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Software Review: Bit Torrent Clients – Azureus

Written by: StevenHodson on January 9, 2008

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The last stop on our tour of BitTorrent clients is Azureus. This is decidedly the most robust of the three, written in Java, containing features BitLord and µTorrent can only aspire to. If BitLord is the smarmy pre-adolescent, and µTorrent the world-wise teen, then is Azureus the mature adult, outwitting them both with a sly grin? Read on.

Acquisition and Installation

I grabbed the Windows version of Azureus (v3.0) from the home page here. It’s 7.5 megs, which is actually a bit down from previous versions, and a break in a trend of increased size. There are also Linux and OSX flavors to be had. Apparently, it’s available from many different locations across the net, but the developers urge you to limit your downloads to the Azureus and Vuze sites due to spyware infestations. Maybe it’s just so you see their ads instead of someone else’s? My guess would be that they’re trying to avoid having people download an older version of the client that isn’t combined with Vuze, a GUI and “entertainment” suite with short videos, sound bytes, and games. I actually thought I’d downloaded the wrong thing for a couple minutes.

Features and Use

I found Azureus hidden beneath the ‘advanced’ tab. Once selected, the “classic” Azureus interface is revealed, which looks fairly standard. There are a ton of features under the hood, starting with the ‘configuration wizard’ under ‘Tools’ in the menubar. One of the first things it allows you to choose is your level of proficiency, beginner, intermediate, or advanced.

Beginner: Use this mode if all you want to do is manage your torrents.

Intermediate: Use this mode if you want to create your own tracker and host/publish your files.

Advanced: Not for the faint of heart. If you know without looking what “MTU” means, you might have a shot here. Probably.

This customizes the options menu system to hide things that are not needed, and may confuse the user whose experience is low. This is also where you specify your connection type, test your connection (very useful if you have a router or firewall) and set the default storage location for .torrent files. Even on ‘beginner’, the number of options available is quite large. There are the expected options of course, such as download directory selection, manual bandwidth limits, and User Interface controls. However, there is also password protection, visual and audio alerts, integrated IP filter, and an IRC plugin. By default, the plugin connects you to an Azureus help channel on Freenode. I checked in several times over 24 hours, and there was never anyone there except a couple bots. There are likely other help channels available, or perhaps it was an ‘off’ day. The built-in speed test and firewall/NAT test are handy.

azureus

In the Vuze interface, I looked at the videos, (which were largely pointless) and the slew of trial version games like Kane & Lynch and Hitman 2, which are probably “paid offerings”, and the whole premise behind the bundle. The musical offerings weren’t bad, but since they were free, I’m not certain how it’s legal, (though it likely is) since even Metallica is in there, one of the staunchest RIAA-supporting bands around. The thumbnails for available videos when in the Vuze Dashboard view can be a bit racy, and clicking on the wrong one will quickly download an R-rated video. Watch the kids unless you’re comfortable with them watching topless models with fake boobs writhing on the beach. Granted, you have to flip a ’switch’ at the top of the screen to enable “mature content”, but this takes half a second, and you get the ‘good stuff’ without further interference. I’m sure my daughter could have found the ’switch’ quicker than me. They’re like that, kids.

The UI for monitoring torrents is superior to the other clients I’ve reviewed, a quick glance tells me how my files are doing, if anything needs my attention, or if everything is peachy, and I have my choice of interfaces to monitor.

If you’re very brave, or clever, or just experienced, Azureus features a built-in tracker. Yes, you can create and run your own tracker, useful if you wish to share a package with a select group, such as a commercial enterprise. I did not set up a tracker, but I have participated in an Azureus-hosted tracker from the client side, and it works quite well, but reportedly does require experience and patience to set up.

Azureus has a large number of plugins available here. There are plugins that automatically adjust bandwidth allocation, upload limiters, a peer finder for use within a Local Area Network(LAN), and an RSS reader for importing torrents from RSS-enabled trackers.

System Behavior and Uninstall

Forget “memory leaks”. The left rear tire on my wife’s Miata has a “leak”. The relief valve on my air compressor has a “leak”. Azureus has a memory TORRENT. Ha! Torrent! I made a funny! On startup, it was gobbling 86,000K of precious memory; within 5 minutes, despite the fact that the client was just sitting there, no loaded torrents, nothing seeding, one tab open under ‘advanced’, with me staring at it, it had incrementally risen to nearly 100,000K. It didn’t stop there, either. By the time I downloaded 4 items and left them to seed, when I came back from eating my lunch usage had risen well over 110,000K, and still growing. After being left for 3 hours it expanded to 180,000K+, dwarfed only by Firefox.

Azureus Vuze, as it’s now called, uninstalled cleanly and quickly from ‘Add/Remove Programs’ in the Windows Control Panel. So I thought!

UPDATE: I didn’t look closely, now did I? Well after uninstalling the client, and sitting at my machine reading my mail, when I realized that the hard drive was active. I checked my network; there was a low level of activity, both in and out. I pulled up the task manager, and checked processes. Lo and behold! Azureus.EXE was still sitting in memory, holding 120,000K of memory! I have no idea what it was doing, but it was still there. I had to delete the exe manually from the \program files\Azureus\ folder. May not have happened if I’d fully shut down the client before uninstalling, but this shouldn’t be needed.

vuze

Conclusion

In many ways, Azureus Vuze is far superior to BitLord and µTorrent, however, the combining with Vuze wasn’t a good move. Vuze calls itself the “future of online entertainment”, but I’ve already got a media player, and can’t help but feel like this isn’t anything new. The inclusion of a tracker is awesome, but only if you’re skilled enough to operate it effectively and safely.

In most ways, I’d take µTorrent. Vuze had me irritated from the start, and never really stopped. Rather than make the experience content-rich and entertaining, they’ve made it bloated, complicated and frustrating. It’s like strapping an old tour bus to your Ferrari.

My recommendation, if you don’t like µTorrent, use BitLord or go to Oldversion.com and grab an older copy of Azureus that isn’t mashed-up with Vuze.

Pros: Integrated tracker, plugins available, many useful features, Great GUI (in advanced tab), variable skill level settings.

Cons: Resource hog, Vuze UI unnecessary and irritating, mature content built-in.

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Category: Software

Software Review: BitTorrent Clients -UTorrent

Written by: StevenHodson on January 6, 2008

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utorrent

Now that our hosting issues have been resolved, now we can get on with life as usual. Namely, the promised BitTorrent client review.

Once I figured out the ASCII code for a “µ”, I was ready to start the review on µTorrent. (it’s 230, for those of you interested in such things). µTorrent bills itself on it’s size (small) resource-friendliness, and configurability.

Acquisition and Installation

I downloaded all 225k of version 1.7.5 from the µTorrent website. 1.7.5 is compatible with all Windows versions from 95 through Vista, as well as Wine. The installer runs smoothly, but is quite odd, in my opinion. In order to stay small, the exe runs independent of a vast library of DLL’s and such. The directory it creates in \program files\ contains only the aforementioned exe. It also creates a data folder in \documents and Settings\. There is no program group created in the start menu, but it does give you the options of a desktop icon, quicklaunch icon, and a shortcut at the top of the ‘all programs’ menu. .torrent files are automatically associated with the program.

Features and Use

On first run, you’re presented with the Speed Guide. In this settings box, you are prompted to select your connection type so the program can set upload speeds as well as maximum connections. You can also play with the numerous connection types to tweak the settings until the upload cap is to your liking to allow for other bandwidth-using apps. There is also an integrated speed test (from dslreports.com) and a applet to test router port forwarding, as well as a checkbox to enable encryption if you’re at the mercy of one of the ISP’s involved in “traffic shaping” by throttling P2P clients.

µTorrent has no built-in search function, but simply typing “torrents” into Google will instantly (okay, in 0.09 seconds) yield 38 million hits allowing you to find a torrent for virtually anything. Including copyrighted material. Watch yourselves:) Alternately, you can simply paste the URL of the torrent file into µtorrent and the program does the rest. Making up for the lack of a search function, there’s something better: µTorrent supports RSS feeds. Many .torrent sites are now offering torrents via RSS, and µTorrent takes full advantage of this.

Once a torrent is loaded, the features available are numerous. If you’re not into tweaking, all default options are perfectly adequate. However, each torrent can have it’s own upload/download caps, be set to start right off, or just load up and wait for your click. You also can view all files contained in the package, and uncheck portions you don’t want to download, the specify a program to automatically open the file once download is complete.

In preferences, you can give µTorrent a schedule for limiting bandwidth usage depending on the time of day, specify folders for downloaded files, adjust how queued files are handled, proxy settings, globally enforced bandwidth limits, several display settings, and change languages, of wish over 50 are available. Azerbaijani, anyone?

Torrent file creation is simple, add your file or directory, paste in the tracker (if you have one ready) click the button. As I said in the previous review, each torrent site has different rules for making your torrent available to the public.

Overall, µTorrent seems slick and well-built, The bandwidth usage graph is interesting, as is the plethora of info available on the peers you’re getting from and sending to. Country of origin, client, IP, and more. One interesting tidbit, at least 70%, perhaps more, of the peers I connected to while downloading a 3.3 gig ISO of Fedora were using µtorrent or Azureus, the subject of our next review.

System Friendliness and Uninstallation

CPU usage was…present. I watched it for a few minutes, and it hovered from 0 to 1% most of the time, but spiked as high as 7% at times, but only briefly. I had only 3 torrents active at any one time. This could become an issue if you’re using the client hard. Memory usage at the highest was around 25,000K, much less than BitLord.

There is no uninstaller. If you’re done with the client, you must manually remove the shortcuts, folder in \program files\, as well as the data folder under \documents and settings\. Benefit of this is that there are no registry entries or huge mystery files inhabiting \windows\system\.

Pros: Nice interface, RSS support, lots of features

Cons: No uninstaller, no integrated search function. Possible CPU-hog

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Category: Software

Software Review: BitTorrent Clients – A Primer

Written by: StevenHodson on December 31, 2007

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image For those of you who haven’t heard of the BitTorrent protocol, I’ll take you through a brief introduction. BitTorrent and P2P networks in general spend a lot of time in the news, being demonized, usually, by both the media and venerable organizations such as the RIAA and MPAA. It is claimed, generally, that the P2P networks are responsible for the lion’s share of the illegal trafficking of music, software and movies.

Like any tool, P2P nets like BitTorrent can be misused. This does not mean that the tool is to blame, but the person who wields the tool. There are many legitimate uses for BitTorrent, as it is a fabulous method for sharing large files of any kind, particularly to a vast number of people. With other methods of file distribution, the file is placed in one location, and everyone who wants it connects to grab a copy. This puts a huge strain on the resources of the computer hosting the file, as a separate connection must be initiated for each requester. Bandwidth is usually the bottleneck, resulting in refused connections, and very slow transfer speeds, if not collapse of the network hosting the file if it is extremely popular and proper safeguards haven’t been implemented.

According to Wiki:

To share a file or group of files, a peer first creates a “torrent.” This small file contains metadata about the files to be shared and about the tracker, the computer that coordinates the file distribution. Peers that want to download the file first obtain a torrent file for it, and connect to the specified tracker, which tells them from which other peers to download the pieces of the file.

The torrent file can generally be found on BT websites or newsgroups among other places. The key is that once a few people who have acquired the torrent from a website download pieces of the file, the strain begins to be relieved off the originator. Newcomers to the party actually get the file from the people who downloaded it, bypassing the original computer entirely. This way, the person sharing the file need only upload it a couple times in many cases, and subsequent transfers are handled by an ever-expanding network of participants. The benefits are increased speeds, faster dissemination of the file, and the originator doesn’t even have to stay online for the file to continue to be distributed.

A BitTorrent client is any program that implements the BitTorrent protocol. Each client is capable of preparing, requesting, and transmitting any type of computer file over a network, using the protocol. A peer is any computer running an instance of a client.

BitTorrent is just one type of the P2P (peer-to-peer) file transfer method. In FTP, HTTP, and virtually any other file transfer method, the file is hosted in one spot, as explained above, and everyone grabs from there. This is the primary reason that the copyright enforcement groups hate P2P so much. If there is a website serving copies of Kanye West’s latest insult to music, chances are good that it can be shut down. However, with P2P, there is no central location, just a bunch of people sharing files. However, some sites distributing the torrents HAVE been shut down when it was proven that the offered info was for copyrighted data.

Now, I don’t want you to get the idea that Winextra or myself condone trading copyrighted media, I just wanted everyone to understand BitTorrent, how it works, and why it is popular (and hated in some circles). There are millions of files being traded every day that are perfectly legal, in fact there are even commercial uses for BitTorrent coming to light.

Now that you’ve got a basic handle on how BT works, watch for the reviews of BitTorrent clients. I’ll be reviewing 3 or 4 of them, and allow you to choose the best for yourself.

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Category: Software