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It feels like it was just a few weeks ago when I reviewed Azureus and a few other Bittorrent clients. Once again I have another little review of for you guys, Azureus 2.5.0.0. This new release features a few security and bug fixes but two items mentioned in the changelog really stick out, the ability to link to your active torrents, and the adjustment of CPU usage especially when connected to a large quantity of peers

To test out Azureus and see what really changed within the client I downloaded the newest revision and installed it into a seperate folder, fired up the old client (2.4.0.2) and then began downloading an Ubuntu i386 server ISO file. Unfortunately I am no longer on campus so these results can’t be compared to my previous tests as I now have a 5800kb/s download 340 kb/s upload connection unlike my previous 33000 kb/s download and 851 kb/s upload connection. To try and keep the seeders from being a potential issue I chose a heavily seeded Ubuntu ISO and ran the tests back to back. While there is guaranteed to be a decent amount of error in regards to the Internet connection, the hardware resources available don’t change so resource utilization values can be taken for face-value.

Results

When I ran the test with 2.4.0.2 I noticed that the processor utilization would creep around 7% to 15% while memory utilization leveled out at around 85 megabytes for just Azureus. Immediately after the file completed I deleted the ISO, closed down Azureus, loaded up 2.5.0.0 and performed the same thing. It looks like the Azureus development team did something correct in their optimizations as CPU utilization stayed around 2% to 5% however memory utilization shot up to 98 megabytes. I do believe the additional memory usage might be due to the fact that the torrent was peaking at around 5700 kb/s unlike the 2.4.0.2 test where the connection was pushing only 5200 kb/s or so. These differences in download speeds makes me wonder if the connection management was beefed up and optimized or if I just happened to connect to the prime amount of seeders on the second attempt. I would run the tests again but lately I’ve been strapped for time as you may have noticed.

Core code improvements are great and all but they don’t really make for an easier user interface however one feature really helps to introduce Bittorrent into daily life, ability to add torrent links to websites, emails, and blogs. Below you can see a nice Azureus symbol that when clicked AND you have Azureus running, will download the indicated torrent and begin downloading the files. I think this is a great idea as it could be another push in the right direction for Bittorrent. I would love to see blogs with podcasts implement this idea, the savings in bandwidth might make it possible for more interesting blogcasts.

Download ubuntu-6.06.1-server-i386.iso

All in all not too much exciting, the reduction in CPU usage can be helpful for those of you running slower systems or where every single clock cycle is important. The torrent linkage action is a great idea, I might use it to host the possible Stammy/Gomeler Podcast that should be going down rather soon.