The Internet – Team FrostWire – Last Update July 3rd 2010

The FrostWire team is constantly on top of the P2P & file sharing news striving to keep the application on the edge of technological developments. We have always had a clear vision of where things are headed in our little part of the Internet and we’re proud to be a part of community that can adapt to changes very quickly.

In 2009 we saw a lot of talk about and many changes ocurrying to the most popular torrent tracker websites. We also observed an increase in general usage and understanding of the underlying technology and it’s benefits. Until now, FrostWire used legacy LimeWire technology to support torrent downloads and was able to decently serve our community torrent needs. We thought that decent was not enough.

Now FrostWire’s BitTorrent engine has been entirely replaced and features all the power of a lightweight version of the Azureus BitTorrent Core under the hood.

Not only all the prior issues our users reported with torrents are gone, but downloading torrents with FrostWire is faster than ever. Torrent Bootstrapping has also significantly improved and in some cases the average download speeds are even 3x faster than with our previous torrent technology.

The introduction of gnutella based .torrent file search with our last release clearly stated our direction, a truly decentralized P2P network with the best of the BitTorrent and Gnutella networks.

BitTorrent Magnet Links Support
The new version of FrostWire also supports BitTorrent Magnets, meaning you only need to get special URL (no initial file downloads necessary) and FrostWire will fetch the Torrent Metadata on the P2P network (using the Azureus DHT technology).

.torrents can survive also in Gnutella
Now, not only will .torrent files survive in the Gnutella network, but they will be fully searchable [in gnutella] and ready to aid in BitTorrent downloads may those torrents ever be removed from web based indexing services.

Every member of the file sharing community will be able to share both the .torrent files as well as the actual content files allowing for the BitTorrent traffic to be fully de-centralized, thanks to Gnutella search and the BitTorrent DHT.

Get high on the BitTorrent DHT with FrostWire “Torrent Joint” version 4.20.1 and update your client now.

Other User Experience Updates
If you’re not getting enough search results from your peers, or you are seeing too many spam and fake results, it’s a good idea to Refresh your connections. FrostWire will fetch a list of healthy and recently crawled ultrapeers willing to take more peers.

Our community members repeatedly told us that the percentage indicator for download progress was not enough, so we added a new column that shows the progress of the download in bytes. Thanks for your feedback.

If you speak geek, here’s the changelog.

Changelog:
Version 4.20.9 "Torrent Joint" (August 2010)
- Fixes bug where FrostWire would not try to open exclusively UDP tracked torrents.
- New option -Dultrapeer=1 forces FrostWire to run as Ultrapeer. Only for hackers that build FrostWire.

Version 4.20.8 "Torrent Joint" (August 2010)
- Upgrades search, now powered with ClearBits.net results a service
   that indexes thousands of legal torrent files. (formerly known as
   LegalTorrents.com)
- New BitTorrent Connection Settings Available.
- New ability to configure the max. number of active torrent downloads.
- New ability to configure the max. number of peers per torrent.
- New ability to configure the max. number of torrent connections.
- New ability to configure the max. number of torrent uploads.
- Fixes torrent auto resume bug.

Version 4.20.7 "Torrent Joint" (July 2010)
- Improves torrent search dramatically.
- Upgrades to protect search results from spam.
- Source packaged (.dsc) for Debian/Ubuntu.

Version 4.20.6 "Torrent Joint" (April 2010)
- Upgrades Azureus Core to version 4.4.0.0 - Thanks to the Vuze/Azureus team for their hard work.

Version 4.20.5 "Torrent Joint" (March, April 2010)
- Fixes audio player issues. Now all MP3s should support skipping and gain control.
- Fixes bug on status bar speed meter. Now BitTorrent uploads speeds are added up and shown correctly in it.
- Fixes High CPU usage bug while loading hostiles ip list.
- Fixes a bug on MacOSX on which FrostWire would only start downloading a .torrent only if FrostWire was already running.
- The FrostWire windows installer will now clean FrostWire Desktop shortcuts if uninstalled.

Version 4.20.4 "Torrent Joint" (March 2010)
- Fixes connectivity issues for Mac version.

Version 4.20.3 "Torrent Joint" (March 2010)
- Fixes a bug where files couldn't be dragged out of the Library.
- Fixes a bug where opening a magnet link would freeze the UI while it was being fetched in the DHT.
- Fixes a bug where magnet links that were dropped on FrostWire wouldn't start downloading.

Version 4.20.2 "Torrent Joint" (HotFix)
- Fixes a bug on torrent resume.
- Installer sizes reduced over 58%

Version 4.20.1 "Torrent Joint" (February 2010)
- Major Upgrade: BitTorrent Engine replaced for a lightweight version of the Azureus BitTorrent core.
  FrostWire has become a far superior BitTorrent client starting version 4.20.x now supporting:
        - Trackerless Torrents (via Azureus DHT)
        - Improved Magnet link support (BTIH Magnet Links)
        - SuperSeeding
        - +100% Faster Torrent Connection Bootstraping  (No more "More Sources Needed" for .torrents that failed before)
        - +100% Faster Torrent Downloads in some occasions than 4.18.x
        - Transport Encryption capabilities
        - Improved UPnP implementation
- New Feature: The Download Manager now has a new column showing the amount of bytes downloaded per download.
- Update: The "Refresh Connections" Tool is now available even if you are Turbo Charged.
- Fixes a bug where Crash Reports would show an old version number. 

Screenshot of FrostWire “Torrent Joint” v4.20 – Click to enlarge

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