# Looking for a Bittorrent client

## Dabljuh

Heyas. MLDonkey's Performance disappoints me year after year and I'm looking for something to replace it with. Due to my setup, a web interface like MLDonkey's is ideal. Can anyone recommend me a client?

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## shickapooka800

check out torrentflux

although, this is going to get moved into OTW, so be prepared.

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## Dralnu

There are several decent bittorrent clients out. Personally, I'd like to find one that could do the searching as well as the downloading. CLI would be best, too...

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## shickapooka800

 *Dralnu wrote:*   

> There are several decent bittorrent clients out. Personally, I'd like to find one that could do the searching as well as the downloading. CLI would be best, too...

 

torrentflux has search support, although I haven't seen it work all too well.  it is supposed to search sites of your choice, but it isn't all that great.  

Torrentflux is really cool if you want to use a dedicated server to download torrents, and not your desktop or laptop.

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## Dabljuh

 *shickapooka800 wrote:*   

> Torrentflux is really cool if you want to use a dedicated server to download torrents, and not your desktop or laptop.

 That's what I'm doing, I always liked the web interface of mldonkey. Does Torrentflux have something similiar? Does it perform well? I don't need a search function in the client.

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## shickapooka800

 *Dabljuh wrote:*   

>  *shickapooka800 wrote:*   Torrentflux is really cool if you want to use a dedicated server to download torrents, and not your desktop or laptop. That's what I'm doing, I always liked the web interface of mldonkey. Does Torrentflux have something similiar? Does it perform well? I don't need a search function in the client.

 

torrent flux is basically a php+mysql front end to bittornado, which itself is a python/twisted based bittorrent client (command line).

check it out: http://torrentflux.com

it needs python, mysql, php and an http server (apache, lighttpd, etc..., I chose lighttpd).

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## Dabljuh

And the performance is good?

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## shickapooka800

 *Dabljuh wrote:*   

> And the performance is good?

 

how do you mean?  do you mean how are my downloads? or how does the performance scale with number of torrents?

well, I can sustain a few healthy torrents (lets say 4) at around 80-160 KBps and my server (a via mini-itx board doing LOTS of stuff) will maintain around a .5 - .6 load avg.  

the interface is not too bad, although since it is in php, there is a bit of overhead needed (not sluggish on my 1ghz itx machine).  It is themable, and there are a few default themes to choose from, some decent enough.  

I am sure though, that your overall download banwidth depends on your connection, but as far as scalability, all of torrent flux is written in python and php, so there *is* a considerable amount of overhead involved, compared to a desktop client written in C or something.  but then again, if you've got a server with php+mysql you already have the necessary overhead covered and you should be fine.  

there is a fair amount of configurability that is nice.  you can cap up and down bandwitdh per torrent.  there is also a queue feature to allow for torrents in waiting.  you can download selected files from the torrent (instead of all if you choose), and you can choose to seed the torrents for a certain percentage of the overall file size (or none if you like to be a jerk :) )

overall it does excactly what I want, which is to slowly download torrents without getting in my way.

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## Paczesiowa

I used torrentflux until I found azureus with azsmrc plugin http://azsmrc.sourceforge.net/

it's ui is faster, better looking, more functional and torrent backend is azureus (best client ever) and not crappy bittornado.

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## Dabljuh

If I'm talking about the performance of a P2P client, I'm talking about "Does it download stuff at a reasonable speed"

I'd consider any P2P backend client that uses more than 2% of a crappy machine's cpu cycles to be horribly broken, unless it's like seeding hundreds of torrents on its own dedicated T3 line.

The problem is for example with mldonkey that you can have a file with 1000 seeders, 10 leechers, like your average knoppix liveCD, or porn, and it'll take DAYS to download it. DAYS. A decent client will basically download this stuff at full line speed. Or fun events like "The Download that never was" when a download stops at 99% and never gets finished, with the odd chance that it will once you restart the client. Or, when due to a bug you simply don't upload anything. JOY!

There's so much crap in P2P land. Word of mouth and testing is important.

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## spiralvoice

 *Dabljuh wrote:*   

> Heyas. MLDonkey's Performance disappoints me year after year

 

You may try to have a look at MLDonkey again, a major bug in its BT module was

fixed in version 2.8.7.

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