Comparison of BitTorrent Clients - APR 2013

The following is a general comparison of computer programs designed for peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol. The BitTorrent protocol coordinates segmented file transfer among peers.

Bram Cohen, author of the BitTorrent protocol, made the first BitTorrent software application, which he also called BitTorrent. He published the application in July 2001.

Many BitTorrent programs are free and open-source software; others are adware or shareware. Some download managers (such as Xunlei and GetRight) are BitTorrent-ready. Opera, a web browser, can also transfer files via BitTorrent. A small number of BitTorrent programs—such as BitDownload, BitGrabber, BitRoll, GetTorrent, Torrent101, TorrentQ, and TorrentSoftware—are actually Trojan horses that attempt to infect the host with malware.

It's worth noting that the client term here is somewhat a misnomer since Bittorrent has a peer-to-peer architecture. It however does differentiate peer software from trackers and companion web sites that do play "server" roles.

Applications

Features II

^ Clients that have been seen in the real world to actually work with IPv6, see IPv6 BitTorrent Clients

^ a b Announcements to the tracker are made via IPv6 if possible, but the client doesn't listen on the respective port.

^ Qdbus interface

^ Automatically configure port forwarding (requires Router with UPnP support)

^ Many clients claim to support this, but just UPnP calls for opening a TCP port is not effective and disabled by factory default in most new hardware. "UDP NAT Traversal" is the proper working solution, supported by just a few.

^ DHT permits use of trackerless torrents (with supporting clients) to resume normal torrents when their tracker is down. However, some trackers that register their users for keeping tabs on fair usage (such as a ratio of bytes downloaded to uploaded) may not reliably measure and update usage for users employing DHT.

^ a b c Tracker included with Linux binaries and with source, but not with Windows binary.

^ a b Exchanging with BT 6 and µTorrent clients (and now MooPolice).

^ It's UDP based, an experimental feature and only supported by other Azureus based clients.

^ a b c Has its own DHT, a mainline-DHT compatible implementation is available as plugin.

^ µTorrent's DHT implementation is the same as Mainline and BitComet's, but unfortunately this is incompatible with Azureus's implementation.

^ It's not a DHT network, but Shareaza uses Gnutella2 to find other Shareaza clients downloading the same torrent. Mainline DHT support is available as a separate download.

^ Since Shareaza v2.5.5.1 r9064.

^ Exchanges with µTorrent and Azureus peers.

^ Since version 2.5.0.2. It's UDP based, an experimental feature and only supported by other Azureus clients.

^ Since version 2.5.0.2. It's UDP based, an experimental feature and only supported by other Azureus clients.

^ Reduces disk usage, file fragmentation (in case it is not preallocated) and latencies via larger written blocks and cached data for hash checking finished pieces.

^ Recently implemented (unofficial) web seeding feature, see HTTP-Based Seeding Specification

^ a b Provides a Java-based and a simple HTML/JS based WebUI.

^ Opera has a feed aggregator that displays feeds like emails.

^ Since Shareaza v2.4.0.2 r7924.

^ Shareaza also uses G2 to transmit download metadata, such as BitTorrent trackers to other G2 clients.

^ Maximum active torrent number depends on respective user settings and is limited to 31.

Vulnerabilities

This comparison of unpatched publicly known vulnerabilities in latest stable version clients is based on vulnerabilities reports by SecurityFocus and Secunia. See computer security for more details about the importance of unpatched known flaws.
Original article available at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparis...