code will be essential in its continued development and adoption,” BitTorrent spokesperson Jenna Broughton told TorrentFreak in a comment. In response to the critique about slower speeds, Broughton adds that “BitTorrent has always believed that being transparent with users about technology and product developments is key.”

“uTP is a smart approach to managing network congestion, and we are encouraged by the early results we have seen from independent tests as well as our own, which indicate that uTP does not degrade download speeds and may indeed be faster,” Broughton adds, without going into detail on the speed issues that have been reported by many users in the forums.

One of the reasons uTP has been developed is to make traffic shaping and BitTorrent throttling by ISPs obsolete. Unfortunately there has not been any feedback from major ISPs on these issues, so the magnitude of uTP’s effect on their networks remain unknown.

“We have not received any formal feedback from ISPs. Informally, several technical insiders have confirmed a noticeable shift in traffic from TCP to uTP, and they seem generally positive about the deployment thus far. Universally, they commend the spirit of cooperation in helping manage congestion on the network,” Broughton told us.

Although it’s widely appreciated that uTP is now Open Source, developers of other clients are not all that eager to implement it yet. Vuze, one of uTorrent’s major competitors, told TorrentFreak that they will keep an eye on how it evolves before they make any decisions. Others have pointed out that uTP still has a long way to go before it becomes mainstream.

That said, there are bound to be issues when one is trying to innovate. There are still a lot of issues to be addressed with uTP, the most important being good speeds for everyone by default. The future will tell whether uTP is really the improvement BitTorrent Inc. claims it to be.

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

In early 2007, when network neutrality was still a non-issue for most people, BitTorrent inventor Bram Cohen told us that ISPs should find a way to cope with BitTorrent.

“ISPs have to invest in making their networks better and faster rather than stifling applications which consumers use and love,” he said, while encouraging users to switch to non throttling ISPs if possible, or complain to their ISP’s customer services.

A lot of things have changed in the years that followed. Comcast started to prevent its users from seeding content on BitTorrent, and many other ISPs took similar actions to throttle BitTorrent traffic. As a direct result, network neutrality was placed on the political agenda in many countries. It also inspired BitTorrent Inc. to look for solutions that would eliminate the need for throttling entirely, solving the problem at its root.

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

With uTP, uTorrent (and the Mainline client) will become network aware by throttling itself if congestion in the network is detected. This will have a huge impact on ISP networks according to Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management. “If uTP is successful it should result in a multi-billion dollar windfall in terms of savings for ISPs,” Morris told TorrentFreak

This means that the new uTorrent will eliminate the need for ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic in their networks. Of course, uTorrent users will also be affected by the new protocol. When needed, uTorrent will decrease the upload or download speed to avoid congestion.

According to Morris it’s mainly the upload speed that will be affected. “The throttling that matters most is actually not so much the download but rather the upload – as bandwidth is normally much lower UP than DOWN, the up-link will almost always get congested before the down-link does,” he explained.

“uTP measures the time a packet takes to get sent from peer A to peer B, so in theory uTP will detect congestion anywhere on that path, although in practice the congestion most often happens somewhere on the first-mile uplink connection.”

So does this mean that the new uTorrent will result in slower download times? Not necessarily. Since there is less congestion, uTorrent users will experience no slowdowns in web-browsing, and ideally less congestion and a more efficient use of the network may result in faster download speeds. uTP is currently being tested in uTorrent v2.0 beta and thus far none of the testers have reported any significant problems.

“There are already a couple of hundred thousand people using our v2.0 beta client, and things seem to be progressing very nicely. Our v2.0 client will initiate outgoing uTP connections by default whenever it can. Previous versions of our clients will accept incoming uTP connections – they just won’t initiate them,” Morris said.

“We’re excited that this creates a better experience for millions of consumers, and it also potentially has a massive impact on ISPs – greatly reducing (even eliminating) any justification to manage or shape BitTorrent traffic and allowing ISP networks to handle more BitTorrent traffic, without resulting congestion forcing capital network upgrades ahead of schedule or the ‘need’ to invest in DPI or other traffic shaping gear.”

It is hard to tell if uTP really is BitTorrent’s savior (some highly doubt it), but if it lives up to the expectations it will be beneficial to both users and ISPs. The specs for uTP will eventually be open so other clients will have the opportunity to implement it too. However, since uTorrent and the Mainline client together are used by two thirds of all BitTorrent users, the effects should be immediately noticeable to both those users and ISPs.

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