PaulSpoerry.com

After months of hard work and more than six months since their previous stable release, the uTorrent team has released version 1.8 of their BitTorrent client, with significant improvements and updates.

uTorrent is the preferred client among many BitTorrent users. In December we reported that the number of uTorrent users worldwide had more than doubled in a year. At the time, 5.1% of all Windows PCs had the BitTorrent client installed, and this number has probably been growing further since then.

One of the most significant updates in the latest version of uTorrent is that it comes with built in IPv6 support, which improves connectivity and thus performance. Other new features are better Windows Firewall registration on Vista and improved distribution of new connections across torrents.

uTorrent 1.8 can be downloaded from the uTorrent website, and the list of changes, improvements and additions is available in the forum thread announcing the release.

Several BitTorrent developers have joined forces to propose a new protocol extension with the ability to bypass the BitTorrent interfering techniques used by Comcast and other ISPs. This new form of encryption will be implemented in BitTorrent clients including uTorrent, so Comcast subscribers are free to share again.

BitTorrent throttling is not a new phenomenon, ISPs have been doing it for years. When the first ISPs started to throttle BitTorrent traffic most BitTorrent clients introduced a countermeasure, namely, protocol header encryption. This was the beginning of an ongoing cat and mouse game between ISPs and BitTorrent client developers, which is about to enter new level.

Unfortunately, protocol header encryption doesn’t help against more aggressive forms of BitTorrent interference, like the Sandvine application used by Comcast. A new extension to the BitTorrent protocol is needed to stay ahead of the ISPs, and that is exactly what is happening right now.

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