GSBot

You probably all know what BitTorrent is: it's the technology that powers almost every peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing tool currently in existence. Whether for nefarious, dubious downloads, or for grabbing the latest distribution of Ubuntu, BitTorrent comes to our swift rescue on its mighty steed of share-and-share-alike virtuosity.

What you probably didn't know is that BitTorrent Inc., the company created by the technology's inventor Bram Cohen, spends most of its time extolling the virtues of its tech and campaigning all over the world for the relaxing of P2P restrictions by ISPs. The thing is, while BitTorrent really, really rocks for its users, it tends to clog up networks really quickly. It also costs the ISP -- such as Verizon or Comcast -- a lot more than 'normal' Internet usage.

But it's this disparity between what the ISPs consider to be 'normal' Internet usage and what we the users consider 'normal' that has driven the development of 'BitTorrent 2.0' or uTP. (uTorrent Protocol? I'm not sure.) BitTorrent Inc. firmly believes that P2P is part of our every-day Internet lives. It is our right to download and distribute files via BitTorrent.

And if ISPs won't let us, insisting on limitations and traffic-shaping the bandwidth that we use, then they're going to develop a new protocol that meets them at least half way. uTP now automatically limits its own bandwidth use when it detects congestion on the network -- uTP limits itself so that the ISP doesn't have to.

Genius, pure, simple genius -- if it works. It's already being tested by thousands of users of the new version of uTorrent 2.0 -- which you should probably go and download! (Direct download link is available on that page.)

[via TorrentFreak]New version of BitTorrent heralds a new age of uncongested file sharing originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 01 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.







Sponsored Topics: BitTorrent - File sharing - Bram Cohen - Comcast - Internet service provider