If you use Bittorrent, you have probably hit the limits of the official client (3 downloads max at a time, not enough stats, etc.) If so, then you should download and install Azureus. I’ve been using it for a week, and while I have by no means explored all of the features of the software, it makes using the Bittorrent protocol for downloading 10x smoother. About the only downside to the software is that it is written in Java, and demands the JRE 1.5 in order to run. One especially nice feature is that it can continue downloading from the swarm even if the tracker goes down, thanks to its integration of a DHT layer. Do bear in mind that you are not anonymous when you download (as is also the case in most functional p2p software), so potentially those ogres at the **AA could catch up with you if you download illegal content. (But there is plenty of legal content out there, so don’t let that stop you from embracing the technology.) Also, you can take some preemptive action by filtering out IPs known to be “non-optimal” to interact with.

One particularly intriguing feature is provided by this RSS plugin, which allows you to subscribe to an RSS feed and download all of the torrents posted to it.

Check out other plugins here.

Also see the related links in the sidebar for this post for more resources on Bittorrent, and check out my Bittorrent feeds on the front page (bottom right of the sidebar).

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