P2P is defined as a computer network that exploits diverse connectivity between participants in a network and the cumulative bandwidth of network participants. It reduces server load and maintains high bandwidth transfer rates. Nowadays, you can get almost anything from P2P. That includes movies, e-books, songs, applications, games and pictures. But before you can do that, you gotta know which P2P file sharing client to use to get the best out of your time. Listed below are 11 of the best, free P2P file sharing clients of 2007 for you to try it if you haven’t. Forget the rest.

Ares Galaxy



Written in delphi, Ares was originally designed for operation on the Gnutella network. Later on in 2003, it switched to its own network of leaves and supernodes which was much more difficult to identify compared to other networks. However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise when it was the only P2P application that could work on restricted networks like university campuses. Ares also has a hashlink function where it is able to search for peers with files pertaining to a hash and download from them.

As a conclusion, downloading files is rapid, file organization is as simple as a mouse click, hassles don’t exist, the interface is pretty clean and attractive, it’s so simple to use that there will never be a Complete Idiot’s Guide To Using Ares Galaxy being published because it is already idiot proof. Search response is lightning fast. On a dial-up, you’ll get a heap to select from in a second. Once you’ve selected your download, everything else is automatic. If the user is no longer available, it will find another. If it gets disconnected, it will reconnect by itself.

Azureus



One of the only bittorent clients in the world written in Java that supports I2P and Tor anonymous communication protocols. Azureus is actually the Latin name of the blue poison dart frog reason being that the co-developer, Tyler Pitchford, uses Latin names of poison dart frogs as codenames for his development projects. Message stream encryption is a method of anti throttling supported by Azureus.

A range of plugins was designed to make using the program easier and to give experienced users more flexibilty and control. The plugins which I would personally recommend are ‘Upload Shaper’ and ‘Ono’. Upload shaper will automatically adjust global upload speed limit based on download speed * factor and Ono will finds nearby peers, which tend to give better transfer rates, and preferentially connects to them.

BitComet



Written in C++, BitComet boasts of many functions including Mainline DHT, protocol encryption, disk cache, port mapping, peer exchange (PEX), UDP NAT traversal. There’s even an embedded internet explorer window for searching torrents within the client.
Since version 0.90, BitComet has included a plugin to transfer files using the eD2K protocol, which is configured to automatically connect to an eD2K server. What makes it different is the ability to preview media files.

In versions 0.85 and above, an IFrame displays a page from BitComet’s server that displayes a web search and a single ad on the right side of the client window and Google Toolbar is installed by default.

Workaround : DISABLE the IFrame in the view menu and CHOOSE not to install the toolbar.

BitSpirit



BitSpirit exceeds expectations. It will not let you down. I swear if this program is developed more it will kill azureus and utorrent.

Fast, nice-looking, feature-loaded, stable, very light on the system, like as if it’s not there while doing the best that you might imagine. Some BitSpirit’s unique features include automatic import of IPFilter.dat from eMule folder which protects you from various prying eyes and private blacklists. It also anables increasing TCP connections of Win XP SP2 and uses Kademlia DHT network(compatible with uTorrent and mainline) and encrypts connections.

Cabos



Written in REALbasic, Cabos was written based on Limewire and Acquisition. Available on both Macs and Windows. It will find every file you ever wanted and 100% successfully download them. You could check the iTMS if you wanted to purchase tracks, but there won’t be any available. That’s how good Cabos is. Moreover, it is not like Limewire in that you have to buy a PRO version to unluck full searching and download capabilities.

In addition, it allows you to import your iTunes library if you are so inclined. Thats not the only thing to make iTunes users feel like home as the search results and downloads are presented with an iTunes look, with a varying blue and white lines in a list, iTunes music icons, etc. If you are a Mac user, I would personally recommend you to take a look at these 40 useful and free mac os x softwares.

DC++



Written in C++, DC++ is the P2P files sharing program used to connect to the Direct Connect network or to the ADC protocol. On DC++ u have to connect on ‘hubs’ and every hub has admins. These admins take care of their hub really good so that users have really little chance to find viruses or fake files, because people with this things are kicked or banned from the hubs even before you can say ‘Ala ka zaam’.

There are many well known mods of DC++ out there, most popular being StrongDC++. It is suitable for newbies in the dc network as well as those who know all about p2p connections and want something more form their client. Basically, you’ll just have to configure your connection, name and put something that is of value in your share folder. Yes, understanding will take some time but once you’ve mastered it, you’ll experience the advantages of multi-source download.

eMule



Written in MS Visual C++ using the Microsoft Foundation Classes, connects to both the eDonkey network and the Kad network. With downloads of over 330 million times as of July 2007, it has become the most downloaded project on SourceForge. The distinguishing features of eMule are the direct exchange of sources between client nodes, fast recovery of corrupted downloads, and the use of a credit system to reward frequent uploaders. Furthermore, eMule transmits data in zlib-compressed form to save bandwidth.

You can find nearly any film, music or program ever made, but if there’s only a few sources it will take long to download them. It also gives more info about the downloads because there is a system where you can rate / comment on files that others can read easily. The cue system encourages people to share because the more you upload the more you can get off others and the faster your downloads. You can also add a proxy to make yourself anonymous and untraceable. Useful when downloading recently released movies.

iMesh



The audio media player works just as well as itunes along with the music search which works the same way. The database is far more limited in terms of only having audio and video but you could find many things on this that you won’t find on Limewire. Downloading speeds are higher searches are very fast. The friends and internal message system is useful, handy and surprisingly bug free.

LimeWire Basic



Written in Java, Limewire offers the sharing of its library through Digital Audio Access Protocol. As such, when LimeWire is running, any files shared will be detectable on the local network by DAAP-enabled devices like iTunes. LimeWire doesn’t forward SHA1 searches, which find exact copies of files. Magnet links use SHA1 searches and SHA1 searches can also be used to find more sources for a download. SHA-1 and tiger tree hash cryptographic hash functions is used by Limewire to ensure that downloaded data is uncompromised.

LimwWire basic is free but you can download the Pro version of Limewire off of the basic version for free. =P The only difference is that the Pro version offers personalized technical support and provides more results and faster downloads by connecting to more sources.

Shareaza



Available in 27 different languages, Shareaza supports the Gnutella, Gnutella2, EDonkey Network, BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP network protocols plus handle magnet links, ed2k links, Piolet links and Gnutella links. The user interface is clean and does not lag in any way. Start up is fast and easy to use. Power mode enables experienced users to control about nearly everything. The monitors and real time graphs are easy on the eyes. There is also a local filtering of received results, besides the many filtering options. For now, I would personally recommend you to not use it to download torrent files yet because it is still immature compared to the other bittorrent clients mentioned in this article.

µTorrent



Written in C++, uTorrent is the No.1 bittorrent client that uses the least computer resources. It can use as little as 14 MB of RAM running a 486 processor on Windows 95. Translations have totaled 38 languages. It has peer exchange with other uTorrent clients , ‘trackerless’ support using DHT and a user configurable intelligent dick caching system.

Unlike BitComet, it doesn’t mess up the ratio statistics and is very convenient to bring around. It is shipped as a single stand-alone compressed executable file, and does not require installation.

Update 5/9 : added mp3-center.org

Update 13/8 : added mp3int.com and torrentplaza.

General

The Pirate Bay



• The Pirate Bay is the 305th most visited internet site as of May 30th, according to Alexa.
• The Pirate Bay was raided by Swedish police on May 31st, went offline till June 3rd where it came back with new a new hosting location in Netherlands. Plans to setup backup servers included Belgium and Russia.
• Since reopening the visitor count doubled and The Pirate Bay became more popular than ever thanks to the media coverage.
• Directly after the raid, advertisement revenue on the site shot up to a speculated $75, 000 by Swedish newspaper SvD.
• Reports indicated bandwidth usage of The Pirate Bay to be at 2,000 HTTP requests per second across all 4 of it’s servers.

Mininova



Started in January 2005 as a successor to the then very popular SuprNova that was taken down in 2004 due to legal issues.

• Anyone can upload any torrent to the site, tracked by any Bittorrent tracker.
• Mininova does not log visitor IP addresses
• Mininova is porn free.
• ‘mininova’ is Google’s 9th most searched term in 2006.

Demonoid



• Created by an anonymous Yugoslavian who goes by the nick of Deimos.
• Torrents are externally indexed and Demonoid-tracked torrents are easily found on other Bittorrent sites like Mininova and thePirateBay.
• New membership registrations are only held once a month. However, existing users who are in good standing have the ability to send invites.
• Demonois is porn free.
• A sister site called Demonorgy was created but shut down after a few months when the owner couldn’t keep up with website maintainence.
• Demonoid keeps users with good upload/download ratio and automatically ban users with lousy ratios.

isoHunt



• At the time of viewing, isoHunt indexes 713,176 online torrents in its database with over 15.11 million peers.
• As of May 2006, isoHunt boasts of 7.4 million unique visitors. An average of over 40 million unique searches are performed each month.
• isoHunt is derived from the term ISO image that describes a 1:1 soft copy of a CD or DVD, a format often used in peer-to-peer file distribution.
• Earlier in 2007, isoHunt restructured it’s server setup and bought lots of new hardware for the cluster which now includes a total of 34 Opteron cores, 70 GB in ram and 30 hard drives ranging from SATAs to 15k rpm SCSIs.

TorrentSpy



• Hosts externally tracked torrent files
• As of 18th June 2007, TorrentSpy has 668,329 torrents indexed with an average of 800 new torrents everyday.
• On May 29th 2007, a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to monitor user activities and submit logs to MPAA. TorrentSpy indicated that it will turn off US access before it started monitoring anyone, to maintain TorrentSpy’s own privacy policy.

TorrentReactor



• As of 18th June 2007, TorrentReactor has a total of 354,330 torrents hashed.
• Files are not hosted on the server, but available from peers of the bittorrent network.
• A ‘health’ bar is used to show peer ratios. The more the seeds, the better the health.
• Get ideas of what to search for through the top movie, music and game charts.

FullDls



• FullDls has 446,753 torrents in it’s database at the time of viewing.
• It has an average of over a thousand new torrents added everyday.

TorrentScan



• At the time of viewing, TorrentScan has the ability to search 14 other major search engines from a single spot.
• TorrentScan does not maintain a database of torrents that it finds when indexing the site.
• Preserves advertisements on other sites though it may be slow when switching between search engines.




Music

Mp3000.net



mp3000.net is the bomb! DIRECT DOWNLOAD mp3s for FREE. No registration required. Make full use of this site while it lasts.




Mp3Int.com



Another free mp3 direct download site. No registration required.




MP3 Center



And another one.




Films

Flix Flux



FlixFlux is a films specialist torrent meta search engine. Launched in 2006 with basic search function besides a list of new film releases. All torrents contain information details such as the genre, rating and plot information. You can even watch the actual trailers before downloading the torrent.




TorrentPlaza



Get all the latest high quality movie torrents as they come. If you cannot wait, there are always the DVD Screeners (promotional copies). Rest assured that ALL movie torrents are personally selected and reviewed to prevent spam, scam, virusses, adware and mallware. All the indexed DVDrips and DVDscrs are the kind of movies that have a very good video and audio quality.




TV

TvTorrents



Contains every tv episode imaginable that has been aired before in the US. TvTorrents has a system whereby it allows only users with good upload/download ratios to download torrents. Registration is free.

TheSprawl



Contains all the latest high quality tv series, day by day. No registration required. Dowload tv torrents for free.

I live in a part of the world where many things are monopolized by the government. One of it is ISP. Most of the people living in Malaysia have no choice but to use ScreamyX. Of course there are also good ISPs, but their reach is limited at the moment. I realized that P2P throttling is an activity practiced by a lot of other internet service providers all around the world. Below is the list of bad internet service providers (ISP) by country. If your ISP is listed here and you have a choice to switch, then switch. The monthly fees that you pay is better off in the hands of ISPs who treat their customers right.

Telefonica de Argentina



• prevents .torrent downloads.

Telecentro



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Fibertel



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Unwired



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

iburst



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

exetel



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Telenet



• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

Net Virtua



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Rogers



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• prevents seeding.

Shaw Cable



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Cogeco



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Eastlink



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
1. Xplornet (Wireless + Satellite)



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• causes unsolvable NAT problem.

Terra Net



• limits bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume.
• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

VTR



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

China Telecom



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

China Netcom



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

China Railcom / TieTong



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Shanghai Telecom



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Club-Internet



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

TM Net



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

JARING



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

Cable Vision



• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

iburst



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Nexlinx



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company



• limits bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume.

ONI



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Ya



• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

Ono



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

CableSur



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

biscit



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

TalkTalk



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Eclipse



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Pipex



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

Freedom2Surf



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

BT Broadband



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

Tiscali / Toucan



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

Virgin Media



• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

SusCom



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Atlantic Broadband



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Cablevision’s Optimum Online



• prevents seeding.

RCN Starpower



• prevents seeding.

Adelphia Cable Communications



• prevents seeding.

iProvo



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Qwest



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.

Cox



• limits bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume.

Comcast



• prevents seeding.

PlusNet



• limits bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume.
• limits bandwidth during certain times of the day.

Charter Communications



• limits bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume.

Intercable



• limits bittorrent bandwidth.
• limits bandwidth for accounts with a high traffic volume.

Bad ISPs
Causing trouble to bittorrent clients