Bittorrent

Today on one of the popular Bittorrent sites, an early “alpha” version of uTorrent for OS X was posted. I’ve downloaded a copy, and below you’ll find a bunch of screenshots along with my initial thoughts. [click to continue...]

From the About Transmission page:

Transmission has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight, yet powerful BitTorrent client. Its simple, intuitive interface is designed to integrate tightly with whatever computing environment you choose to use. Transmission strikes a balance between providing useful functionality without feature bloat. Furthermore, it is free for anyone to use or modify.

This tutorial will guide you through the steps to install, setup and use Transmission to download files using BitTorrent. [click to continue...]

This brief tutorial will walk you through the steps required to access (and control) uTorrent from your mobile device (phone, PDA, wi-fi mp3 player etc). [click to continue...]

This tutorial will guide you through the steps required to install and set up the iPhone (and iPod Touch) Web UI for uTorrent. This version of the uTorrent Web UI was created specifically for the iPhone/iPod Touch and allows you to access your uTorrent client remotely to pause or add new torrents. [click to continue...]

This tutorial will guide you through setting up uTorrents Web UI (User Interface). The Web UI allows you to remotely connect to the computer running uTorrent, through a web browser, and control all of your torrents. [click to continue...]

This tutorial will walk you through each of the steps in setting up and using uTorrent to download files using bittorrent. uTorrent is a free (and very feature-rich) bittorrent client for Windows 98/ME, NT/2000, XP, 2003, and Vista. [click to continue...]

The following collection of lies, misdirections and legal-speak is typical of Comcast. I’d like to take a moment to point out a couple of the larger errors in this statement. The post/statement itself was taken from the Comcast Help forums which require a Comcast uesrname/password to view.

There have been many news reports speculating about how Comcast manages it network. It is important for us to provide you with the facts.

The facts have already been brought to light. What they really want to do is provide you with a patently false response to make you feel a bit better about your current situation, which is only getting worse.

First, and most importantly, our customers have unfettered access to all the content, services, and applications on the Web.

False. I know that Mitch has access to dictionary, so please don’t use words like unfettered. Sending reset packets on behalf of Comcast subscribers does not fall into the “unfettered” category.

They use the Internet for downloading and uploading files, watching movies and videos, streaming music, sharing digital photos, accessing numerous peer-to-peer sites, VOIP applications like Vonage, and thousands of other applications online.

It’s also important that we make something very clear: Comcast does not block access to any Web site or applications, including peer-to-peer (P2P) services like BitTorrent. We also do not discriminate based on the type of content.

Sigh. Again, sending reset packets on behalf of Comcast subscribers is the very definition of discriminating based on the type of content. Unless by “type” you mean file type (.gif, .jpg, .mp3 etc) - in which case this is again, nothing more than fancy legalease look over there while I pull this rabbit from my hat.

So, what do we do? We use the latest technologies to manage our network so that our customers continue to enjoy these applications. We do this because we feel it’s our responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience.

Customers who use bittorrent to share files with friends and family have got to disagree here. I would hardly find it “enjoyable” not to be able to share files via bittorrent because of your packet resets. That does NOT fall within the realm of “good Internet experience”.

As numerous studies show, peer-to-peer activity consumes a disproportionately large amount of network resources, and therefore poses the biggest challenge to maintaining a good broadband experience for all users – including the overwhelming majority of our customers who don’t use P2P applications.

That’s right. The majority of their customers use broadband to send emails, watch videos on “The Fan” and surf the web. Just like Comcast wants. Because it costs them money if you use broadband to transfer large files - which is what most of us thought broadband was for. If all we wanted to do was surf the web and send emails, we would have stayed with AOL.

We never prevent P2P activity, or block access to any P2P applications, but rather manage the network in such a way that this activity does not degrade the broadband experience for other users.

I’m tired of explaining why the above statement is a lie, aren’t you tired of telling it?

Network management is absolutely essential to ensure the health of our network for all of our customers. All major ISPs manage their traffic in some way and many use similar tools.

Network management helps us protect our customers from things like spam, viruses, the negative effects of network congestion, or attacks to their PCs. As threats on the Internet continue to grow,

Sorry I had to cut this one off mid-sentence - where the hell did spam, viruses and “attacks on PCs” come from? The issue that prompted this statement has nothing, and I repeat NOTHING to do with spam, viruses or attacks on any network. NOTHING. This is the typical feel-goodery that Comcast tries to include in any statement on how it runs its network. Oh and speaking of spam, maybe Comcast could do a little more work on not being the #1 source of it (source).

we will do everything we can to ensure that our network management tools evolve and keep pace so that we continue to maintain a good, reliable online experience for our customers.

Mitch Bowling
Senior Vice President
Comcast Online

AllPeers is a Firefox addon (plugin) that allows you to use Firefox as a bittorrent client. This brief tutorial shows you how to use it to download files. [click to continue...]

Another name for this tutorial could be “how to install Windows programs in OS X without buying Crossover“. Or “how to use Darwine to install Windows programs in OS X”. But this tutorial will take you step-by-step through installing uTorrent (which is currently Windows-only) via Darwine - an OS X port of Wine. [click to continue...]

Miro is a free application that turns your computer into an Internet TV video player. Miro used to be known as Democracy Player, but as it approaches v1.0, it’s now known as Miro. For a brief introduction to Miro (and why I think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread), keep reading.. [click to continue...]

Azureus is one of the most popular BitTorrent clients, with millions of active users. Vuze is powered by Azureus 3.0, and it joins movie and music fans with filmmakers and artists to create a rich, social, and completely new entertainment experience. Vuze claims the largest library of hi-def videos - and this guide will show you step-by-step how to get your hands on them. [click to continue...]

This tutorial will guide you in downloading, installing and setting up Azureus (a Bittorrent client that works in OS X) - and will then show you how to use Azureus to download files. [click to continue...]