November 13, 2009 by sharky
The enormous impact that these trackers have on BitTorrent - both public and private - shouldn’t be overlooked. But their influence extends far beyond just torrent sites and into every facet of our filesharing subculture - Usenet, DC++, Warez sites, Release Blogs and all forms of peer-to-peer or direct downloading. If it’s a scene release, then there’s a good chance that it stemmed from a true scene tracker; a dominating tracker. And let’s be frank: if "the scene" cut all ties with scene trackers and no longer granted them access to new releases, the results would be catastrophic and widespread for all private trackers & public torrent indexers. As a whole, the entire filesharing pyramid would certainly collapse as we know it - warez forums, blogs, & filehosters, trackers would all suffer tremendously. Don’t fret; this won’t happen anytime soon.
The Paradigm Of A Great Tracker
Scene Access — A typical ’scene/0day tracker’ is one that has a direct line to scene releases, aka scene access or sceneaxx. To elaborate; when a new release is pre’d (released) it starts out at 0 minutes and 0 seconds - essentially this is when the countup begins, also known as afterpre. If a torrent site picks up this release and offers it on their tracker 2 minutes later, they will have a pre time of 2m 0s on that release. Even if great pretimes isn’t something that concerns you in regards to the merit of a tracker (which we can understand), the significance of scene access directly affects the content that is provided by other non-scene trackers. For example; genre-specific trackers (TV, movies, games, music) are almost completely reliant upon scene access (and trackers that have it), as a large portion of their content originates from scene trackers in the first place. Even the well-established large trackers (TL, RevTT and especially IPT) rely upon the releases found on scene trackers to supply them with fresh content.
The afterpre time of a release only tells a portion of the story; a small snippet into what really constitutes the overall framework of a great tracker. Perhaps more importantly is the number of pred releases that actually make it to a good tracker, the retention time, and the type (quality) of releases. These are all significant criteria in what distinguishes a dominating tracker from the rest of the pack.
Pretimes — Some suggest this is an overrated benchmark for measuring the soundness of a tracker. Yes and no. A tracker that has a solid scene connection will undoubtedly do better than a tracker without it (assuming that both trackers are relatively identical otherwise). Then again; a scene tracker with an ugly design and no peers will unquestionably fail. However, scene content is the single most important factor for what characterizes a dominating tracker, and scene access combined with great pretimes distinguishes this. But there’s another reason why pretimes can be irrelevant:
[About pretimes] - When interpreted improperly, pretime/tracer stats can be somewhat misleading, which is evident on public IRC trace channels. Pred releases are divided into two categories - spam and non-spam. Spam includes 0DAY (small apps), XXX-0DAY (imagesets, siterips), MP3s (music releases), MVIDs (music videos), EBOOKs, WII DLCs, TV-DVDRips, unknowns, and others (which may include language-specific rls). Rule of thumb is: anything under 100MB usually fits into spam (although TV-DVDRips are a known exception). Non-spam includes main releases such as TV, XviDs, DVDRs, regular XXX, HD/x264, GAMES, APPS/PC ISOs, etc. Some trackers carry spam; some don’t - for this (as applied in reference to other trackers’ pretimes and ‘win’ percentage), trackers can achieve grossly inflated tracer stats based on being the only tracker in the ‘race’.
Pred Releases/Torrents — Good pretimes mean nothing if not combined with sheer volume of content that the tracker has to offer. The continual freshness of newly added torrents is what keeps members coming back to browse multiple times a day. Good trackers will add hundreds of new torrents daily which includes unique packs, special uploads and internal releases in addition to fast scene content.
Retention & Peers — Retention refers to how long a torrent stays alive on the tracker after being indexed. Good trackers generally don’t have a problem with this, and have found ways to encourage long-term seeding either through a seed-bonus system, freeleech categories or simply by being ratio-free. Peers (seeders & leechers) are what hold the economy of a tracker in check; a high number of seeds ensures great speeds for downloaders and increased longevity of the torrents. Leechers are equally as significant, and provide upload data to those who are seeding older (freeleech) torrents, as well as to initial uploaders and other members in the swarms of popular torrents. This synergy provides a copacetic balance necessary to the life of a tracker.
Community — A tracker is only as good as its members (and staff). The number of overall members isn’t nearly as important in relation to the number of good, active users. A high level of activity on the tracker is a necessity to the overall health of the torrents - but community goes much deeper than just the "tracker". IRC involvement, forum discussion, contests, promos & special events, polls, staff feedback, future development - all of these are essential aspects required in maintaining a successful tracker.
Design/Usability — Like food, people eat with their eyes first; the same can be said for trackers. A tracker that is visually unappealing or difficult to navigate will not do well, regardless of content.
Speeds — Not quite as important as it once was; most good trackers will host new torrents through seedboxes. For older torrents, this goes back to the number of peers - although it helps if the majority of members are also using seedboxes.
But enough about all that, and on with the list!
Part I - The Top Three Dominating Trackers
It takes more than just access to the latest scene releases to make it as a dominating tracker in a BT world filled with copycats, release thefts, good axx and jostling over who has the best pretimes. You can count on three fingers today’s dominating trackers - and that’s ScT, SCC & GFT, which we’ll go into extensive detail about. These trackers are more than just a sum of their parts.
ScT vs SCC - In terms of content it’s difficult to compare ScT to SCC, since ScT doesn’t index - or race - most scene spam releases, whereas both GFT and SCC index just about everything that hits the scene. For this, SCC lists more total torrents than ScT - but in terms of quality releases (non-spam), ScT wins in an overwhelming landslide over all other trackers. Having said that; at ScT you won’t find the latest scene music, xxx siterips, 0day apps, ebooks and other content globally accepted as prespam - ScT simply refuses to race most spam. GFT and SCC are far better at providing a clearer view into what the scene has to offer - both are more thorough than ScT when spam is factored into the equation.
| Spam | Non-Spam | |
| ScT | ~2,000 | ~24,000 |
| SCC | ~30,000 | ~10,000 |
| GFT | ~14,000 | ~5,300 |
ScT
ScT shouldn’t be in the Top Three. They deserve to be in their own class above all other trackers: there is ScT, and then the rest. If you’re looking for non-spam quality scene releases, exclusive packs and fast pretimes, there is no better tracker than ScT. Running strong for more than 4 years, ScT is held in high regard as the most complete, well-rounded scene tracker that exists on the Internet today.
- Online Since: August, 2005.
- Alexa Rank: 25,300
- Members: nearly always at full capacity at 20,000.
- Torrents: 27,252 (total); 26,116 (active)
- Peers: 214,132 (Seeders - 203,229; Leechers - 10,903); S/L ratio = 18:1 (est.)
- Oldest Active Torrent: 2005-09-20
Content: The acronym ScT doesn’t stand for SpamTorrents. ScT prides itself on being the only true non-spam scene tracker, without filling the tracker full of mundane scene releases. The number of new torrents added daily is normally between 150 - 200; quite admirable considering that spam isn’t included.
Pretimes: Inarguably some of the fastest pretimes on the planet, when averaged. Here are some recent stats which go back about 2 months from a private IRC trace channel ran. Remember that these stats do not include prespam races.
ALLTIMESTATS:
#1 ScT (11640p) - #2 SCC (10429p) - #3 GFT (8239p) - #4 TV (5943p) - #5 TiT (2621p) - #6 ViZZ (1289p) - #7 DDT (1257p) - #8 PTM (1055p) - #9 DH (792p) - #10 FF (783p) - #11 HT (669p) - #12 ACE (601p).
*p = Points. For each race, trackers are awarded 5 points for a win, 3 points for second place, and 1 point for third.
ALLTIMEWINS:
#1 ScT (1824) - #2 SCC (1518) - #3 GFT (948) - #4 TV (882) - #5 TL (416) - #6 TiT (183) - #7 HT (104) - #8 TD (101) - #9 PTM (91) - #10 ViZZ (78) - #11 DDT (75) - #12 ACE (67) - #13 TBy (59).
*Stats for RevTT are not included, since they don’t want to be traced.
Stats shown above may also include improperly filtered releases, such as TV-DVDRiPs being reported as non-spam which can inflate the numbers by as much as 5K for trackers that race them as individual releases, when in fact these should be sorted into the spam category. But now we’re just nitpicking.
Retention & Peers: ScT has an average of 10.2 seeds for every torrent. The average life of a torrent is about 6 months, although more than 50% of all torrents are older than this, which shows some very good retention. To encourage seeding, all regular torrents (these have pretimes associated to them) are set to "75% download" counted. Thus, if you download a 100MB torrent, only 75MB is charged towards the download on your account (as opposed to 100% like other sites). Also, anything without a pretime is freeleech - which includes TV, Music & Movie Packs - although packs can be found in just about every browse category.
- * Torrents with pretimes must be seeded to 1:1 or for 72 hours (3 days).
- * Freeleech torrents must be seeded to 1:1 or for 120 hours (5 days).
- * Global ratio on account must be kept to 1.0 or higher.
Community: ScT has a remarkably active community, in both forums and IRC.
- • IRC: ScT possesses multiple IRC channels, some are only available to certain user classes which promotes userclass upgrading - and of course, seeding. At any given time, there are ~600 members on their main IRC channel.
- • Forums: Topics - 23,559. Posts - 408,938. Proof that ScT members are a communicative bunch, there are more forum topics than members.
Usability: ScT uses a highly-customized version of TBDev, which continues to be the source code of choice for 0day/scene trackers. Aside from easy-to-browse categories, torrents can be filtered (arranged) to show hi/lo seeds, leechers, size, # of files, date added, # completed and # of snatches.
Speeds: Seedbox stats are not known, but it has been officially guesstimated by staff that 60% of ScT members own at least one seedbox. A further 30% of all members reside in Sweden, where a seedbox isn’t required to provide great download speeds. That said, a 12,000-seedbox strong tracker is a powerful thing; speeds will never disappoint. Just check out this image.
Extra Features: As innovative as it is thorough, ScT continues to set a high bar for other trackers by implementing these features:
- • Added IPv6 to the site, tracker and IRC - we’ve yet to uncover any other trackers that have implemented this on any of these three levels.
- • Has two webservers - eu and us - and uses GeoIP to direct members to the best server to ensure consistently fast browsing (GeoIP is also incorporated into ScT’s tracker).
- • Among just a handful of sites that has an optional SSL tracker (https).
- • Special RSS: Unseen elsewhere is their unique RSS Feed Configurator, whereby members are able to create custom feeds based upon multiple criteria (categories, SSL/non-SSL, feed type, # of feed items, etc).
Editorial:
If the above points didn’t already sell you on how appreciated an account as ScT is, we don’t know what will (but we’ll try). While ScT typically avoids racing ’spam’ releases, this is not to say they don’t offer them. Often they’ll repackage these as ScT exclusive packs, such as daily 0day releases which include hundreds of releases bundled together into one convenient download (in contrast to ‘racing’ these rls individually, they still offer them - but as packs). Likewise with TV spam, anime, small games, xxx-0day, and any other rls dubbed as spam - likely (but not always) ScT will carry it, but not individually as its own torrent. Thus, to say that ScT only has 27K torrents doesn’t do justice to the true amount of releases available on the tracker. Just check out the 2,000+ packs, and you’ll get a bigger picture of what ScT truly has to offer.
SCC
Let there be little doubt that SCC is a top contender among scene trackers, and rightly so. For more than 3 years now SCC has been setting records for pretime accomplishments, and is one of (if not the most) thorough trackers in terms of overall volume of scene content added. SCC doesn’t serve the purpose to replace ScT as a complete alternative to scene access (and vice-versa); both trackers have undoubtedly earned their right as dominating trackers, albeit for somewhat different accomplishments. Simply put - true scene-freaks need both trackers to round out the consistency, quality and quantity of scene content that’s available.
- Online Since: September, 2006.
- Alexa Rank: 31,000
- Members: 14,721 / 16,000
- Torrents: 42,370 (total); 42,054 (active)
- Peers: 191,518 (Seeders - 186,289; Leechers - 5,229)
- Oldest Active Torrent: 2006-12-21
Content: SCC doesn’t pull any punches with allowable scene content, and pretty much carries everything that comes out. As an all-around general scene tracker, SCC is the best of the bunch. This true 0day tracker indexes it all, and carries both non-spam and spam (prespam which includes Apps/0day, MP3s, music vids & TV-DVDRiPs - which aren’t only difficult to find elsewhere, but come armed with amazingly fast pretimes on them).
Pretimes: No matter what source you look at, SCC is a bonafide contender. SCC is ranked as the #2 tracker as seen above (both on points and wins). However, public preDb IRCs such as p2p-net.eu (which allows for filtering spam/non spam) lists SCC as the top tracker in both spam and non-spam. The only reason we could surmise for a discrepancy here is in what p2p-net (or other public DBs) categorize as "spam" that makes it to other networks as non-spam.
Regardless of how the data is interpreted, both trackers are indeed the fastest. But to put SCC on a level playing field (if anything else, at least on a public level), here are the stats as announced by p2p-net.eu’s public #tracer:
SITES!: (this includes p2p-net.eu’s non-spam only)
#1 SCC: 22369, #2 ScT: 15465, #3 TV: 6434, #4 TL: 4842, #5 TC: 2576, #6 GFT: 2425, #7 TGB: 2243, #8 HT: 1672, #9 PTM: 1547, #10 THS: #11 RBy: 1276, #12 TD: 1228, #13 NT: 1182, #14 TCS: 1174.
SITES! -spam: (this includes both spam races and non-spam races)
#1 SCC: 56350, #2 TV: 39430, #3 TGB: 20656, #4 ScT: 17616, #5 HT: 14437, #6 GFT: 12666, #7 VIP: 9769, #8 PTM: 7512, #9 THS: 6525, #10 TL: 5948, #11 TD: 3641, #12 ScR: 3464, #13 RBy: 3386, #14 TC: 2578.
*Stats above are not for "wins" but for overall instances that each tracker has been involved in a race, regardless of how they placed.
Note above: SCC has been involved in 56,350 total races, with 22,369 of them classified as ‘non spam’. To compare, ScT has been in 17,616 total races, with 15,465 of them being ‘non spam’.
Retention & Peers: SCC has an average of 4.4 seeds for every torrent. To promote long-term seeding, nearly three-quarters of all 42,000+ torrents are freeleech - which can be found in the Archive & MP3/0Day sections. Over the past four months, SCC has added nearly 8,000 new active torrents to the tracker (had 35,000 in July).
- * You are required to seed to a 1:1 ratio, or for at least 36 hours.
- * Members with a site ratio higher than 1.5 are allowed to H&R.
- * Global ratio above 0.75 is expected to be kept at all times.
Community: A very tight-knit group of members, which includes many staffers from other trackers.
- • IRC: Has a unique feature whereby to join their IRC channels, you’ll need to first connect to their server (register with your sitenick and identify), and then click the "Invite" button through SCC’s IRC link on the website to gain access. SCC’s main channel usually has 300+ online members.
- • Forums: Topics - 3,385. Posts - 70,532. Stats here would be higher, but SCC recently removed their XXX forum section. There’s also a unique scene news area, with discussion on scene groups, release standards, release dates and scene notices.
Usability: SCC incorporates three distinct browse pages, depending on the release type:
- • Browse (main) - This is where their non-spam releases are indexed, lists about 10,000 torrents at any given time.
- • MP3/ODay - Where spam releases for 0Day apps, MP3s and music vids are listed. This section is freeleech, and currently has about 28,500 torrents.
- • Archive - This is where ‘packs’ are listed for TV, Movies and Games, as well as TV-DVDRiPs - lists 3,225 torrents, all of which are freeleech.
Speeds: Like ScT, the majority of SCC members own a seedbox, ensuring great DL speeds for just about everything. Both home ISP and seedboxes can easily max-out.
Misc:
- • Recently removed the unlimited invites to What.CD and Waffles.fm.
- • Has a system (in forums) where individual archive scene releases (and packs) can be requested to be filled.
- • Seeding rules are currently the same for regular non-freeleech torrents (1:1 or 36 hours) although this will likely be changing sooner than later.
Editorial:
If you’re looking for the Internet’s most consistent tracker in terms of overall scene releases & retention, look no further than SCC. While SCC doesn’t quite contain the same caliber of non-spam releases as ScT, SCC more than makes up for it by offering a vast array of scene music, 0Day apps and misc releases. With more than 1,000 special packs for TV, Music, Movies & Games (all are freeleech), SCC is a tracker that shouldn’t be viewed as a total replacement to ScT, but rather as a complimenting tracker that offers a different genre of diverse content. When combined, SCC and ScT are formidable allies for obtaining just about anything, and together provide an unparalleled completeness of scene-related content.
GFT
While certainly there are trackers that list more torrents than GFT, here’s a scene tracker with amazing axx that provides more new daily torrents than any other tracker. On any given day, GFT adds up to 600 new scene-only torrents, making it the most prolific 0day tracker on the Internet today.
- Online For: About 18 months.
- Alexa Rank: 92,000
- Members: ~3,000
- Torrents: 18,700 (active) - torrent stats frequently fluctuate
- Peers: unknown (stats not published on tracker)
- Oldest Active Torrent: 2009-06-15
Content: GFT’s strength is in numbers. No site can come close to competing with GFT’s colossal 15,000+ new torrents that are added to the tracker each month. GFT doesn’t pull any punches with the content, and races just about every category of scene release. We need not mention what ’site categories’ make up GFTs content, this tracker is all-encompassing for every type of scene release imaginable. While not well-known as a tracker that carries packs, there’s still a pretty decent selection in their GFT-Gems category.
Pretimes: For pretimes, GFT easily holds its own with giants ScT and SCC and is listed in the #3 spot for both all-time wins and all-time points - which is quite remarkable considering how much prespam they race (which isn’t counted).
Retention & Peers: The only thing that plagues GFT is the number of peers and overall retention of torrents, which is certainly understandable for a tracker that adds as much content as they do. The oldest active torrent on the site is just 5 months old. However, frequent browsers of GFT will assuredly find everything they’re looking for, assuming the release doesn’t go too far back. Throughout their history, it would be fair to say GFT has added well in excess of 100,000 torrents (probably closer to 200K, or even more) although only a small fraction of this exists on the site today. So it pays to visit often, especially when searching for that special new app or music release.
Community:
- • IRC: Very active main IRC channel with anywhere from 100-200 online members; also has their own pre and spam channels.
- • Forums: Topics - 1,752. Posts - 37,672 - very busy forums for a tracker with 3K members.
Usability: Everything is added to a single browse page, where all site categories are listed. Default browse categories can be set in the User CP, as well as removing XXX releases if so desired. Advanced User CP settings: Hidden shoutbox needs to be enabled in the CP. IRC access, forums, tracker browsing, security, personal info - all of these can be customized through the user CP.
Speeds: All new additions are hosted by GFT’s seedboxes which ensure great speeds (although members are able to upload and fill requests).
Misc Features:
- • GFT is a ratio-free tracker - all torrents must be seeded for 48 hours.
- • Shows a list (next to user stats) of downloaded torrents that need to be seeded longer, in order to hit the 48 hour mark.
- • Bonus system - For every hour that you seed a torrent (above 50 MB), you are awarded with 1 Karma Bonus Point (used for invites or a custom title).
- • Unique userclass system, whereby members can transcend class based on the number of downloaded torrents (and average seed time), as well as through uploaded GBs.
- • Reseeds can be directly requested through each torrent.
Editorial:
Fast, reliable, great pretimes & ratio-free, GFT is relatively a newcomer to the scene but is already firmly established as the #3 dominating tracker. There truly is no other tracker as thorough as GFT for catching the true vastness of what the scene has to offer. Popular torrents, spam releases and everything in between, GFT is certainly one of the Internet’s leading scene trackers.
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