uTorrent 2.0 Beta Public Release
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 at 7:37AM | Print Article Four years after uTorrent was released to the world, the development team have unveiled uTorrent 2.0 Beta. The new Beta is currently only available for Windows, however has some significant improvements.
UDP Tracker Support: UDP is a different protocol for tracker communication, it is significantly better when compared to HTTP trackers (uTorrent 1.0+). UDP trackers use less resources and considerably less processing power at the tracker end. This had a couple of key advantages. Firstly trackers have limited resources, so UDP should allow them to support many more users with their current hardware and not cause them to crash under load. It should also allow for smoother web-browser at the users end as UDP does not interfere with HTTP traffic, meaning that BitTorrent associated web-browsing slowdowns will be a thing of the past.
uTP: uTP is an alternative communication method for BitTorrent traffic based on UDP (billed as UDP Torrenting or Micro Transport Protocol). It allows the client to automatically regulate its bandwidth usage to avoid adversely impacting your internet connection. This will allow you or other users on the network to download their torrents without killing your connection.
Transfer Caps: Over the past years ISP have started adding transfer caps to their services (such as a 50GB monthly download limit). As a result uTorrent 2.0 adds settings that track your usage in MB and can stop your torrents once the user defined limit is reached. This works for both downloads and uploads.
New Speed Guide: To help get the most out of your Torrent client the uTorrent Speed Guide has been upgraded to use Google’s measurement lab servers. This should allow uTorrent to accurately assess your network connection and configure itself automatically to the most optimal settings. Unfortunately Google’s measurement lab servers are currently only in the US, therefore us Europeans will probably still need to manually configure the client for best results.
Considering uTorrent is one of the most popular BitTorrent Clients in the world any change to their application will have a major effect on the BitTorrent scene. Hopefully once uTorrent 2.0 goes final and cross platform the new improvements should significantly improve overall performance and efficiency.
To download uTorrent Beta for Windows head over to the uTorrent Forum.