Vuze Speeds Up Torrent Downloads Through “Swarm Merging”

[Ernesto]

Vuze is one of the most recognized BitTorrent brands. The client is used by millions of people each day and has a steadily growing user-base.

In recent years Vuze’s BitTorrent client has evolved into an all-in-one download solution, with built-in search, DVD-burning capabilities and device integration

While it’s certainly not the most lightweight client around, Vuze has some interesting options for more demanding BitTorrent users. With the latest 5.6 release the new “swarm merging” feature stands out.

The new feature allows users to find duplicate files shared elsewhere via BitTorrent, and combines the seeds and peers from multiple sources.

“Vuze automatically detects when two or more of your incomplete downloads share one or more files of identical size and will attempt to merge the torrent swarms to download the file faster or, possibly, complete an existing file with bad availability,” Vuze explains.

For example, if you download a copy of LibreOffice, Vuze can search for torrents that have the same files and combine these swarms. This is particularly useful when a torrent has no seeds or very few active ones.

Below is a screenshot of one download being pulled from two swarms. In this case it’s downloading 1.2MB per second from the original torrent and an additional 1.0MB per second from the merged swarm.

A merged swarm

The merging feature makes use of Vuze’s swarm discovery tool and finds files through the Distributed Hash Table (DHT). It’s relatively primitive and based on file-sizes, but can be a life-safer nonetheless.

Another new feature that’s worth mentioning is improved support for the anonymous I2P network. While not mentioned in the official 5.6 release announcement, users who download a torrent with an I2P tracker are now prompted to install the corresponding plugin.

I2P plug

This I2P plug will likely increase the number of users on the network, increasing the download speeds as well. Vuze believes that it makes sense to support I2P as many of its users are interested in communicating anonymously.

“I2P is used by many people who care about their privacy: activists, journalists, as well as the average person. The Vuze user can fall into all of these categories,” a Vuze spokesperson informs TF.

The latest stable release of Vuze for Mac, Linux and Windows is available at the official website. More details on the swarm merging feature can be found in the Vuze wiki.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and anonymous VPN services.

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Originally Published: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 21:56:00 +0000
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[Hary1946]

That's a potential game changer (even more so given uTorrent's recent stumbles): a genuine and really useful improvement on the protocol. I've stayed away from Vuze for years because it's even more bloated than uTorrent but if that isn't incorporated fairly rapidly by other clients I'll be tempted to give it another try.

I wonder if they've changed their torrent creation code to add per-file hash values? That's not necessary but it would make discovery easier (and it wouldn't affect compatibility).

[Dubsteam]

That's a potential game changer (even more so given uTorrent's recent stumbles): a genuine and really useful improvement on the protocol. I've stayed away from Vuze for years because it's even more bloated than uTorrent but if that isn't incorporated fairly rapidly by other clients I'll be tempted to give it another try.

I wonder if they've changed their torrent creation code to add per-file hash values? That's not necessary but it would make discovery easier (and it wouldn't affect compatibility).

Vuze is Better For Downloading and Uploading but it eats up the memory of the Computer lol

[Hary1946]

What do you mean by "better"?

It doesn't download, or upload, any faster than any other torrent client (though swarm merging, if it works as well as it could, could change that in some cases, at least until it is incorporated into other clients).

You are right about the memory hogging though--it's just one of it's problems.

[Dubsteam]

What do you mean by "better"?  

It doesn't download, or upload, any faster than any other torrent client (though swarm merging, if it works as well as it could, could change that in some cases, at least until it is incorporated into other clients).  

You are right about the memory hogging though--it's just one of it's problems.

Nah! i didn't mean that it doesn't upload/download currently i am using an older version of Azeureus but if you got a fast internet (Very Fast) compare other clients with vuze and you will know. I got 2 servers and they have 100mbit port and i have installed Utorrent (1.8.1) + Azeureus both are equal but when you upgrade utorrent to any new version you can easily differenciate between them. The newer version of utorrent sucks + 1.8.1 is light-weight and gets you a good speed. Try it by yourself and then tell the difference.

[Hary1946]

Yet again, we will agree in parts and disagree in others. Yep, uTorrent has gone to the dogs too (as Azureus did when it became Vuze).

But torrent clients all communicate with each other identically, by definition. They have to, otherwise they don't understand each other. It's not possible for your client to make a request of a random peer and be given priority to my request to the same peer simply because your client is Azureus and mine is something else. In fact the random peer cannot even know (for sure) which client either of us are using.

Any perceived difference in speeds is a result of different configurations (as the default configurations of different clients are different some of them will "suit" your particular bandwidth better than others; but all can be brought into line), or of you seeing what you want to see in the forest of noise that is a torrent swarm.