The advent of DHT (Distributed Hash Tables) has been a valuable asset to the BitTorrent community. Most newer BitTorrent clients now support this network layer, which boosts the efficiency of the already capable BitTorrent protocol.
The first BitTorrent client to establish a DHT layer was Azureus, followed by the official BitTorrent client. Although similar, the two DHT networks are not compatible. The DHT layer supported by the official client would be known as Mainline DHT network. Soon after, most BitTorrent clients would release versions with Mainline DHT support, such as the popular BitComet.
The DHT layer works by creating a virtual network on top of the BitTorrent protocol. Each node that participates in the DHT layer indexes a small portion of files on the network and helps with network communications. This works great for public trackers as it puts less of a burden on centralized server resources, helps distribute files more efficiently, and saves bandwidth. It’s an underappreciated quantum leap that has been overshadowed by more visible advances such as BitTorrent or eDonkey2000.
On the other side of this spectrum are private trackers. Private trackers are not looking to widely distribute their files. These communities are designed to only allow sharing within this closed community by assigning each registered member’s IP address with a passkey. In addition, a ‘private’ flag within the torrent file tells the BitTorrent client not to share on the DHT network.
However, BitComet does not honor the flag. Instead, the torrent is shared and those who do not belong to the private tracker can freely leech off the resources of that community. For example, let’s say an individual is banned from a private tracker for leeching. In that period of time, he managed to download 50 torrent files. Since he is also using BitComet, the client ignores the flag and shares the torrent on the public DHT network.
This is highly frowned upon in private communities. To ensure sharing and save bandwidth, many trackers have tight download/upload ratio policies and enforce them strictly. Since the neither the DHT network nor BitComet have any concept of ratios, the torrent is traded freely. This situation has especially been a kick in the µTorrent for those donating to private trackers in return for higher status and more privileges.
The solution? Ban BitComet. Most of the leading private trackers such as ScT Torrent and Midnight Torrents will not accept BitComet clients. Some trackers such as TorrentIt.com have recommended the use of other, private tracker friendly, clients.
“Unfortunately due to tracker security issues with BitComet 0.60 we will be banning this client to protect our users,” an announcement on TorrentIt.com said. “The ban will take effect at 13:00 GMT December 9th and will be effective until such time as the bug is fixed by the BitComet developers. This ban is NOT up for debate, do not make posts in the forums about it, they will be locked. As some of you may be aware several private trackers much like ours are banning the use of BitComet because of an issue with the client enabling DHT despite the existence of the ‘private’ flag.”
The banishment of BitComet has drawn mixed reviews. Some believe the security of private trackers is paramount and must be respected. Others cite that banning BitComet forces some users to loose advantage of its ‘end to end’ encryption. One of BitComet’s newest features, some contend ‘end to end’ encryption conceals BitTorrent traffic on throttled ISP’s like Shaw Cable.
Whether BitComet will upgrade at this time is unclear. The developer of BitComment, “RnySmile”, did not return requests for comment.
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