BitTorrent is a hugely popular peer-to-peer file sharing program. In countries where broadband Internet is widespread, BitTorrent accounts for as much as 70% of the overall Internet traffic. In contrast, in developing countries, BitTorrent is almost unusable on the typically low bandwidth dialup connections and accounts for less than 10% of the overall traffic. BitMate is designed to enhance the performance of hosts with low-bandwidth connections. Importantly, BitMate enhances the performance of low-bandwidth nodes without cheating, circumventing the fairness policy of BitTorrent or adversely affecting the performance of other peers.
As at 2013, BitMate has over 40k users from 173 countries, BitMate outperforms vanilla BitTorrent by as much as 70% in download performance, while at the same time improving upload contribution by as much as 1000%! BitMate also outperforms strategic clients like BitTyrant in low-bandwidth conditions by as much as 60% in download performance (without cheating).
an effective BitTorrent client, based on Vuze, optimized for slow connections.
BitMate for Mac is a BitTorrent client fully compliant with the BitTorrent protocol and compatible with existing BitTorrent clients. BitMate is implemented using azureus (Vuze) code base. They have subtly changed the underlying mechanism (GPL’ed) without changing the UI or the code base that deals with the Vuze platform.
BitMate is designed to specifically improve the performance of low-bandwidth peers (5-20 KB/sec). In some specific places and under some certain conditions, Bitmate for Mac can almost double your download performance. At the same time, it performs at least as well as the traditional BitTorrent clients for high-bandwidth peers but you will see most performance benefit for low-bandwidth peers in the developing-world.
