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upstart writes in with an IRC submission for nutherguy:

Libtorrent Adds Support for BitTorrent v2, a Potential Game-Changer:

As developer of one of the leading BitTorrent libraries, Libtorrent, Arvid Norberg has been closely involved in the protocol's development. It's his code that makes a wide variety of torrent clients function properly. This includes uTorrent Web, Deluge, and qBittorrent.

[...] This week, Norberg announced the latest release of Libtorrent; version 2.0. This new version comes with many changes that eventually will make their way to torrent clients. The most crucial one is the implementation of the BitTorrent v2 protocol specification.

BitTorrent v2 is an improved version of the early BitTorrent standards and includes several technical changes.

[...] Tech-savvy readers can get the complete lowdown from the Libtorrent site but for the sake of simplicity, we will focus on how the changes will affect users.

[...] BitTorrent v2 changes the way torrents are 'compiled' and the newer version is not backward compatible.

[...] There is an option to create so-called "hybrid" torrents that can connect to both swarms.

[...] For now, it makes sense that publishers, including torrent sites, are best off using hybrid torrents.

[...] Finally, we should mention that it's not just the .torrent files that will change. The v2 and hybrid magnet links are different too.

Just how soon the v2 torrents will work depends on when clients update to the latest Libtorrent version. That can take days, but also more than a year. When large publishers and torrent sites will embrace the changes is uncertain as well, but eventually, it's the way forward for all.

Original Submission