Why/How Is BitComet Faster Then Other Clients?

[ProbablyRaging]

Hi guys, new to the forum and have a few questions about download speeds and BitComet itself.

In the past I have used clients such as uTorrent and Azureus, along with other clients that claim to be the fastest. I have always seen BitComet around and just never bothered trying it as the name did not sound very catchy (don't hate me for that).

Either way, since downloading BitComet and downloading a few files (some I have downloaded previously, just to test the speed) I noticed a massive hike in download speeds. From most other clients I was maxing around 700kB/s and on the odd (very very odd) occasion I would see it rise over 1000kB/s.

With BitComet I am getting an average download speed of 1000kB/s and onwards, sometimes in the high 1000. For the last month I have been trying to download a 20GB file, with over 5000 seeders, but only getting 100kB/s download speed. I tried downloading that file on 3 or 4 other clients but still then same deal.

While I am typing this, I am downloading that exact same file, but this time with BitComet, and instead of only having a 100kB/s download speed, I am sitting steadily on 1500kB/s (might not be fast to some, but it lighting to me).

So I have a three part question:-

1. Why and how does BitComet allow me to download at such higher speeds then other clients?

2. I am an ADSL2+ user, with supposed 20Mbps download (I get 15Mbps on a good day), do download speeds of about 1500kB/s sound good or could I be getting better? If so, how?

and

2. What is your average download speed when downloading 1GB+ files using BitComet?

Note: I have opened ports, and configured settings to be able to download at unlimited speeds. If that helps.

Edited December 20, 2013 by ProbablyRaging (see edit history)

[The UnUsual Suspect]

Hi,

The answers to your questions have been addressed more times than I can count in the years I've been administrating this forum, so rather than spending a few hours with indepth technical info, I'll be brief and you can research each aspect or ask further questions if you want to understand it in more detail.

Bittorrent protocol has strict rules involving how the downloading is achived, to get more, you attract the better peers by giving more. With optimally tuned clients on an identical swarm with the same randomly connected peers, all bittorrent clients will perform equally. With "out of box" settings one client may perform better with a specific type of connections and a different client with another type of connection, but what makes bitcomet different is that we have developed cross-protocol downloading which allows the bitcomet peer to source the data from outside the bittorrent swarm. This not only helps the bitcomet peer, but benefits the entire swarm and in some cases can revive a dead or dying torrent without seeders. Many times an unseeded task will not complete, but if a bitcomet peer is able to complete the download from non-bittorrent sources, it can then become a seeder and revive the dead torrent. This makes the bitcomet peer a valuable asset to the entire community.

When a bitcomet peer has all options enabled on a public torrent the data can be sourced from...

1. Traditional bittorrent peers within the swarm

2. Bittorrent peers from a different swarm with some or all of the same content (I'm not aware of any other client that can do this)

3. Http/Ftp sources. When available bitcomet can download the files from outside the bittorrent network and use the data to construct bittorrent pieces so they can be shared with the swarm

4. eMule sources can be used to download any of the files in a torrent which is a fully automated process.

5. LTseed (Long Term Seed), a protocol developed by and proprietary to bitcomet which enables bitcomet peers to share files previously downloaded. This occurs only when the bandwidth isn't needed for traditional bittorrent downloading and can greatly accelerate the downloads.

The combination of these sources can dramatically increase your performance and in addition bitcomet is also developing server-assisted downloading referred to as VIP acceleration. When this works properly it uses state of the art highspeed commercial servers that run the tasks on your behalf and sends you the completed files via LTseed protocol. Besides increasing the speed, this can also make you anonymous to the swarm. I mentioned "when it works" because it's gotten off to a rocky start and has spent a couple years in beta testing phase but it's slowly developing. When initially released free trials were available to all, which was an epic fail just as it would be if you opened a new fastfood resturant and offered free hamburgers and had lines backed up for miles and not even your paying customers could get a meal, so we had to put strict restrictions on the free trial, at first limited to longstanding members with 80,000 points or more which was gradually reduced to 40,000 and I'm sure it will be further reduced as development continues.Plans start at $5 and you can sign up at vip.bitcomet.com. I'd recommend if you try it that you consider the purchase a donation, as it's definitely not bug free but it has improved vastly. This is a costly system to implement and develop and the fees are designed to keep it self sufficient and we all have high hopes that it will be, but it's had a rough beginning but if you understand how it works and where it can and cannot help you, it can be a good tool to use, but even without VIP BitComet can outperform other clients (as you've witnessed).

Also understand that in order for bitcomet to outperform other clients there must be additional sources for the data available. If there are none, bitcomet will behave exactly like any other bittorrent client that is 100% compliant with the protocol.

None of these advanced features can be used on private torrents due to the restrictions in how peers are gathered, so the enhancements apply only to public torrents.

I suggest you do some reading at our wiki.bitcomet.com website where we've posted a lot of useful information on Long Term seeding, cross protocol and multi protocol downloading and the torrentfreak news agency has done some articles that you may find interesting. There are some links on the main page at bitcomet.com to these articles and reviews and you can read an interesting press release that our forum staff helped prepare here...

http://torrentfreak....ew-BitComet.pdf