BitTyrant Editor's Review

'BitTyrant' is a BitTorrent client and a modified clone of Azureus.

In fact, this client has the same interface and features as the original Azureus, so I won't describe how BitTyrant works. You can read it in my review for Azureus, because it works mostly the same.

Don't get me wrong, these two clients are different, because of the modifications that were implemented in BitTyrant.

BitTyrant promises to improve the performance by optimizing the way in which the BT clients interact with themselves in a swarm. This optimizes the upload bandwidth. It doesn't mean that it uploads less than other regular BT clients do. It means that this client keeps it fair for all connected users.

BitTyrant can dynamically adjust its send rate. Thus, it can allow more bandwidth to the users that upload more and it can reduce the upload rate to the ones who upload less. This kind of behavior is a good anti-leech practice. It forces the users to be fair with their upload rates.

There are some theories concerning the performance increase or decrease when using this client. There are so many possibilities that nobody knows if it can affect the overall swarm speed when this client is widely used. Furthermore, this client may be unfair to users that have asynchronous connections, such as ADSL. On the other hand, it can improve performance in local areas where users communicate through faster connections, including, but not limited to MANs (Metropolitan Area Networks).

Pluses: it has the same amount of features as the original client, Azureus. It can dynamically adjust upload speeds of the connected users based on their share ratio.

Drawbacks / flaws: because it runs under a Java Virtual Machine the application is not very fast. In fact, it uses a lot of memory.

In conclusion: a pretty good alternative to the existing BT clients for Macintosh, featuring all the functionality that has been implemented into Azureus.

version reviewed: 1.1