When the uTP protocol was announced, it promised to allow me to leave my torrents running all the time, without worrying about it interfering with my web-browsing, internet telephony, or other activities which require the use of my internet connections. The idea was that uTP was smart enough to notice when the network was under strain, and it would just back down to let other applications/users use the bandwidth. In my experience, the version of Transmission that delivered on this promise was the version shipped with Ubuntu 12.04. ( If I recall correctly, previous versions of Transmission includud uTP, but it did not work well enough to keep from interfering with other applications. ) Finally I could just leave my Transmission instance running all the time, without having to worry about throttling when other users were also wanting to use the internet. Or so I thought. It turns out there is a catch: Whenever Transmission connects to a peer that does not support uTP ( or has turned it off ), my connection gets just as hosed as if I had uTP turned off. The solution seemed obvious to me: Put a checkbox in Transmissions configuration that allows me to only accept connections to peeps that also use uTP.
This has been suggested on the Transmission Trac server: https://trac.transmissionbt.com/ticket/4927 ; however, it seems that it will not be implemented. My question is: Why ? Is this a misunderstanding between the developers and the end users ? For instance, the user at the given link words his suggestion so that it sounds like every packet should be transferred using uTP. I bet that this is not necessary. When connecting to a peer, see if they are using uTP, and if not, don't do business with them. Overhead could still be transferred using whatever protocol gets used now, just that the payload would effectively be limited to uTP. It seems as though having uTP support is essentially useless as long as I am still going to be transferring to peers that do not use it.
But maybe I am just underestimating the complexity of the problem. I apologize if this post comes across as trolling, that is not my intent. I would very much appreciate the input of anyone who has insight into this issue. Thanks !