Lahore – The New York Times (NYT) in conjunction with GigaOm published an article “BitMate Brings BitTorrent to the Developing World” on 28th February on the BitMate project undertaken by Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) School of Science and Engineering Computer Sciences (CS) Department Associate Professor and BitMate project Head Dr Umar Saif and students. BitMate is a modified BitTorrent client that allows people to share and download torrents over dial-up connections. It has been designed to enhance host’s performance with low-bandwidth connections without adversely affecting the performance of other peers on BitTorrent networks. Dr Saif and his team claimed a download performance increase of as much as 70 percent during eight months preceding client’s general public release.
The project has been funded by a joint grant from the HEC/US State Department in collaboration with UC Berkley. It is a result of two years of development and will be significant for developing countries where broadband internet access is limited.
Dr Saif told NYT, “BitMate provides a level playing field for Internet users in the developing world, if people are given a means to efficiently access data, you will be surprised with what they can do with it!”
