Old time BitComet user.

[Anarki]

Well in fact I love BitComet. I have heard all the rumours about it and everything but I always stood by it. I know quite much about torrents and their clients in general so its not hard to tell most accusations are false.

But I stopped at version 0.70 thanks to the (at the time) unstable rewrite of BitComet. And I have used 0.70 ever since. I mean i did try a newer version once (maybe 1.00) and I was dissapointed becouse none of the "new features" worked as they were supposed to and all around it wasnt as high quality as i had expected.

But i followed the forum progress, but at some point the forum get heavily lost into some bizarre layout and I stopped following even.

Until yesterday when I figured id check back here, and i mean jesus christ this client seems to have came back guns blazing? Forums are back? A faq for all features exists? with images even?? And stuff works? I couldnt believe my eyes. Immedietly I got the urge to get a more modern, cutting edge, client but I am hesistant to install it for 3 reasons:

1. Third party software. Back in the days, after the rewrite, BitComet would install a third party advertising program who scanned the applications installed and notified of updates. Is this gone now? I am not talking of being able to disable its usage - I dont want it installed at all.

2. Does the new features really work now? Last time i checked, around 1.00, screenshots of videos just redirected to an advertising page, long time seeds had problems with corruption (and wouldnt ban the users sending corrupted data) http download would sometimes leave the donloaded files corrupted. etc. Are theese problems fixed?

3. Does the "report to tracker" stuff work theese days? It sending STOP command when torrent is stopped and COMPLETE when only the whole torrent is complete not just selected? And it sends to correct up/down data to tracker? And that it identfy not with a browser anymore on first try? (the hybrid mode)

And thanks for upholding the support for this client after all the hating! I thought (rightfully) that we lost you to the east forever! :)

thanks for any repsonse :)

Edited November 2, 2009 by Anarki (see edit history)

[greywizard]

Well, first of all welcome back. :)

Actually, the most frequently updated support pages, nowadays, can be found on the Wiki pages. Nonetheless the forum staff tries its best to mirror the most important changes and additions on both sites. Still, the forum guides and FAQ hold some complementary info, to the Wiki. But the most recent updates in the program are found on Wiki first, usually.

1. Third party software. Back in the days, after the rewrite, BitComet would install a third party advertising program who scanned the applications installed and notified of updates. Is this gone now? I am not talking of being able to disable its usage - I dont want it installed at all.

That feature is still present in BitComet, though I don't think it's a third party software anymore. It seems integrated in BitComet's code. If clicked upon it merely checks for updates of the applications installed and opens a browser page of the apphit.com site which hosts all the Comet team's applications, too. I'm guessing it a sort of partnership. Indeed, it can be disabled in the program options. If that bothers you, it means you'll have to stick with the old versions. I don't mind it. In fact I've used it a couple of times, since it showed me some update versions for Skype and something else which I don't remember now.

2. Does the new features really work now? Last time i checked, around 1.00, screenshots of videos just redirected to an advertising page, long time seeds had problems with corruption (and wouldnt ban the users sending corrupted data) http download would sometimes leave the donloaded files corrupted. etc. Are theese problems fixed?

Last time I've checked the snapshots feature was working. I myself, barely use it, but I was testing it out of curiosity. LTseeding seems to work very well (at least for me :P) since in some cases I was getting as much as 140kB extra speed off LT seeds. Of course, many times you get nothing. But, hey, you loose nothing, isn't it? The HTTP issue seems to have been fixed in v.1.05 as you can see in the changelog (if that's what you were referring to). The peers sending corrupted pieces isue was addressed again and reportedly fixed in v.1.11.

3. Does the "report to tracker" stuff work theese days? It sending STOP command when torrent is stopped and COMPLETE when only the whole torrent is complete not just selected? And it sends to correct up/down data to tracker? And that it identfy not with a browser anymore on first try? (the hybrid mode)

The EVENT_COMPLETE issue was revised, indeed, in v.1.02 to send the message only when all pieces of a torrent are downloaded; it was re-addressed in v.1.15, too. As for the STOP command at the stop of the task is implemented since v.0.49. I'm not sure to which issue you refer when mentioning the "correct up/down to tracker". Other than allegations which lacked back up info I'm not aware of anything. If you do, elaborate please. But anyway what I can tell you is that many private trackers clearly allow the latest versions of BitComet along with all the other major BT clients. I'm using it myself on a couple of them with no problem at all. We have to thank for that to some elders of this forum too, who lobbied several tracker admins for BC, explaining them all the changes and improvements BC suffered in the last time.

You can see/set the user agent BC is sending to tracker in the Advanced options page (since v.1.03).

And thanks for upholding the support for this client after all the hating! I thought (rightfully) that we lost you to the east forever! :)

Although the dev team from China is doing all the hard work, most of the forum staff is not part of the dev team. Some of them are registered and visit certain sections of the forum, occasionally. Especially the Bug Reports section and the Admin section.

But we have sophia who is the usual liaison with the team and who passes both ways all the info, questions and answers and also, initially, updates the Wiki pages with all the info about the new features. There is The_Unusual_Suspect, too, who keeps more or less in touch with the team admin on the forum.

There you go, you're pretty much up to speed now.

For more info on changes in BC feel free to check the changelog.

[Anarki]

Thank you for a very informative answer greywizard! :o I feel I have to apologize for my sloppy language in my initial post now tho :)

Actually, the most frequently updated support pages, nowadays, can be found on the Wiki pages. Nonetheless the forum staff tries its best to mirror the most important changes and additions on both sites. Still, the forum guides and FAQ hold some complementary info, to the Wiki. But the most recent updates in the program are found on Wiki first, usually.

I knew this. That is why i said I couldnt believe my eyes. When i left here, one could never ever get to know what a feature meant or anything like that. A "wiki" did not exist. Perhaps it was different for the chinese users. (it was well divided back then, east and west, and that is what i meant that things changed for the better here as the last time the west was left cold)

That feature is still present in BitComet, though I don't think it's a third party software anymore. It seems integrated in BitComet's code. If clicked upon it merely checks for updates of the applications installed and opens a browser page of the apphit.com site which hosts all the Comet team's applications, too. I'm guessing it a sort of partnership. Indeed, it can be disabled in the program options. If that bothers you, it means you'll have to stick with the old versions. I don't mind it. In fact I've used it a couple of times, since it showed me some update versions for Skype and something else which I don't remember now.

I see. Well to be honest i do prefer it being part of the code rather than being a seperate application at least, so this can be looked over then for me. Thanks.

Last time I've checked the snapshots feature was working. I myself, barely use it, but I was testing it out of curiosity. LTseeding seems to work very well (at least for me :P) since in some cases I was getting as much as 140kB extra speed off LT seeds. Of course, many times you get nothing. But, hey, you loose nothing, isn't it? The HTTP issue seems to have been fixed in v.1.05 as you can see in the changelog (if that's what you were referring to). The peers sending corrupted pieces isue was addressed again and reportedly fixed in v.1.11.

Great information. Yes the LT seed is a very innovate feature, which could have helped me many times in the past. And what i meant with the HTTP transfer is just that when I used ~1.00, and tried it, it often corrupted the download, saying for example for an .exe that "the file is not a win32 application" error. And then when redownloaded, error did not occur. I read the changelog regarding 1.05 and I dont think such a thing is mentioned there. But I will experiment with this myself.

The EVENT_COMPLETE issue was revised, indeed, in v.1.02 to send the message only when all pieces of a torrent are downloaded; it was re-addressed in v.1.15, too. As for the STOP command at the stop of the task is implemented since v.0.49. I'm not sure to which issue you refer when mentioning the "correct up/down to tracker". Other than allegations which lacked back up info I'm not aware of anything. If you do, elaborate please. But anyway what I can tell you is that many private trackers clearly allow the latest versions of BitComet along with all the other major BT clients. I'm using it myself on a couple of them with no problem at all. We have to thank for that to some elders of this forum too, who lobbied several tracker admins for BC, explaining them all the changes and improvements BC suffered in the last time.

What I meant with the STOP command is the fact that when you litterally "stop" the torrent (I dont mean when torrent completes) in many BitComet versions (even 0.70 which I use currently) it does not send the STOP command. This was an old issue that never seemed to go away but I will experiment with this myself (It doesnt matter much...Im used to manually connect the tracker before removing the torrent by now anyway hehe)

And what I meant with "correct up/down" (excuse the language will you please? :) ) was that some very few versions of earlier BitComet had problem with misreporting the stats to trackers. I got banned for it once very long ago. After the rewrite of BitComet, I was just asking to make sure it didnt arise again or something :) I am also a member of some serious private trackers, and that is why. But since you say it is no problem for you then I take your word for it :)

Although the dev team from China is doing all the hard work, most of the forum staff is not part of the dev team. Some of them are registered and visit certain sections of the forum, occasionally. Especially the Bug Reports section and the Admin section.

But we have sophia who is the usual liaison with the team and who passes both ways all the info, questions and answers and also, initially, updates the Wiki pages with all the info about the new features. There is The_Unusual_Suspect, too, who keeps more or less in touch with the team admin on the forum.

Yes. From a quick look around here, things here have improved massively since my last visit.

I have a few other questions too if I may?

First, I did read the wiki page for LT seeding here: http://wiki.bitcomet.com/Long-Time_Seeding

But it doesnt really clarify the feature completely. For example:

It is supposed to seed even if I stop/remove the torrent yes? (which I am fine with, I have a 100mbit line to spare) Then what if I complete the torrent, remove it from bitcomet, and then physicly move the file from its location to a completely different one? Optimally it should stop the seeding then. But does it? How does it work? It wont prevent me from moving the file at least right? And a somewhat unrealistic thought strikes me; it wont try continiue to seed the file from its new location somehow right?

Second, I noticed you can sign up for something, which you can tie the client too. Which promises better speed. What does this do? I tried look around for a description, excuse me if i missed it >.<

[edit]Ignore this, I found it in the wiki ^^ I must be blind...

Thirdly, the emule plugin. I understand its use. I have used emule before. it just seems, how do I put it? Odd? ..to use in paralell with a torrent program. Can the 2 applications at same time transfer seamlessly into the same file?? it seems impossible. Is the plugin really made that good so that it works smoothly? and most importantly, will it continiue to share the file I downloaded? And also, does it somehow hurt my normal emule use? (I just fire it up occasionally for rare files). Are there any details of theese things? Again I am sorry if I missed it somehow...

hope theese things can be answered :) sorry if am being persistant hehe

Edited November 3, 2009 by Anarki (see edit history)

[greywizard]

I read the changelog regarding 1.05 and I dont think such a thing is mentioned there.

I was meaning this part of v.1.05 changelog: "Core Bugfix: if the HTTP task stopped because the file is locked by other program, data integrity can not be guaranteed when resumed downloading." But I'm not sure if this was the fix addressing the issues you described. Anyway, there are quite a few little additions and bugfixes in almost every version which don't seem to make it to the changelog.

What I meant with the STOP command is the fact that when you litterally "stop" the torrent (I dont mean when torrent completes) in many BitComet versions (even 0.70 which I use currently) it does not send the STOP command. This was an old issue that never seemed to go away but I will experiment with this myself...

Yes, I understood. It was reported as fixed in v.0.49 "Core Bugfix: send event=stopped to tracker when program exited (Thanks to ulion)". If there still were issues after that I don't know; maybe. But they seem to be gone now.

It is supposed to seed even if I stop/remove the torrent yes? (which I am fine with, I have a 100mbit line to spare) Then what if I complete the torrent, remove it from bitcomet, and then physicly move the file from its location to a completely different one? Optimally it should stop the seeding then. But does it? How does it work? It wont prevent me from moving the file at least right? And a somewhat unrealistic thought strikes me; it wont try continiue to seed the file from its new location somehow right?

Indeed, LT-seeding works by seeding even if your task is stopped. But only as long as you don't delete the task. It uses a special BitComet server/tracker and apparently a somewhat different negotiation protocol (I don't know very much on the matter since we don't have any documentation on that).

Anyway, it is proprietary to BitComet team and hence, at present time, LT-seeding works only among BC clients. It uses some percentage of the global upload speed you set in Options, dynamically releasing the bandwidth when it doesn't have to whom to upload. Furthermore, the algorithm is designed so that when you download, it prioritizes (just like the seeding activity, too) the downloading task(s) (i.e. the uploading for LT-seeding and seeding tasks will tend to stay to a very minimum).

In the former versions you could only set a fixed maximum amount for it, which was dynamically used or released in favor of the global upload speed. In the latest versions it was also introduced and "Auto" setting for it, which seems to work even better (at least for me it does, so, I never bother with it anymore).

Can the 2 applications at same time transfer seamlessly into the same file?? it seems impossible. Is the plugin really made that good so that it works smoothly? and most importantly, will it continiue to share the file I downloaded? And also, does it somehow hurt my normal emule use? (I just fire it up occasionally for rare files). Are there any details of theese things?

Actually, that's the magic. It does work together with BC. When you add a task it searches it's network and if found, it will add it in the bitcomet_imported tab in eMule. And they will actually transfer in the same file. I usually don't get very high speeds for it (mostly a max of 34-55kB) but on some special old torrents it could actually help you finish a download without seeds. It did that for me a few times and I can tell you, at that particular point I was extremely happy. As for uploading, I'm sure that it will continue to upload for the current session. I'm not sure about subsequent sessions, though.

I don't know how will it work in conjunction with another ED2K client, since I've never had another one, but in the end it is an ED2K client. Why would you run 2 at a time?

You can always bring to front the plugin (just go to Options-->ED Task page and click Show eMule plugin) and it will run just like the standalone thing, with all the bells and whistles you want.

As an endnote, none of the LT-seeding, ED2K, DHT, PEX will work with private torrents, since they are automatically disabled for those ones.

[Anarki]

Alright that won me over. On to new, modern times shall we? :D Thanks for many clarifications greywizard!

[greywizard]

Happy hunting m8. ;)