topbanner_forum
  *

avatar image

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?

Login with username, password and session length
  • Thursday March 28, 2024, 1:37 pm
  • Proudly celebrating 15+ years online.
  • Donate now to become a lifetime supporting member of the site and get a non-expiring license key for all of our programs.
  • donate

Last post Author Topic: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows  (Read 32598 times)

Darwin

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 6,984
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #25 on: October 25, 2009, 09:35 PM »
I just use one of the Opera torrent widgets. I'm not on my own computer at the moment, so can't post a link to the one I use, but later today will check and post it here. At any rate, it's been great! I tried using whatever Vuze (formerly Azeurus), but didn't like it.

This is the Opera widget I've been using: Torrent Power Search.

nosh

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2007
  • **
  • Posts: 1,441
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #26 on: October 26, 2009, 12:56 AM »
+1 for utorrent. (Forgive me, tµxman!)
I run it in portable mode.

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #27 on: October 26, 2009, 03:08 AM »
µTorrent is rather bloated, compared to other clients.
That's the worst nonsense I've heard in a while.

µTorrent has a bunch of features, yes, but they're features that a lot of people find useful (and thus not feature bloat), while the executable is still tiny (a lot smaller than halite, iirc - and thus not exe bloat either).

It's µ, not u. And did you compare it to Halite? Much more stuff in it. "Bloated".
Additionally, µTorrent is known for unfair behavior...
Didn't read through all of that, so dunno if any conclusion was reached. But perhaps it's not "favoring other µt clients" but rather people who have set their clients to only accept protocol-encrypted clients?

Plus, the installer places the program in the uTorrent Folder so I guess I am right too ;-)
These guys are not even able to spell their own software's name. You see?
Sure they are, but unicode characters aren't always the smartest thing to put in file/folder names.

RE: µtorrent cheating: I remember reading a bunch of complaints that it manipulates something to make it get stuff faster than other clients. I don't remember the details, that's why I through it out for comment. Maybe it doesn't do that anymore. I'm not sure if µtorrent was the one.
That was BitComet (and other clients), doing nasty stuff like spamming the tracker announce... µTorrent never did anything like this, afaik.

I have a linux server running rTorrent for most of my needs, but if I need to grab something fast, it's µTorrent on Windows. Works well, has the options I need, and is able to handle 20mbit downstream without disk thrashing.
- carpe noctem

Tuxman

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 2,466
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #28 on: October 26, 2009, 08:13 AM »
while the executable is still tiny (a lot smaller than halite, iirc - and thus not exe bloat either).
UPX-packed, I presume? So it will be unpacked on runtime -> large overhead.

Didn't read through all of that, so dunno if any conclusion was reached.
Yep, it was: µTorrent systematically leeches non-µTorrent clients.

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #29 on: October 26, 2009, 08:37 AM »
while the executable is still tiny (a lot smaller than halite, iirc - and thus not exe bloat either).
UPX-packed, I presume? So it will be unpacked on runtime -> large overhead.
I know about exe compression overhead, but it makes perfect sense for µTorrent - it's single-instance, and the .exe is downloaded directly (ie, no zip compression around it) so exe compression is just fine.

When de-upx'ed, µTorrent 1.8.2 (haven't bothered upgrading to the latest-and-greatest) weighs in at 577kb. Halite is ~5.4meg for the main executable, and does it support HTTPS trackers yet? You might want to apologize for calling µTorrent bloated.

(Note that I'm not criticizing halite, I respect Eóin quite a lot, and find that people often obsess about executable file size where it doesn't matter much - but I'm not the one who started this silliness.)

Didn't read through all of that, so dunno if any conclusion was reached.
Yep, it was: µTorrent systematically leeches non-µTorrent clients.
Proof, please? There's nothing of that in the post you linked to earlier, just speculation. If µTorrent really did "favor it's brethren", I probably wouldn't be going 2MB/s with rTorrent in a swarm consisting mostly of (leeching) µTorrent clients :-\ :-\ :-\

There's a lot of eyes on the µTorrent executable because it's such a popular client - both white-, grey- and blackhats. I haven't been following closely, but I'm pretty sure I would've heard if anybody caught it doing nefarious things.
- carpe noctem
« Last Edit: October 26, 2009, 08:39 AM by f0dder »

Tuxman

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 2,466
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #30 on: October 26, 2009, 08:47 AM »
You might want to apologize for calling µTorrent bloated.
No.  :P

However, the choice of a P2P client for a certain network is mostly a matter of personal favors. Mine is different. Is that, at least, OK for everyone?

 8)

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #31 on: October 26, 2009, 09:09 AM »
However, the choice of a P2P client for a certain network is mostly a matter of personal favors. Mine is different. Is that, at least, OK for everyone?
Sure is; calling other clients bad names and throwing accusation around for no good reason isn't.
- carpe noctem

Innuendo

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 2,266
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #32 on: October 26, 2009, 11:03 AM »
Sure is; calling other clients bad names and throwing accusation around for no good reason isn't.

Agreed...a lot of people have thrown around disparaging comments regarding µTorrent & usually these comments can almost always be traced back to people who are publishing a competing client. µTorrent's competitors are jealous of what it can do in such a small footprint & sour grapes is usually the order of the day. Even Bram Whatshishead, inventor of the BitTorrent protocol, was critical of µTorrent....until he bought the rights to it and now Bram Whatshishead proclaims from the highest rooftops how good µTorrent is.

A lot of people are critical of µTorrent as it performs just as well as any other client in a much smaller footprint than most of them. Lots of implied behavior, guesses, and wild-assed guesses as to what might be happening always come up in discussions about this client, but proof is always in short supply.

Running a BitTorrent client on your computer is handy if you are going to be torrenting stuff only once in a great while, but if you plan on torrenting for any major lengths of time you should look into running it on a low-power device like a NAS or a router allowing you to free up your computer for other things, including the ability to turn it off when you leave your desk without interrupting your torrents.

(Disclaimer: What follows is editorial content and does not in any way, shape, or form reflect on my opinion of the OP and for what purposes innocent or nefarious s/he may or may not being using a BitTorrent client.)

I always find it amusing when the subject of BitTorrent clients comes up how quickly it is mentioned that the person is using said program to download Linux ISOs. How many Linux ISOs does one need? Evidently a crap-load of 'em as the client requirements are always for something small, efficient, and fast so the most throughput can be gained with the least amount of system resources used implying this client will be used quite a bit....to download as many Linux ISOs as possible, I guess.  ;D

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #33 on: October 26, 2009, 11:43 AM »
Funny thing is that you almost always get abysmal speeds when getting linux ISOs via torrents, whereas the various university http/ftp mirrors can easily be abused for 2MB/s downloading. The opensores community should really embrace the torrent technology and set up clients on their mirrors :)
- carpe noctem

Kamel

  • Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 138
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #34 on: October 26, 2009, 02:52 PM »
I find that utorrent not only lacks some features I love, but it also has much less respect for the connection settings I set, in some conditions causing poor internet performance, and even crashing routers despite extremely limiting connection settings (100 connections global max).

µTorrent also did that on my router but it's not just the number of connections that is the problem - it's also how fast they're made.

My router was resetting every few hours using µTorrent no matter what connection limit I used until I changed two Advanced values - since then, not one µTorrent related router reset.

bt.connect_speed = 8
net.max_halfopen = 4

All of which is mentioned in the TroubleShooting section here.

I see, I was unaware of these settings. That was the problem, the amount of half open connections utorrent used. I still prefer deluge though, for many other reasons. One of them being the half open connection limit is very easily settable from the interface.
I'm the guy you yell at when your DSL goes down...

40hz

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2007
  • **
  • Posts: 11,857
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #35 on: October 26, 2009, 03:29 PM »
The opensores community

What was that you were saying earlier about calling names and throwing accusation around for no good reason? ;D ;)


Tuxman

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 2,466
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #36 on: October 26, 2009, 03:31 PM »
There is no "open source community".

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #37 on: October 26, 2009, 03:50 PM »
The opensores community

What was that you were saying earlier about calling names and throwing accusation around for no good reason? ;D ;)
Whoops, that was a slip - didn't actually intend to write that, even if I'm not always superhappypositive about the opensoresurce (or, rather, GPL + zealots) mentality :)

There is no "open source community".
Call it what you want. I could be a bit more precise and say "the network of people running mirrors for the various linux distros", but whatever.
- carpe noctem

Innuendo

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 2,266
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #38 on: October 27, 2009, 11:50 AM »
I see, I was unaware of these settings. That was the problem, the amount of half open connections utorrent used. I still prefer deluge though, for many other reasons. One of them being the half open connection limit is very easily settable from the interface.

µTorrent and other P2P programs make most routers cry. In the last year or so it's been getting better, but anyone who plans on using P2P programs extensively needs to do a lot of research on routers or they will be sorry. A lot of routers are programmed to keep track of 512-1,024 connections and this includes half-open connections. Unfortunately, some P2P programs come with default settings that expect to use 2,000 connections and sometimes 3,000 connections or more. This behavior, of course, makes those routers crash. Hard.

TucknDar

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 1,133
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #39 on: October 27, 2009, 12:20 PM »
I'm no tech-savvy person, and I download torrents and my router seems happy enough. It's a Linksys router with the Tomato firmware, by the way.

f0dder

  • Charter Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • Posts: 9,153
  • [Well, THAT escalated quickly!]
    • View Profile
    • f0dder's place
    • Read more about this member.
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #40 on: October 27, 2009, 12:31 PM »
I'm no tech-savvy person, and I download torrents and my router seems happy enough. It's a Linksys router with the Tomato firmware, by the way.
Running Tomato and not being tech-savvy? I sense a bit of contradiction in that sentence ;)
- carpe noctem

Innuendo

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 2,266
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #41 on: October 27, 2009, 12:38 PM »
Running Tomato and not being tech-savvy? I sense a bit of contradiction in that sentence ;)

Laugh...you beat me to it, f0dder!

TucknDar, running any third-party firmware will relieve you of 99% of any limitations your router may have had. If you had stuck with the stock firmware you most likely would not be having such great luck with torrents.

40hz

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2007
  • **
  • Posts: 11,857
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #42 on: October 27, 2009, 06:05 PM »
I'm no tech-savvy person, and I download torrents and my router seems happy enough. It's a Linksys router with the Tomato firmware, by the way.
Running Tomato and not being tech-savvy? I sense a bit of contradiction in that sentence ;)

Laugh...you beat me to it, f0dder!

 ;D ;D ;D Spot on!

(Especially considering Tomato :-*  is probably the best of breed when it comes to replacement firmware for consumer routers.)


Innuendo

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 2,266
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #43 on: October 27, 2009, 11:15 PM »
(Especially considering Tomato :-*  is probably the best of breed when it comes to replacement firmware for consumer routers.)

Tomato is very good, but it cannot match the number of routers that DD-WRT supports. I'd love to try Tomato (or OpenWRT or some of the others), but my router is only supported by DD-WRT.

That's okay, I guess...DD-WRT gives me access to more features than I'll ever use & is much more responsive than the stock firmware.

40hz

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2007
  • **
  • Posts: 11,857
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #44 on: October 28, 2009, 01:26 PM »
Tomato is very good, but it cannot match the number of routers that DD-WRT supports. I'd love to try Tomato (or OpenWRT or some of the others), but my router is only supported by DD-WRT.

That's okay, I guess...DD-WRT gives me access to more features than I'll ever use & is much more responsive than the stock firmware.

Don't get me wrong. DD-WRT is a fine choice too. I've used both.

But from my experience (and what I've read) it basically comes down to stability vs features. Tomato is the more stable product. DD-WRT has more built-in functionality.

I don't know if anybody else had this experience, but I found Tomato to be significantly more stable than DD-WRT on Linksys hardware. For some strange reason, DD-WRT has a habit of "going off into limbo" on some Linksys routers. Once that happens, they invariably need a 'bounce' (i.e. hard power cycle) to get them back up because you can no longer access the web interface to do a soft reboot.

I've also had occasions where DD-WRT would repeatedly drop a PPoE/DSL connection on certain WRT-54G routers no matter how much I adjusted various settings to prevent it from happening. Installing Tomato on those same routers fixed the problem permanently without needing to tweak anything.

 Just my 2¢ 8)



« Last Edit: October 28, 2009, 01:31 PM by 40hz »

exjoburger

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2008
  • **
  • Posts: 43
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #45 on: October 28, 2009, 02:01 PM »
It might not be exactly what you're looking for, but I use Opera's built-in torrent download handling.

Kamel

  • Honorary Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 138
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #46 on: October 28, 2009, 11:33 PM »
I see, I was unaware of these settings. That was the problem, the amount of half open connections utorrent used. I still prefer deluge though, for many other reasons. One of them being the half open connection limit is very easily settable from the interface.

µTorrent and other P2P programs make most routers cry. In the last year or so it's been getting better, but anyone who plans on using P2P programs extensively needs to do a lot of research on routers or they will be sorry. A lot of routers are programmed to keep track of 512-1,024 connections and this includes half-open connections. Unfortunately, some P2P programs come with default settings that expect to use 2,000 connections and sometimes 3,000 connections or more. This behavior, of course, makes those routers crash. Hard.

This is exactly why this needs to be a configuration option, and it needs to be easily accessable (atleast make it inside an advanced menu if afraid of scaring newbs).

I understand all of these things, believe me, I'm no newb when it comes to any of this. You do have to understand, however, that my router was running DD-WRT in repeater mode, and was repeating a wireless network from my car, strategically parked somewhere between me and an open access point. In situations such as this, it is understandable that you can't exactly torrent things. If you do need to use a torrent (some places force it now, such as world of warcraft updates [since, obviously, they could not afford the bandwidth it would cost to patch all of their clients :huh:], and various "open sores" projects), the default settings murder your router and internet connection. That doesn't really make much sense to me.

But from my experience (and what I've read) it basically comes down to stability vs features. Tomato is the more stable product. DD-WRT has more built-in functionality.

I completely disagree, actually. DD-WRT could not be more stable when used in more or less default settings. It's only when you begin using its advanced or less well implemented features that problems arise. My DD-WRT router ran for months solid, with heavy usage (including torrents etc) never a hitch. As soon as I changed it to repeater mode, all that changed, very quickly. [huge note, i use DD-WRT micro on my current router]
I'm the guy you yell at when your DSL goes down...
« Last Edit: October 28, 2009, 11:37 PM by Kamel »

Innuendo

  • Charter Member
  • Joined in 2005
  • ***
  • default avatar
  • Posts: 2,266
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #47 on: October 29, 2009, 12:51 PM »
[quote author=Kamel link=topic=20392.msg182700#msg182700 date=1256790801
This is exactly why this needs to be a configuration option, and it needs to be easily accessable (atleast make it inside an advanced menu if afraid of scaring newbs).[/quote]

It's not as bad as it used to be. A lot of P2P programs are setting more sane defaults in recent versions, but the only way to get those when you've been using a program for a lot of months (or years) is to wipe your config & re-configure for scratch letting the set-up wizard inject those new safe settings into your new configuration. Otherwise you have to take your fate into your own hands & tweak by hand.

Curt

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2006
  • **
  • Posts: 7,566
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #48 on: October 29, 2009, 05:32 PM »
New, Beta, for Firefox on Windows - Wyzo: http://www.fireaddons.com/

fire.gifwanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows

I almost never use bit-torrents, so I have not tried this one either.

Ehtyar

  • Supporting Member
  • Joined in 2007
  • **
  • Posts: 1,237
    • View Profile
    • Donate to Member
Re: wanted: simple, stable bittorrent client for windows
« Reply #49 on: October 29, 2009, 05:57 PM »
Do we know what's in the compiled code in those addons? I'm always a little suspicious of addons that can't do what they need to with XUL and/or XPCOM.

Ehtyar.