Overview of Mac BitTorrent clients

[Magnus]

BitTorrent, or just torrent for short, is a technology that allows for distributed file sharing, where any number of computers take part in the distrubtion of digital files. According to WikiPedia, "BitTorrent is designed to distribute large amounts of data widely without incurring the corresponding consumption in costly server and bandwidth resources."

How does it work?

You know if you download a file from a web site and the download for some reason is disrupted you most likely have to start all over again. With torrent you don't download the actual file from a web site, you download what's usually called a torrent file. A torrent file is sort of a small control-file that contains information about the original file or files, their size, names, etc. as well as what tracker controls the torrent file and the original file. A tracker is a server somewhere on the internet that keeps track of who has any parts of the original files for a number of torrent files.

So you download a torrent file from a server. The torrent file is usually just some kilobytes big. You open that torrent file with your torrent client software which then connects to the tracker server for that particular torrent file and if pieces of the original files are available from other client-computer it starts downloading.

The structure of torrent means that the more people who take part in any given torrent file sharing, the faster it's going to be for everyone to download it. It's usually recommended that once you have downloaded the complete original files you keep your torrent application running with the torrent open so others can keep downloading from you. That's called "seeding" as is critical for torrents to keep being shared between users.

Regrettably BitTorrent has got a bad name because it's used a lot in the illegal distribution of content such as software, music, and movies. It's easy to find pretty much whatever you may be looking for and get it through torrent technology. That said there is a lot of legitimate content as well and what we used to test the software was a torrent distribution of Ubuntu Linux.

The description above may be too simplified, but I hope you get some understanding of what makes torrent technology different compared to most other ways of distributing digital files.

Torrent clients

First, this is not meant to be an exhaustive test of these applications. I just want to give you a quick overview of what is available and a few points to consider for each application. Please add your own views and suggestions in the forum.

The original BitTorrent Client has been steadily developed and some people think it's the best client around, possibly because it's the original one. I've never found it very useful and although I've tried it from time to time I've quickly dumped it for something else.

One application that stands out from the rest is Acquisition because you have to pay for it, but also because of some nice features. It's an integrated application which does torrent as well as Gnutella and it integrates with iTunes, which may be a blessing for some users. It's not expensive, only $18, and it does come with some things they others don't. If we look at Acquisition as a whole, it's probably a nice application with a lot of features, but if we focus on the torrent part it comes up short compared to the other apps, and they are free.

BitPump was a simple thing to take a look at because it doesn't even start. All it does is say the demo has expired even though it's a newly downloaded 1.0 version that has never been installed on my computer before. It may be a nice client or not, I don't know.

TomatoTorrent is built on BitTorrent 4.2 and although it's small and pretty fast, it doesn't seem to have any features that would lead me to recommend it. Try it if you have some time, but if you're new to torrents, TomatoTorrent is probably not the place to start.

Transmission, which happens to be my personal favorite, is an incredibly small and fast torrent client. It has few features and settings, but it's small and easy to use. Although I don't have any firm numbers to back this claim up, it seems to be that Transmission downloads files faster than the other clients, which is obviously a good thing. For some Transmission is probably too simple, but I think it would be a great choice for most users.

Bits On Wheels is an interesting client. I've not used it much but it seems to give you all kinds of information and statistics about your torrents. In fact it's so much that it probably turns away many beginners, I would suspect. For those interested in all kinds of details about their torrents, Bits On Wheels seems like something worth checking out.

Then we have Azureus which in some ways is the king of torrent clients, at least in terms of functionality, is also an incredibly extensive piece of software, with a lot of settings and functions. Even though there's a setup wizard and you can set it to beginner, Azureus takes a long time to master. That complexity can probably turn some users away. It's also written in Java, which makes it cross-platform, but also slower than other clients in my experience. Azureus works well and has some really good features but unless you need those features, I'm not sure I would recommend it.

And finally I'd like to mention that Opera 9 has a torrent client built in to it. If you already use Opera as your main browser and keep it running all the time it's perhaps worth looking at. If you're happy with the browser you have, there's little reason to go with Opera just to get the torrent client, pick one of the other ones instead.

So what's the recommendation? Picking a torrent client is a very personal choice so it's hard to say. Generally I would recommend Transmission if you want something small, simple, and fast, and Azureus as you get more advanced and need more functions and features. Acquisition is a very nice piece of software, integrating with iTunes for example, but you pay $18 for the pleasure and if all you want to do is download some torrent stuff, then I'm not sure it's worth it.

[Clouchi]

Whatever your choice is (I still can't decide) make sure to properly configure your router for best results. You can visit this site http://www.portforward.com/routers.htm for details. Enjoy.

[dandantheitman]

Nice review of the current bit torrent clients for mac.

On my linux / BSD boxes I use azureus, this is because it was the first client I ever used and because of its feature set and fine grain control of torrents.

On my mac I run the original bit torrent client, not quite sure why I have not installed Az on it, but I don't really use bit torrent on my mac. Everytime I have had to use bit torrent on my mac then it has been to download some Linux / BSD ISOs and usually it is because I am stuck somewhere and need to install a linux / BSD box that needs to do a specific thing, and I don't have the time to acquire corperate software to do the job.

daN

[Magnus]

Good point Clouchi! Thanks for that.

Dan, I like Azureus and it's powerful. There are so many settings. I must say I find myself using Transmission more and more on Mac because it's so simple. That's also the drawback obviously. Azureus does distributed tracking which Transmission doesn't as far as I know, and that can mean the difference between getting something to download or not in some cases.

[Adamatus]

i have been having firewall and connection problems with azureus...
i used tthe port forwarding link in the sorum to set up my router.. speedstream 6520..
but the instrustions given on teh site werent coincding with the ones i was getting..
this is the router i got from etisalat recently....

any help?

[Magnus]

i have been having firewall and connection problems with azureus...
i used tthe port forwarding link in the sorum to set up my router.. speedstream 6520..
but the instrustions given on teh site werent coincding with the ones i was getting..
this is the router i got from etisalat recently....

any help?

I'm not sure I understand you fully, but would something like this work? Did you get any documentation with the Speedstream? If so, does it explain how to do port forwarding?

[snow7]

Like many Al Shamil Cable modem users in the UAE, i use a motorola surfboard SB4200 cable modem. Unfortuantely, I cant see any instructions for port forwarding for this modem. Any tips?

[Magnus]

Unless the modem is a router, which I don't think the Surboard is, but I may be wrong, there's no need for any port forwarding. It's only in a router, or comined modem/router, you would need to port forward.

[snow7]

alright fair enough, although I always thought this cable modem could be a router if a switch is added. Anyway, im the only one using this connection so i guess ur right, and i should be ok.

I only asked about this issue coz uTorrent in my BootCamp partition pointed out to me that I may require port forwarding, altho I do get decent speeds.