Battleangel

Bram Cohen just released a new version of his BitTorrent protocol and client. The biggest changes are that his client is almost useful now, even if I still prefer Azureus or maybe that new C++ BitComet client. I suppose these clients will soon be updated to v4 standard as well.

Among the version notes is a line that reads “BitTorrent packets are marked as bulk data to make traffic shaping easier”. I don’t know if this is such a good idea but in the end Bram doesn’t work for us pirates and bulk data is a great idea for everyone else. Hopefully none of the major clients will adopt it. The idea behind traffic shaping is great but seeing as ISPs will be trying to make money off of VOIP and other high priority services, it doesn’t take genius to figure out that bulk packets will be worth just about as much as a bucket of sand in Sahara. We have a problem as it is with skipping port ranges and the whole point is obviously to masquerade the packets as totally innocent, though voluminous, data.

Bram Cohen also appeared at Stanford Univ a couple of weeks ago, holding a lecture which focused on, you guessed it, BitTorrent.