BitTorrent is a communication protocol for peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P), which enables users to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet in a decentralized manner.
A BitTorrent tracker is a special type of server that assists in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol.
rTorrent is a text-based BitTorrent client written in C++, based on the ncurses and libTorrent libraries for Unix, whose author's goal is "a focus on high performance and good code".
FrostWire is a free and open-source BitTorrent client first released in September 2004, as a fork of LimeWire. It was initially very similar to LimeWire in appearance and functionality, but over time developers added more features, including support for the BitTorrent protocol. In version 5, support for the Gnutella network was dropped entirely, and FrostWire became a BitTorrent-only client.
Free Download Manager is a download manager for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android.
qBittorrent is a cross-platform free and open-source BitTorrent client.
Rainberry, Inc., formerly known as BitTorrent, Inc., is an American company that is responsible for the ongoing development of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer protocol, as well as the ongoing development of μTorrent and BitTorrent Mainline, two clients for that protocol. Files transferred using the BitTorrent protocol constitute a significant slice of all Internet traffic. At its peak, 170 million people used the protocol every month, according to the company's website. The company was founded on September 22, 2004 by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin. In 2018, the company was acquired by cryptocurrency startup TRON, and Bram Cohen left the company.
Tribler is an open source decentralized BitTorrent client which allows anonymous peer-to-peer by default. Tribler is based on the BitTorrent protocol and uses an overlay network for content searching. Due to this overlay network, Tribler does not require an external website or indexing service to discover content. The user interface of Tribler is very basic and focused on ease of use instead of diversity of features. Tribler is available for Linux, Windows, and OS X.
Suprnova.org was a Slovenia-based website that distributed BitTorrent trackers for various music and video files, computer programs and games. Started in late 2002 by Andrej Preston and for a while considered the most popular BitTorrent search engine, Suprnova.org closed in late 2004 after legal threats. The site operators supported the development of the eXeem BitTorrent client software, deeming a fixed website too difficult to operate in the present legal climate. On August 2, 2007, the domain name was donated to The Pirate Bay, which relaunched the site on August 21, 2007.
Vuze is a BitTorrent client used to transfer files via the BitTorrent protocol. Vuze is written in Java, and uses the Azureus Engine. In addition to downloading data linked to .torrent files, Azureus allows users to view, publish and share original DVD and HD quality video content. Content is presented through channels and categories containing TV shows, music videos, movies, video games, series and others. Additionally, if users prefer to publish their original content, they may earn money from it.
BTJunkie was a BitTorrent web search engine operating between 2005 and 2012. It used a web crawler to search for torrent files from other torrent sites and store them on its database. It had nearly 4,000,000 active torrents and about 4,200 torrents added daily, making it the largest torrent site indexer on the web in 2006. During 2011, BTJunkie was the 5th most popular BitTorrent site.
The following is a general comparison of BitTorrent clients, which are computer programs designed for peer-to-peer file sharing using the BitTorrent protocol.
Torrentz was a Finland-based metasearch engine for BitTorrent, run by an individual known as Flippy, and founded on 24 July 2003. It indexed torrents from various major torrent websites, and offered compilations of various trackers per torrent that were not necessarily present in the default .torrent file, so that when a tracker was down, other trackers could do the work. It was the second most popular torrent website in 2012.
This is a comparison of BitTorrent sites that includes most of the most popular sites. These sites typically contain multiple torrent files and an index of those files.
In the BitTorrent file distribution system, a torrent file or meta-info file is a computer file that contains metadata about files and folders to be distributed, and usually also a list of the network locations of trackers, which are computers that help participants in the system find each other and form efficient distribution groups called swarms. A torrent file does not contain the content to be distributed; it only contains information about those files, such as their names, folder structure, and sizes obtained via cryptographic hash values for verifying file integrity. The term torrent may refer either to the metadata file or to the files downloaded, depending on the context.
StealthNet is an anonymous P2P file sharing software based on the original RShare client, and has been enhanced. It was first named 'RShare CE'. It use the same network and protocols as RShare.
BTDigg is the first Mainline DHT search engine. It participated in the BitTorrent DHT network, supporting the network and making correspondence between magnet links and a few torrent attributes which are indexed and inserted into a database. For end users, BTDigg provides a full-text database search via Web interface. The web part of its search system retrieved proper information by a user's text query. The Web search supported queries in European and Asian languages. The project name was an acronym of BitTorrent Digger. It went offline in June 2016, reportedly due to index spam. The site returned later in 2016 at a dot-com domain, went offline again and is now online.. The btdig.com site has its torrent crawler's source source listed on GitHub, dhtcrawler2.
μTorrent, or uTorrent is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc. With over 150 million users. It is the most widely used BitTorrent client outside China; globally only behind Xunlei. The "μ" in its name comes from the SI prefix "micro-", referring to the program's small memory footprint: the program was designed to use minimal computer resources while offering functionality comparable to larger BitTorrent clients such as Vuze or BitComet. μTorrent became controversial in 2015 when many users unknowingly accepted a default option during installation which also installed a cryptocurrency miner. The miner was removed in later versions, but had already done irreversible damage to μTorrent's reputation.
ZeroNet is a decentralized web-like network of peer-to-peer users, created by Tamas Kocsis in 2015. Programming for the network is based in Budapest, Hungary; is built in Python; and is fully open source. Instead of having an IP address, sites are identified by a public key. The private key allows the owner of a site to sign and publish changes, which propagate through the network. Sites can be accessed through an ordinary web browser when using the ZeroNet application, which acts as a local webhost for such pages. In addition to using bitcoin cryptography, ZeroNet uses trackers from the BitTorrent network to negotiate connections between peers. ZeroNet is not anonymous by default, but it supports routing traffic through the Tor network.
