Downloader: uTorrent banned by private trackers for "not playing fair"

Friday, April 2, 2010

uTorrent banned by private trackers for "not playing fair"

We told you a while ago about uTP, the new self-throttling torrent transfer protocol that first appeared in version 2.0 of the popular uTorrent app. As Sebastian explained in our previous post, uTP prevents network congestion by limiting its own bandwidth so that your Internet service provider doesn't have to. Ideally, this means nobody is subjected to ISP-level torrent throttling, and everybody wins. In practice, though, uTorrent may be unfair in a different way: it gives priority to other users who are running the new protocol.

That's caused several private trackers to boot uTorrent 2 off of their approved clients lists. Bittorrent Inc., the developers of the uTP protocol, has opened it up so that other torrent clients can incorporate it. Bittorrent Inc. admits that there might be a "downside to innovation" in this case, according to Torrentfreak, but it's working to take uTP mainstream, which would solve the problem. Other major clients, including Vuze, are already looking at incorporating the protocol into their software.