One of the novelties in the new uTorrent release was uTP, a new and improved implementation of the BitTorrent protocol which is designed to be network friendly. Critics, however, have labeled the new release as unfair, which has resulted in the client being banned from several private BitTorrent trackers.

The critique was aimed at the new uTP protocol which causes uTorrent to favor its own kind when networking. This means that when connecting to other clients, uTorrent users will give preference to other uTorrent users.

Earlier this week BitTorrent Inc., the company behind uTorrent, open sourced the uTP protocol so other developers can make their clients uTorrent compatible. Although not all developers are equally excited about uTP, Ktorrent has already upgraded its client to support uTP with its new 4.0 release.

“Several KTorrent users asked for it, and it seemed like an interesting feature to add,” KTorrent developer Joris Guisson told TorrentFreak in a comment.

To our knowledge, KTorrent is the first client outside BitTorrent Inc. to implement uTP support. With uTP, KTorrent will be more network aware as it will throttle itself if congestion is detected in the network. In theory, this should eliminate the need for ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic, while KTorrent users should see less interference with other local applications.

Aside from adding uTP support the latest KTorrent release also adds support for magnet links, a feature that was pushed by The Pirate Bay and has now been implemented by all the prominent BitTorrent clients. The full KTorrent changelog can be found at the official website.

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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.

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.

The effectiveness of uTP is still being debated, but some people in the BitTorrent community have noticed another issue. According to some owners of private BitTorrent trackers, uTorrent is no longer playing fair. Since uTorrent users are the only ones using the new protocol, uTorrent favors its own kind over other clients.

This means that when connecting to other clients, uTorrent users will give preference to other uTorrent users, behavior that some have characterized as unfair. As a result, several private BitTorrent trackers have refused to put the newer uTorrent releases on their whitelists, effectively banning the client and forcing their users to stick with the older versions.

Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management admits that the tracker owners have a point, but says that it is very hard to innovate without having to face such technical downsides. “This is part of the challenge of innovation… but hopefully a challenge we’ll overcome,” Morris told TorrentFreak.

“We’re well aware of these discussions and have been very receptive to the feedback we have received. uTP is being constantly tuned and like any advanced technology on the internet there are edge cases where there’s room for improvement,” Morris adds.

BitTorrent Inc. has opened up the specifications of the uTP protocol and hosted a conference in their San Fransisco offices a few weeks ago to discuss uTP in detail with developers of some of the most popular Bittorrent clients. According to Morris, other popular client developers have shown interest in implementing uTP into their own applications.

Widespread support for the new protocol would of course be the easiest way to get rid of the unfairness allegations, but uTorrent’s major competitor Vuze has no plans to support uTP in the short term. On the other hand, Vuze doesn’t believe the unfairness will result in a noticeable disadvantage for its users.

“In terms of speed, we do not buy-in to the ‘threat’ cited by some, claiming that uTP can result in slower downloads for non-uTP clients due to uTP clients favoring each other during the torrent cold start phase,” Olivier Chalouhi, CTO told TorrentFreak.

Vuze is keeping a close eye on how uTP evolves and will consider adding it to their own client as the technology matures. For now Vuze will continue to work on their own congestion solutions and speed improvements. They have already added UDP transfer support, but not as the primary protocol.

“Vuze added support for UDP transport a few years ago, as a fallback for when TCP connection attempts fail. To date, Vuze chose not to implement UDP as a first-class protocol, as we consciously wanted to avoid claims of a Vuze-specific protocol bias, which we do not believe serves the BitTorrent community at large,” Chalouhi said.

Whether uTorrent’s choice to push uTP forward results in any significant disadvantages for users of other clients is still open for debate. BitTorrent Inc. is, however, committed to play fair and will make the necessary adjustments where needed.

Thus far, only a few private trackers have decided to ban uTorrent and there are currently no signs that it will spread out to more.

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

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.

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.