uTorrent v2.0 Throttles Itself

BitTorrent client will throttle upload speed when network congestion is detected, diminishing the need for ISPs to throttle BitTorrent traffic as part of network traffic management practices and saving them billions in the process.

ISPs have long been throttling BitTorrent traffic as part of their network traffic management practices due to the constant baseline pressure that uploads represent on overall bandwidth.

Enter uTorrent v2.0 beta, currently being tested by several hundred thousand people, which incorporates uTP, an updated and improved version of the BitTorrent protocol designed to be more network friendly.

By using uTP uTorrent will become “network aware” and throttle itself when network congestion is detected, saving ISPs billions in network upgrades.

For users of the BitTorrent client, it’s mainly upload speeds that will be affected.

“The throttling that matters most is actually not so much the download but rather the upload – as bandwidth is normally much lower UP than DOWN, the up-link will almost always get congested before the down-link does,” explains Simon Morris, BitTorrent’s VP of Product Management, to TorrentFreak. “uTP measures the time a packet takes to get sent from peer A to peer B, so in theory uTP will detect congestion anywhere on that path, although in practice the congestion most often happens somewhere on the first-mile uplink connection.”

Morris adds that the best part of it all is that uTP means ISPs will no longer be able to justify throttling BitTorrent traffic, and in fact will allow networks to handle even more of it.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

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