Can anyone give me a detailed review on why should I use torrents or not?

Pros:
1. Centralized network allows for quickly locating seeds.
2. It's really fast
3. Because of the way torrents function, fake shares are at worst uncommon.

Cons:
1. Centralized network is very vulnerable to damage to its structure (human: if a tracker goes down and it's the only one you have for the given torrent... you won't download)
2. Client program searches for seeds only on the tracker list given in the torrent file (which means that if there any seeds are connected to a different, unlisted tracker, your client won't "see" them)
3. Leeches (users who only download and remove the share as soon as they finish) can kill off a torrent quickly (this is an unfortunate consequence of the networks' fast speed)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(ianfreddie07 @ Aug 10 2007, 01:48 PM) [snapback]304105[/snapback]</div>free stuff
movies, games, pr0n

If I need to download something i use 3 progs:
Direct Connect (StrongDC++)
torrent (BitSpirit)
eMule (eMule)

My favourite is torrent - i get what I want and it's quite fast, especially if the downloading stuff is new. If it's old - it's slower, and sometimes it stop around 95-99%, because there are no seeds, only partials, and you can wait and wait and wait some more - then delete the files ...

DC is good for quick search - if I find a really dfast connection (2-6MB/s) I download what is interesting and turn it off (fast people are only from your town/nieghbourhood)

eMule is the slooowest - it sometimes takes days or even weeks to downlad, but there you can EVERYTHING - if you failed to download something - try eMule :P

Torrents or no torrents, the downside of downloading especially exe files, is that you better have a pretty good idea of what the size of that file should be. I would not download say, a 3 minutes mp3 for 250 kb, or Battlefield for 1.5 mb. That only spells trouble. The torrent files you download has info on the total size of the program you're about to download, so it shouldn't be too difficult to spot any trouble before it gets to your hdd. The downside of torrents, as bob-satan just pointed out, is that the number of seeders could be so low or zero, that it will take you forever to download a large file, if you get to complete the download at all. There should be a number both on the torrent client such as Azureus, which tells you how many complete copies there are of the downloading file. The higher, the better and below 1 means there are no complete copies around.The number of seeders will of course vary during the download, but you can get a pretty good idea from the page you get the torrent from if this particular torrent has enough seeders to be worth the effort.

Anyway, just a couple of random thoughts.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(the_fifth_horseman @ Aug 10 2007, 04:12 PM) [snapback]304107[/snapback]</div>actually, azureus client offers decentralised torrents

but not to mislead freddie. the "centre" is only tracker, which 'points' your computer to the torrent. and files itself are stored by all the users who download it. and its up to you to shrare it with others if you like it (or if you are a nice person..but most of "normal" people seed it at least for a while).

so the main difference between direct download (or others direct p2ps) is that in direct downloads, all the files go from one "source" so if the server or user is slow- it goes slowly. while torrent recognises that more users have the same file (its the same torrent after all..) and more users(servers) upload this to you, so if one goes down, nothing happens, many other users still have it.

Should have also put earlier... but what, in your opinion is the BEST torrent handler? I use uTorrent and it's ok so far.

I use uTorrent as well. Nice well working software that is

I heard, from several people and I think some of them know their stuf, that uTorrent is the most lightweight and functional at the same time. I myselft have downloaded only once through torrent in my life so I used Opera itself.

if you are gonna use uTorrent, dont use the newest version! it has something commertial built-in and restricts speed limit
i personaly use azureus, but it requies java

It has nothing to do with the latest version. The speed limit occured to me when the cable modem rented by my cable company died out and they gave me the new model, and I was using an old version. I'm pretty sure the speed limit is server related. They are probably blocking the IP of those major file sharing programs.

Bastards... :angry:

well im pretty sure that my friends torrents went back to the old good speed when he switched to one of the older versions, after the new version gave him this limit. and he didnt change any isps or modems

What's the number of that older version? I'll try it out.

I had no problems with either 1.7.0 or 1.7.1

speed was slow in the newest version(1.7.2), as mentioned by russ :(

EDIT: reason is if there are no peers, there will be no download. :(

uTorrent is very good and small. You can use the latest version, but if you want to stay safe for any reasons, get 1.6.1.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Eagle of Fire @ Aug 17 2007, 04:20 AM) [snapback]305002[/snapback]</div>he said

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(_r.u.s.s. @ Aug 16 2007, 05:24 AM) [snapback]304842[/snapback]</div>I was told this by others as well; however, they cited other reasons... :ph34r:

I was told that the newest works perfectly by myself... Hauling down with 1.2 Mbyte / sec.. no problems.

Please.. if you are to say something is bad and you've heard so, link to the source.
Two 14 yr old duuuuudez speaking on dA MsN is NOT a source to rely on.

Looked in a forum for uTorrent and found no complaints of that worth mentioning that was the softwares fault.

Causes of low speed;
High load on the computer (games running high priority on the core/disc)
Slow harddrive (uTorrent puts alot of stress on the disc)
ADSL connection doing heavy upload (On especially cable-modems, once the upload hits a sertain point, the download plumits. Get NetLimiter)
ISP throteling on Torrent-ports
Few seeders in the swarm (ppl sharing 100% shares)
Few ppl overall in the swarm
You'r downloading the last 10% of the share, as there are fewer sources with the required blocks.
Alot of ppl doing throtteling on the upload, because they are on ADSL.....

You get the picture.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Titan @ Aug 17 2007, 11:15 PM) [snapback]305188[/snapback]</div>So true, I've seen lots of such Global Village legends.

But I don't think you need a separate program for limiting upload, right? I think you can configure that in "Options > Preferences > Connection, Bandwidth Limiting".

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Titan @ Aug 17 2007, 11:15 PM) [snapback]305188[/snapback]</div>actually two 19 years old students of informatics on ICQ but its okay..

Well the downloads don't work without the peers. Also in the latest version, not all the seeds are utilized, which really sucked.

Well, I tell you from my own personnal experience: I used to be able to download (total) up to 80kb/s before they switched to that new cable modem... Now, I have trouble getting to 5kb/s but my maximum download capacity didn't change. For example, if I download a game directly from Abandonia (I tried), I go to the usual 30-40kb/s...

I'll try an older version, just to be sure.

Edit: I tryied an older version, but even tough it does go slightly faster and that at time it can go as fast as 80kb/s, it's not constant and thus change nothing in the whole deal. It really looks like a cutoff, at around 15kb/s it stop and drop back to around 10 and start again. And when I mean it drops back, it stop altogether and restart at 10 (because of the average count).

And, to make this worse... Only one torrent (the last one) seem to be active at any given time. This really suck.

Well, I've also had those fluctuations in speed. It peaks and drops. I dunno why.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Eagle of Fire @ Aug 18 2007, 01:53 AM) [snapback]305209[/snapback]</div>
turn it off, wait a bit then restart the program and it will start loading all 3 or 4 of them at the same time. and much faster for some reason.

also do you have your ports open? i have a 256kB connection here and i get speeds up to 20-27kB/s no problem (depending on how many seeders there are etc.)

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(gregor @ Aug 18 2007, 09:27 AM) [snapback]305220[/snapback]</div>i think he wouldnt get any download if he hadnt a port opened for torrents

Not sure about torrents but at least in eMule you can download even when firewalled, albeit much slower ("low ID"). EMule has a button to test the ports and see if they're open.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Japofran @ Aug 18 2007, 12:27 AM) [snapback]305191[/snapback]</div>So true, I've seen lots of such Global Village legends.

But I don't think you need a separate program for limiting upload, right? I think you can configure that in "Options > Preferences > Connection, Bandwidth Limiting".
[/b][/quote]

The reason for NOT using this, is that some trackers limit your access-list if you've choaked the upload and thereby not participating fully.
A third-party software is usualy not detected however.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(_r.u.s.s. @ Aug 18 2007, 01:13 AM) [snapback]305195[/snapback]</div>actually two 19 years old students of informatics on ICQ but its okay..
[/b][/quote]

See!!!!!!!!!11 That's what i was saying!
14 ort 19.. bah! KiDzz!!!!

(If you didn't get it the first time, i was KIDDING)
The point beeing, you should look for official comments in the official chanels.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Titan @ Aug 18 2007, 01:37 PM) [snapback]305272[/snapback]</div> har har
.. i know, i just didnt find it funny=/
we were talking about personal experience. if it realy is that new version of utorrent limits the speed cause of "some reasons", i dont think it would be on any official pages

For some reason, my downloads just kicked in constant again. I'll stick with the old version to see what happen.

One of my torrent just ended, so maybe having too many torrents open at the same time may give negative results for some reason.

well of course i think. that would mean that you have to spread your up speed in to more, so you would get slower download speed

Yeah, that's what I'd normally say too but it was very obvious yesterday that the global connection was to blame, not the secondary connections to each torrent.

Maybe it was just a coincidence.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(_r.u.s.s. @ Aug 17 2007, 11:53 AM) [snapback]304997[/snapback]</div>Did it have the words "Download limited" down the bottom?
That's if you have set your upload speed to <= 5kB/sec
It limits to around 30kB/sec download IIRC

it might be that it was set on the new version but not on the old?

no, he is a solid uploader