HDBits Willing To Unban BitComet?

[staindrocks]

I just recently became a member of the HDBits Private Tracker Community, only to find out that they have a blanket ban on all releases of BitComet. I know, I could just download Utorrent and use that client for their tracker, but all I've ever used is BitComet and that is what I'm used to. I really don't want to have to learn how to use a new client all over again, and on top of that, why should people have to have any more than 1 client on their computer. Since I'm far from being an expert on BitComet, other clients, computer programming/code, etc..., I need some help from some BitComet fans who are! I asked them on their forum why ALL BitComet releases were banned, and this is the answer I got:

Just checked, 70% of the users of this site use utorrent..they find it good, so give it a go! :)

As far as I know all the bitcomets are banned, i just did a blanket ban of the useragent it uses (and bitlord and most of bitspirit..which are just copies), which i don't think they've changed. If they've fixed all the problems there were, I have no objection to unbanning it. Need some bitcomet fans to tell us what's what.

I believe him when he says that 70% use utorrent on THAT site, but what would that number be if BitComet were not banned. But back to the point, he says he's willing to unban BitComet if they've "fixed all the problems there were"? I don't even know what specific "problems" he's referring to, but I'm sure there are a few of you that know all about these things. All I know is the fact that many other private torrent sites ban the earlier releases of BitComet, but not the more current ones. That lead me to believe that "problems" were fixed enough on newer releases as to make them "legal" on these private sites. So could someone please help give me some ammo to take back to this site Admin.? I figure it's worth a shot, and it would help all BitComet users as well as all the torrent community, regardless of the client they choose!

[Soraiya]

Dear staindrocks,

If you wish you can forward this message to your site administrator (This is what I've typed):

I'm no official Spokesperson here for our Client. But what most Private Torrent Site Administrators should be aware of is that, we have done the most to rectify the DHT Issue, and from versions 0.63 onwards, the DHT issue no longer poses as a threat to Private Torrent communitites.

Torrent Administrators should also be aware of the fact that Cheating within Private Communities can be done with any client, not only BitComet. Since I do not want your Private Community to have users who love to cheat their stats, I won't state the "ways" users can cheat within such communities.

Although we were one of the first clients to implement DHT Technology, and perhaps one of the first to allow the DHT to go out of control, we have fine-tuned this technology.

[staindrocks]

Thanks for your help. I'll forward this writing to the site Admin. and see what he has to say.

[Dark_Shroud]

Tell him to unban version 0.70. It also has the fix for the super-seed issue. 0.63 is still a little loose with the ease of DHT exploits, 0.64 fixed those. But 0.70 is what he should look at. :)

[staindrocks]

What "useragent" does BitComet use, as stated in, "As far as I know all the bitcomets are banned, i just did a blanket ban of the useragent it uses which i don't think they've changed."

[kluelos]

The useragent is, of course, "BitComet". There are some clients out there that can lie about what they are.

As far as the ban, one version of BC, several versions ago, implemented the "private" flag in such a way that it could be gotten around. Nobody can say that it was incorrect, because the implementation had not been defined yet, and still has not been canonically defined, except by usage and custom over time. The whole thing was fixed in the next version. Again, this was several versions ago. He who does not know this, has not been paying any attention to it.

What that meant was that people who weren't members of a particular site could still download their stolen goods from other members. The one set of thieves doesn't like it when another set of thieves steals from them, hence the bans. It was fixed, but the fairy-tales persisted, and still do to this day. This client cheats. That one is full of spyware. DHT harms your ratio. Ad infinitum. About every client.

The rumors and the nonsense persist, and snowball until they're something "everybody" knows, (except for anybody who's bothered to actually find out).

Generally, when a tracker bans a client these days, it's out of ignorance, rumor, hearsay, and just unsubstantiated crap indicating people's lack of understanding about how bittorrent works. There's just an unbelievable amount of this, and there's usually nothing at all at the bottom of it, but nobody bothered to do the digging to find out. To the point now, that when a site bans a client, they're presumed to be semiliterate idiots until proven innocent.

I'm very aware that not everyone shares this reaction. But my feeling is, "good riddance". None of these sites has ever had anything I couldn't get elsewhere, from smarter site ops. (And for the most part, a pathetic little selection containing nothing I would want in the first place.) And I am so very TIRED of dealing with uninformed crap by people who ought to know better. Besides, my cousin's friend's sister got an STD from using Azureus.

[staindrocks]

So i posted what Soraiya wrote on their forums, and got no response from an Admin. yet, but i did get responses from the Utorrent nazi members of the site. I'm getting the sense that it's very much a pro-Utorrent site, starting from the top. Here's some of the responses:

1. Who cares, µTorrent is a better client anyways...

2. Yeah, its prolly better and all that, but µTorrent owns, so why bother using something else?

3. well, i hate the app, not because of the cheating, but cause of the following:

http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Super_Seeding wrote:

Comment: BitComet interferes with Super Seeding?

It looks like BitComet doesn't play nice. BitComet clients disconnect and reconnect as soon as they have a piece downloaded from the Azureus superseed. Thus, Azureus never gets a chance to determine whether the client is a big uploader. To make matters worse, for some reason Azureus will upload to the "new" peers before uploading to known big uploaders. It appears to me this has a pretty bad effect on the effectiveness of superseeding.

I get much better performance if I regularly kick and ban all BitComets manually.

4. it's like Windows - once a mess, always a mess

The only post that sounds half intelligent is #3. Is this true? The rest are just what you're speaking of, kluelos! Just biased people who don't even know why they're biased!

[Valerio]

Kluelos the useragent for bitcomet is "BitTorrent/3.4.2". At least, in every version of bitcomet i've seen.

Love the phrase utorrent nazi :P

I used to use bitcomet until it got banned from most places in .59. I liked bitcomet but was forced, like many others to switch client (to utorrent). At first i thought it was reasonable, it downloaded stuff..and had a few features. I wasn't particularly impressed but had little choice (i hate azureus). More recently however it has become a very good client. The disk cache works properly, there are plenty of sorting options and of course the rss downloader <3. There's no way I would ever go back to bitcomet unless it had a rss downloader (which i don't think it does?).

Back to business:

I am aware that the private flag issue has been resolved, however if the superseeding one hasn't then I don't think bitcomet will be unbanned.

We need superseeding to work because of the large filesizes on hdbits.

I shall await a response from someone who knows more than me about bitcomet.

[The UnUsual Suspect]

Utorrent is a fine client also, and there is no "downside" to using more then one client (not at same time)

However, as soraiya has stated, the bit comet versions that had issue with private trackers are history.

I believe this was limited to only version .59 and .60, but banning anything older then .63 is acceptable.

Suspect

[Valerio]

If you'd even read what i had said you'd see that I know the private flag issue has been resolved for quite a few versions.

My concern is bitcomets techniques to get around superseeding. If it still does that i don't want it on hdbits.

[Dark_Shroud]

Tell him to unban version 0.70. It also has the fix for the super-seed issue. 0.63 is still a little loose with the ease of DHT exploits, 0.64 fixed those. But 0.70 is what he should look at. :)

Please read all the posts in the thread. ;)

[staindrocks]

So i told them that the SuperSeed issue had been fixed in 0.70, and they said they want to see the SuperSeed fix confirmed. I don't have the knowledge myself to know how to do this, so any help?

This is the actual post in response to my post:

Want to see that confirmed

Is it

GUI Improved: remove task pause, resume operation

or

Core Improved: improved file piece request algorithm, increase the launch speed of online video play

BTW, its from 0.71

[kluelos]

You can't, really, since it was never broken in the first place.

Azureus is as wretchedly documented as most other clients, but this aspect is worse than most, and begins to depart from making sense.

So, first, large filesizes. This has to do with what? A mistaken believe that so-called super-seeding will distribute them faster? Based on what? It wasn't designed to do that, and the guy who invented it doesn't think it will do that, and it will if anything be slower than normal seeding. So where does filesize come into it at all?

BitComet not "playing nice" - hmm, let's see, Azureus invents a behaviour out of whole cloth, and other clients neither know about it nor cooperate with it. And I'll add µtorrent to that list. But since they don't cooperate with this unknown, newly-invented behaviour, they're "broken"? That isn't the way the process works. If Azureus wants to evangalize this behaviour, then they need first to define it. Yeah, they would actually have to document something, so that's right out.

But let's look at the one complaint we do have. Azureus hands out a piece, the BitComet client disconnects before Azureus can determine whether the client is a big uploader.

Ok, now think about that for a minute. Why would disconnection matter? Pieces aren't and cant be "earmarked" (This is the piece that was originally sent to BitComet Bob!), which means that if Azureus is doing this, Azureus has to be the one that is internally tracking IP addresses where each was sent. Being connected or not would not matter unless Azureus is dropping disconnected addresses, which would make Azureus "broken", not the hapless clients it connects to.

Since the piece isn't earmarked, Azureus has no way of knowing whether BitComet Bob is a big uploader himself, or just happened to send this piece to MainLine Mal, who is the big uploader. And Mal might have gotten it second or third hand. How would Azureus correct-for/track/manage that?

Why would BitComet disconnect anyway? Because it thinks Azureus Al, (super-seeding as he is) is just another leecher (because that's how super-seeding works), and not a very reliable or good leecher at that, so Bob disconnects in favor of a better conneciton.

Um, that's what bittorrent does. They ALL behave that way, including Azureus itself. It has the cute name, "greedy algorithm". They prefer connecting to the best sources they can find in the swarm. If BitComet's behaviour were exceptional and unusual in this respect, then it would complete torrents a lot faster, hence would be what everyone would use in preference to the others (so they would change to behave this way too). But it doesn't, and they don't. They all behave the same way and complete at the same speed, all other things being equal. So we have three big clients, all about equal, with minor behavioural differences, AOTBE. (And semi-religious squabbles about this one being "broken", and that one "full of spyware", and the other "not playing nice").

When, where, why did Azureus create all this extra functionality anyway, and where did the dev team find the time, with all the stuff they've got on their plates to fix? And how is it that they sprang it on the world undocumented and unannounced? Odds are they didn't, that it doesn't exist, and this whole mess comes from yet another person who doesn't understand Bittorrent or inital/super/frugal seeding, & has invented behaviour it does not have.

They sure wouldn't be the first to do this, and probably won't be the last.

[staindrocks]

Here's the response to what you wrote kluelos:

UPDATE

BitComet 0.70 and above is now unbanned on HDBits! Thanks to all of you for your help in the matter. It's great to see that you CAN make a difference if you just stand up and present the facts! Thanks to Valerio and the rest of the Admin over on HDBits for their unbiased and honest evaluation of BitComet! For anyone who like's HD, it is a great site! And now the BitComet community has the same opportunity to enjoy it, just as rest do!

Super Seeding is a special optimised seeding mode.

Only use this mode when you are the first and only seeder.

Each peer will be assigned a piece, and Azureus will then compute the time it takes for that particular piece to be seen again the swarm, thus identifying peers with high upload speed, to which Azureus will preferentially give data.

It works :) this way U can determine the speed of each peer and compute the best distribution for fastest completion of all peers.

seems like the guy has no idea what he's talking about :)

I'm in the HDBits forums, and trust me, its me against the world! I did, however, manage to get the Admin's to consider unbanning 0.70 and newer. They told me they would have no problem unbanning if a BitComet user could show them where the SuperSeeding issue was fixed. When i directed them to take a look at 0.70 and up, they said that it looked like BiTComet had addressed the issue. I figured that was that, and i could expect it to be unbanned soon after. They haven't done so yet, and one of the Admin's just started a poll on the forums: If Bitcomet were unbanned, would you use it? So i don't know if they are going to do what they said they'd do, or let the anti-BitComet community decide? You guys should grab an account and give BitComet a voice. Like i said, its me against everybody else, and i'm not the person who should be representing BitComet because i don't know enough to defend it. So please, it would be great to have some experts show up and sort out what's what! Thanks to everyone here for there help!