Browser Integration during Install

[The UnUsual Suspect]

During some testing done by a private tracker, it's been reported that the browser integration options are difficult to see if you're not looking for them. Unless the users opens the "+" to see the options, they are likely to miss them and end up with them installed.

Could development please look into a way to make the options more obvious please?

Also, one of the testers has a condition where the clipboard integration feature wasn't removed after an uninstallation. I've asked them to report here, or send me the info and I will do so.

Thanks

[Toby3ML]

Hi there, Toby3 here

I have only gotten as far as testing the installation/uninstallation of BitComet.

As shown here I would like to see integration be optional, not automatically included, user ticks it if THEY want it.

As a user I dont much like the popups at all...

How does signing up to the passport etc increase speeds? I realise these things can be "unticked" in BitComet options AFTER installation but I dont feel they should be automatically chosen.

Also dont like the eDragon webpage popping up much either, as its already advertised in the client upon installation.

Now....

When uninstalling I used BitComets own uninstallation ability. It uninstalled easily....a tad too easy.

The program was still running at the time yet it "uninstalled". Heres images showing that it has been uninstalled yet its still there and still running.

After that I had to manually exit out of client by rightclicking on icon and exiting. I then had to go into Program Files and appdata folders to delete BitComet.

Also when BitComet is UNinstalled the add-on remains (understandable I guess but....a pain). As TuuS states, the clipboard int is still working AFTER uninstallation (before deleting folders).

Edited March 26, 2011 by Toby3ML (see edit history)

[The UnUsual Suspect]

Thank you toby3, I'll see this gets attention from development. The browser integration should be expanded, or have ability to disable all with one box if it's not.

I can answer your question about downloading faster with comet-ID, but this applies only to public trackers.

BitComet supports not only bittorrent protocol, but also ed2k (emule) http/ftp, and LTseed protocols. When you have LT-seed enabled, you can connect to all the normal bittorrent peers, plus LT-seed peers, as well as emule and in some cases http/ftp too.

After download is complete, and your seeding goal through bittorrent is met, and your task is stopped, it will be available for LTseed to other peers. this is done only when there is available bandwidth, priority is given first to bittorrent tasks and ed2k. In torrents with a large amount of peers you are likely to get a good bit of bandwidth from LT-seed peers, and on a torrent that isn't seeded at all, presence of LTseed peers can enable you to download the task and in turn seed it to other bittorrent peers. LTseed can even download files from other LTseed peers from different torrents (with the same contents). We refer to this as "cross-protocol" downloading, where LTseed, http/ftp or emule sources can complete a bittorrent task. So far, this is unique to bitcomet and it took quite some time to develop and get all these features stable, but they do indeed work and many users report huge benefits from them.

Also, they are very p2p friendly, as a single bitcomet peer joining a swarm could potentially save a dead or dying torrent.

Keep in mind that none of this can apply to a private tracker, when the private flag is enabled, bitcomet won't allow connections to any other peers, not even other private trackers, unlike other torrent clients that will upload to multiple private trackers and report false stats. As far as I know, BC is the only one to address this problem.

I will see what I can find out about these problems, in the meantime, can you tell me what Windows version your using, and do you have "user account control" enabled?

[Toby3ML]

Since I dont seem to be able to edit my previous post I will dble post, hehe

Just wondering....at the 3 private sites that I staff at I offer my personal help with users becoming connectable via remote access.

Just looking at BitComet options.....I see there is the function where it "Check if port is forwarded correctly automatically". I have unticked that just to test it and then rebooted client. It then showed the grey unknown, so did your nifty rightclick "Check again" and voila (even though I havent opened that port in my 2 x routers, one does have uPnP enabled).

Off to actually test the client now :)

Using Windows 7 and no definately not UAC enabled, lol. I will also test the client via XP and Ubuntu on other machine that triple-OS boots. Not sure what diff OS makes tho?

Edited March 26, 2011 by Toby3ML (see edit history)

[The UnUsual Suspect]

ps. Toby3, there is a setting to control what the "X" (close) button does. I think when newly installed it's set to minimize to systray. I think that should be changed and I'll recommend it. Here is a screenshot showing how to change it.

Thank you for taking the time to help us improve bitcomet

edit: sorry for the text displaying over my screenshot. That was from an error in photoshop and has nothing at all to do with BC.

[The UnUsual Suspect]

The windows version and uac question is because the way windows handles a programs config files. In windows XP, it will save them in your program files folder if uac is off, and %appdata% if it's on. This is something that windows does on its own. On Vista and Seven, it will put them in %virtual store% folder if you have multiple users, so that complicates things more. To simplify things, bitcomet has and advanced option to use %appdata% folder, if this is enabled, it will write files directly there.

As for the port check. bitcomet has always used an "active" test, where it sends a signal telling our server to attempt a remote connection, if sucessful, your light will turn green, if it can connect to our server, but receives no connection, it turns yellow. If it is unable to connect, it says grey (untested).

In recent versions we have added a "passive" test, similar to the one utorrent uses where if your port status is grey or yellow and bitcomet receives a remote connection, it will turn green.

The advantage to the active test is you find your status without having to run a task that has remote peer connections, so the light will turn green imediately. By adding the passive test, it will override the active test if it was unable to connect due to errors on the users lan, our servers, or anywhere inbetween.

I'm not completely sure what you are saying regarding this, but if your port did suddenly become open, it probably is from uPnP. BitComet will attempt to use uPnP to open your port, so if your router uses it and its not blocked by a firewall, then it will open your port for you.

Thanks again for your efforts.

ps. double posting is fine. We have put time limits on the edit function after many users when asked to provide more info were editing it then wondering why we didn't notice. By replying, it bumps the thread up and gets our attention.

[Toby3ML]

Oky doky, thanks luv :) BitComet ended up giving me yellow signal after a few mins so clearly realised it wasnt connectable, hehe. Fixed that and bobs yer uncle. I just merely mentioned it as if we do decide to use BC on site and users have difficulty getting connectable (modem/router/3rd party firewalls) Im just teaching myself how its setup in GUI to test it.

Btw, really like the Comments section in GUI, nifty, hehe

Thanks for the explanation RE: OS differences. I think minimizing BC to systemtray is normal, well uTorrent does it as well when the X is hit so I think its fine to leave it that way. The only detriment came when uninstalling ofc, I didnt even see it was running till after I uninstalled :)

With regard to the expanded list of public torrent sites shown on the left side of the GUI......the reason I think it should be hidden is that private site users may think, eek, public, sod that and uninstall without exploring what effect (if any) it has (with MPAA etc, lol). It may just scare them off using it is what Im saying.

Edited March 26, 2011 by Toby3ML (see edit history)

[The UnUsual Suspect]

I agree about public sites, most are horrible, very tastless ads, fake torrents, malware, viruses etc. I only use demonoid, and sometimes thepiratebay, if I want something I can't find elsewhere. However, the majority of BC users do use them, and BitComet is designed to be user-friendly, so thats why they are there. BitComet used to be a web browser too, you actually would browse the web from within the client. That was a nice feature, but it was based on a very old IE version and at that time IE was very lightweight, but since then the client has had a major core rewrite so that the multiple and cross-protocol downloading could be integrated, so all that stuff was removed. Oh yeah, it used to have chat too, so you could chat with any other bc peers during download. It wasn't used much so it was dropped.

The comment feature is unique to bitcomet. The users can post comments about any torrent to alert users if there are any problems, ect. It is a great feature, but it gets abused a lot. It would be impossible to moderate the comments, so you will see spam and flaming in them, but nothing we can do about it. We have had some really offensive ones removed, but it would take dozens of people working full time to enforce the rules. Imagine a forum that has 2.5million people logged in 24/7 lol.

Oh, one other thing regarding open ports. BitComet used to use "Nat port traversal", or "UDP hole punching", as it's sometimes called. This would allow "some" remote peers to connect even if your behind a router that you cannot control. It was very popular with college students on a university lan, and more recently with cellular broadband users, as they are all firewalled and have to torrent without an open listening port.

Unfortunately it was removed in version 1.03 because it was effecting tcp connection efficiency. If someone needs it, they can use version 1.02. I think that version has a few minor bugs, but nothing to concern a private tracker.

[Toby3ML]

Righty....food for thought....

I downloaded Fringe episode today.....using both BitComet and uTorrent at the same time, from the same private site (not one that I staff on).

Intially BC took a bit to "kick off" e.g 5mins, whereas uTorrent took off in 1st place.

I glanced every now and then at speed and both seems to fluctuate, I would stop and start both but didnt seem to make much of a difference.

Anyhow...after the same time on both clients, seedback ratio on BC is 0.47, ratio on uTorrent is 1.48.

As you can see also the peerlist differs with no identical IP at all between them.

[The UnUsual Suspect]

The peer list will make all the difference. On private trackers your likely to get a lot of high bandwidth peers to feed you download, but peers taking from you are scarce. Also, because both clients are operating on the same IP address, they cannot connect to the same peer, so whoever gets the fast download peers first wins the download race, and whoever gets the most peers asking for your upload will win that race.

The only way to test them so that all is equal is to run the test on a lan where you control all peers.

To get the best performance on either client, you need to have your max upload speed capped at about 80% of your tested upload speed, so there is enough bandwidth for prompt replies to peers wanting to trade with you. If your running two clients at the same time, that makes it much more complicated.

If you want to run a more accurate test, try doing them one at a time, but still remember that the results will be subjective.

I can tell you from my own testing, as well as testing by our development team and independent experts (see the robb topolsky paper), both bitcomet and utorrent will perform equally well in a private tracker environment.

Some users may find that one client or the others default settings work better for their connection, but with all conditions being equal, they both work the same way.

BitComet does have some strong advantages on public tracker, but only if resources outside the bittorrent swarm are present. This is where the emule and LTseed are handy.

Regarding LTseed, without registering for CometID, you can connect to upto 40 LTseed peers, and if you register for CometID, the more you upload and run torrents, the more connections you can receive. This works much like bittorrent protocol, rewarding those who upload the most, but with CometID, your total upload for all torrents increases your rank, where with bittorrent protocol you could be the best uploader in the world for ten years, but when you start a new torrent, your no better off then any other peer.

I have seen cases where users have only been about to get a max of about 100kB/s from bittorrent peers, and shortly after enabling LTseed the speed jumped upto over 1000kB/s. This isn't always the case, but it's not an uncommon experience. Naturally you'd have to be on a public torrent with other bitcomet peers to see this benefit.

The really beautiful thing about LTseed protocol is it doesn't just benefit the bitcomet user, it can benefit the entire swarm, because all data downloaded from them is then uploaded to the bittorrent swarm. This can breath new life into dead torrents, and LTseed will only upload when there are no bittorrent peers available to upload to.

[Lucy26]

Hi Toby3, thank you for your suggestions, they will be forwarded to the development team. :)

[Toby3ML]

argh....I just installed BitComet on my server/seedbox....4 browser pages opened upon installing it :(

[The UnUsual Suspect]

Was it the same page toby3? The installer does open a page to promote a free game thats developed by BitComet. I don't like that either, but it isn't really malicious or anything.

I've told the development team that promoting a game that way has a price. It may get some users to play the game, but it's going to be at a cost of BitComet's reputation. I'll bring this to their attention and see if there is any information they need to figure out why this has happened.

Thanks for the report.

[Lucy26]

Hey Toby3, can you please tell us what Windows version does your seedbox use? Is it 32 or 64bit Windows? And what default web browser did you use? Also, were all the web pages the same, or were they unrelated?

[Toby3ML]

Windows Web Server 2008, 32-bit OS, Firefox browser (3.6)

Pages that opened were 2 x playcomet.com, 1 x Transforce and 1 x eDragon game

[Lucy26]

Thank you Toby3, these information are helpful to us, they will be forwarded to the development team. :)

[Yacuza]

I have been trying to install and use the eMule plugin (1.24) with BitComet (1.32) with no success.  I have uninstalled, booted, and reinstalled (both eMule and BitComet)numerous times.

Is there a remedy or set procedure to cure this problem?  

Tech Specs:

Windows 7 x86 w/SP1

Processor 1.2G

Memory 4G

Drive Space 1.5T

[The UnUsual Suspect]

for us to understand the problem you're going to have to d a better job at explaining it. Saying "no success" is virtually useless as far as describing the problem.