Fastest Bit-Torrent Downloader (BitComet)

Member Name: sparksteroid

Product:	BitComet
Date:	22/12/08 (637 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very fast, stable, efficient

Disadvantages: Asks to accept incoming connections, patches tcp/ip limit

Bit Comet is a free software application which is a bit-torrent client. In other words, it connects to the bit-torrent network and allows you to use torrent indexing websites to download files at high speeds. Generally, Bit Comet is file-sharing software and allows up to thousands of file-sharers to connect to each other simultaneously. Bit-torrent clients like Bit Comet are great for downloading large size files like movies and games due to their high speed capabilities.

However, when using Bit Comet, in order to be able to download you also have to be uploading and the program gives you a ranking based upon your download to upload ratio. Higher ranked users are able to download at faster rates as a reward of their uploading. I should also mention that you don't have to be sharing illegally to be uploading.

In my experience Bit Comet is the fastest bit-torrent client available at the moment and I've even compared it to uTorrent which most people claim is the fastest, due to it's light CPU usage. However, uTorrent request that you allow their IP address in your firewall, which I personally think it very risky. Bit Comet does not ask you to do this.

One thing that Bit Comet does do, which I don't like, is that at startup it urges you to change your TCP/IP half-open connections limit in Windows (XP). By default this is set to 10 in Service Pack 2 and above and it's set at that limit to help prevent mass-spreading worms. Bit Comet allows you to change this to allow up to 200 half-open connections claiming to increase download speed. A half-open connection is an unestablished one, so while it may help to connect to other file-sharers quicker on startup, ultimately it will result in slowing the connection down. This technique was original used for dial-up connections.

Bit Comet open demands that you open (forward) a port on your computer for the program to allow incoming connections. The program functions fine without doing this and still maintains high download speeds, though by not opening the port you are now allowing other file-sharers to make a direct connection to your computer. In my opinion I wouldn't want them to anyway.

Bit Comet is a stable application and very efficient for what it does. If you're looking to download large files (or even small ones) at the highest speed possible, then I would have to recommend Bit Comet.

Summary: The fastest filesharing program available and it's free

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