I’m a big fan of the BitTorrent protocol despite its bad rap. Devised as a method to distribute large files without using up too much bandwidth, it’s become a hit for all the right and wrong reasons. It’s unfortunate that using BitTorrent can be so difficult: Tracker? Seeding? Port forwarding? Why did my ISP block my download, even though the files were legal?
BTaccel, a browser-based and remotely hosted BitTorrent client, can help to make things far easier. Feed it a link to a torrent and it does all of the P2P wizardry automatically, downloads the file and prepares it for you to grab off their servers via HTTP.
In order to use it to download torrent files, you’ll need to sign up with an invitation. Lucky for you, I’ve managed to get 150 free invites just for MakeUseOf readers! You may get it at the end of this article but continue reading to find out what BTaccel can do.
First, the user interface is Google-simple. You have an account link at the top, and a box in the center where you enter a URL or keyword. You can search by keyword, browse a website by proxy or paste in a direct link to a .torrent file.
Browsing torrent tracker sites via the proxy is a bit hit-and-miss in this alpha release. Sometimes, it will pick up a clicked torrent link, but not always. Your best bet is to browse the tracker in a separate window, copy the torrent link’s location and paste it into BTaccel.
After you’ve chosen a torrent, the next screen you see will be a summary of the torrent’s contents. Once the download from the swarm is complete, you can be alerted by email, and then you may download torrent files individually, or download a single compressed ZIP of all the files packed together.
To view the torrents currently in your download queue, hit the Home page and you’ll be presented with a list of your torrents and their progress.
What makes BTaccel so great is the fact that your system won’t be bogged-down with uploading and downloading. Once the torrent is finished, you’ll have a direct download from BTaccel’s servers (which must be completed within 72 hours). Another advantage is the fact that you can start a torrent from any computer with a browser and then finish the transfer at home, when it’s convenient.
In comparison to using a traditional BitTorrent client, BTaccel offers users an advantage on ease-of-use. For those interested in the protocol, we have plenty of BT-related material on MUO, especially The Big Book of BitTorrent, which I consider a must-read. How do you like your BitTorrent? Let us know in the comments.
We’ve got your hookup for the first 150 users to sign up with alpha invite code “100GBmakeuseof150″. If you’ve missed out, follow @btaccel on Twitter for a chance to score a code.
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Cool. Thanks :)
Thanks Tim!
Thanks a lot Tim. Wonderful article and a very sweet gift of invites
Looks interesting, but seems expensive. Hope they have a nice, cheap dedicated server.
Thanks guys !
Not that I would download anything illegal but if I had to for research purposes, are you saying that this site bypasses ISP restrictions and acts as an anonymizer? If so, sweeeeet!!
You have to create an account with an email address, so I wouldn’t say that it’s anonymous. Since it’s HTTP traffic between you and BTaccel, I doubt that your ISP would throttle it.
Does it seed?
It is said that at this point (alpha testing) btaccel does not seed, which in the spirit of BitTorrent is a no-no.
Also, you will be blocked from using certain trackers and have limits on others, like Demonoid.
All-in-all, I love the idea and the service and say thanks for spreading the word, which hopefully will help people who get wrongly harassed over trying to use BT when it’s clearly the best option for big file transfer.
Wow! Thanks for this. I grabbed a sign up and so far this appears to be one of the most useful things ive used this year! My ISP always throttled my torrent bandwith, with this im downloading at 10mb per second rather than the usual few kbs. :-)
so do you have to keep your browser open for the bittorrent to keep downloading to their server or just look for the file and let it do the rest? also, how does the bandwidth cap works for the free account?
many thanks dude! x)
Thanks,this could be really useful.You should also check Torrent Relay [http://www1.torrentrelay.com/fresh/web.pl?d=] i’m not so sure but i think it does almost the same thing even though Btaccel seems superior in my opinion.
Would you consider this a safer way to use torrents, considering the peer to peer issues of virus, malware etc.?
Oh, and Thank you also!
Downloading through BTaccel does not make the files safe. Whether you’re using BTaccel, Vuse, BitTornado or any other client, the files are coming from the same network. A good updated virus-scanner is still the best defense.
but does this hides your ip from the wild? im kinda confused on this, does the downloading works while you have the browser open and login to the account or does it happen even if you are not login in. also how does the bandwidth cap works on the account?
does this eliminate having your computer all the time just to complete the download?
thanks
BTaccel plucks the file from the Torrent network, so you’re not downloading it directly, thus your IP is known only to BTaccel. Also it’s not necessary to have your browser open to get the file from the swarm. You can come back to the page after so much time and the file should be there.
Now this looks very interesting especially as my attempts to use bit torrents up to now have been considerably less than successful and highly frustrating. I will definitely be testing this one out today. THANK YOU!
muchas gracias for the invite. looking forward to trying out this service!
Thanx Tim
Doesn’t seem to work for me. A file I requested is available, but it shows a http://:/getfile?info_hash=2d8d9b0…… link. The getfile thorws my browser/DNS server (OpenDNS) off.
What about seeding/uploading?
It does them?
Can I close the browser/tab and the torrent’s content will be available through BTaccel later, or I have to keep the webpage open?
Since its HTTP, can we use download managers ?
yes you can, once the download is complete in their server it gives you a download link. I used flashget and it worked
Thanks for the free invites!
Seems like a nice tool. However it all depends on the free account bandwitch… and whether or not there may be additional restrictions.
Anyway i have tested Bitlet, the previously mentioned toorentrelay, fileswire, instanttorrents and torrentdrive by imageshack, and i remark that this service apparently dont requires java (bitlet and others does) and i may have to test if the download speed are good (versus torrentdrive wich in my opinion is terrible slow, at least fot the last time i tested it).
Apart from that its nice to be able to browse the torrent sites with a integrated proxy, ideal for avoiding the increasing ip recording hassles.
It does not work.
I’m sorry. What exactly is not working?
The download torrent page for my a/c has not downloaded anything for 4 hours now, just stuck on 0% and nothing going on.
I gave this a try yesterday, and was pleasantly surprised at how fast it was…. i then went to bed, leaving my download at around 60% complete. i woke up to find my download back at 0% this morning… I thought maybe this was a one off, so i gave it a try, this time, downloading 2 smaller files.
Well, they have both been at 99% for over 3 hours now. So all i can say is, so far, it has not exactly done what its supposed to do. but still holds a lot of promise.
Thanks m8
from brazil
Why do people mention where their thanks comes from?
Useless stuck at 99% then overnight to 0% slow and unable to do the job. You have no right recommending this rubbish.
I’ve lost my password to their site and I’m still waiting for the password reset email…
Also, I put a torrent of 350MB more than 24 hours ago and it doesn’t make any progress.
I guess we’ll have to wait until they fix all their bugs and change it to beta, or even better, final release.
There is the email…
They are having some trouble lately with the servers so just give them some time. I have downloaded nearly 100 GB from their site till now and I like it.
What is the point reviewing sites that just don’t do what they say they can?
My 99% downloads are finally done…. but this is still an unreliable site. My downloads constantly get reset back to 0% or when am lucky, they fall from 20% to 14% and stay there.
Woo, thanks. Happy I got in. Looks like it will be useful.
I really love this service – it’s not 100% reliable, but there’s a reason it says in “alpha” red letters, isn’t it?
Anyway, great stuff!
I’ve been using this service for a week or so now, and the only thing i got to say is: awesome!
Bittorrent used to cripple my home network to an unusable state. For that reason i switched to usenet.
Now i just add my torrents there, wait some time and download them at high speed. I would even pay for this service. Thanks for the invite!
Thanks for the article and feedback. Tim did send us a lot of traffic and helped us find yet another couple of ways that we can break our server. For that we are grateful. For the bad experiences some of you had we are embarrassed.
Regarding the % dropping back down to less than what it was before, that was caused by a failed hard drive which took all of those torrents with it. We are “skimping” on quality drives to keep the costs down.
Regarding the 99% torrents that are stuck at 99% forever. We have noticed that some torrents just don’t complete. Have not been able to find a reason so far. For now, if a torrent does not complete within 72 hours we remove it from the queue.
Cheers and please email me at tom AT btaccel DOT com if there is anything I can help with.
Tom
Well, having used this service for about a week now, I feel like I can safely say that it sucks.
Yes, I know it’s alpha right now. But it just doesn’t work. It doesn’t suck in a alpha-sort of way, it’s just one big epic fail.
I tried over a dozen torrents from various sites. The only thing I got to work was a completely unnecessary Ubuntu torrent (which I correctly assumed would already be avialable) that I only loaded to satisfy my curiosity as to whether Btaccel worked at all.
Thanks for the invite, but I’m done. Great concept, but not even close in implementation.
After a week of being totally useless, see above this seems to be coming back to useful, managed 4 hours of tv today.
Thanks a lot Tim.
My first attempt at this using this service went remarkably smoothly. I entered the url of a popular 700+ MB title and was downloading the file within minutes. It was incredibly easy. However, the file (possibly due to it’s popularity) was still in btaccel’s cache from another user, which meant that it was available for immediate download. That isn’t the case for every torrent, obviously.
I tried to download some files but it still 0% . I thought at the beginning that their something wrong with torrents files however they all are healthy with lots of seeds, could anyone telling me the reason why.
good information
About “you may download torrent files individually, or download a single compressed ZIP of all the files packed together”
Can you explain how to download torrent files individually?
My download link only shows one big file.
I want to download torrent in pieces (e.g., 1024 pieces x 1024 KB)
I want to downlaod 1024 pieces individually for frequent connection interrupt.
Hello,
Downloading torrent in pieces will allow user to save the bandwidth usage when connection interrupt occurred.
After user download piece 10 out of 100 pieces and connection was interrupted,
next time user can download starting from piece 10 to assure the file.
User can reconstruct the original big file with certain program.
Otherwise, downloading one big file will cause user to download from start (as download resumability is not certain) when connection was interrupted.
It will save both time and bandwidth usage.
Please support that functionality.
Yep done that, maybe just give them sometime to get over the traffic.