I just started using ktorrent on Kubuntu and noticed that there was something called DHT that wasn't available. In my search for more information, I was led to this forum and found this thread. Only slightly better informed, I returned to ktorrent and modified some settings. The number of upload slots had been set to 2 and this did not allow DHT. Increasing the number to 5 caused the missing menu item to appear as others have described. (Setting it to 20 allowed upload speed to approach the download speed, but it saturated my home network so no other machine could reach the cable modem.)

SuSE's official packages remove DHT for some legal paranoia reasons. But like for many SuSE packages, you can search at http://benjiweber.co.uk:8080/webpin/ and find alternate software and versions. Actually the 2.1.4 package I found was missing a few dependencies like avahi and some python library. But eventually I got it installed.

However, it barely seems worth the trouble. I have 100 upload slots and only 5 of them are DHT. These are the 5% of users who use BitTorrent. The other 95% are on uTorrent or Azureus. IIRC from other threads, ATM these various clients are having a **** contest and disagree about the proper DHT protocol. The result is that DHT is not particularly useful on KTorrent at least if my above stats are typical. I'm curious if Azureus and uTorrent talk DHT to each other or not. In any event probably you could get closer to 50% DHT users if you used one of those other clients. I wonder if uTorrent runs ok under wine. eMule is able to fill a 20mbit fiber pipe under wine for me, though it does use about 40% of the CPU. ktorrent 2.2 doesn't mention on the front page any changes to their DHT strategy.

In other words, of my 100 upload slot users, 1 or 2 use KTorrent (e.g. me), 5 use BitTorrent, 45 use Azureus and 45 use uTorrent. So the fact that KTorrent and BitTorrent agree on the one true DHT protocol is not helpful because the other 94% of the users are inaccessible to me (over DHT).

Perhaps George can pour some oil on these troubled waters.

µTorrent supports the same DHT as we do (so the mainline DHT), only there is a slight incompatibility, which prevents us from saying with absolute certainty that a µTorrent client supports it. (we don't know if it is turned on or not)

They are just to lazy to turn one one stupid bit in the handshake. Anyway we ping every client regardless of the fact that they advertise their DHT support, so there is no problem with talking to µTorrent clients via DHT.

The current DHT situation is that there are 2 versions : mainline DHT and Azureus DHT (other then Azureus, I don't know any client which supports this)

George wrote:They are just to lazy to turn one one stupid bit in the handshake. Anyway we ping every client regardless of the fact that they advertise their DHT support, so there is no problem with talking to µTorrent clients via DHT.

Cheers. Suggestion: instead of a "red X" or a "green check" you could use a "yellow minus-sign" for those clients.

Unfortunate that Azureus has gone out into their own private Idaho, but I suppose with half the users they can have that hubris.

BigJim wrote:

George wrote:They are just to lazy to turn one one stupid bit in the handshake. Anyway we ping every client regardless of the fact that they advertise their DHT support, so there is no problem with talking to µTorrent clients via DHT.

Cheers. Suggestion: instead of a "red X" or a "green check" you could use a "yellow minus-sign" for those clients.

No, we are not gonna start adding special code for one client because it does not fully support the spec.

Unfortunate that Azureus has gone out into their own private Idaho, but I suppose with half the users they can have that hubris.

That is their choice.