[Krusty]

Well, I had need for a .torrent file yesterday so I downloaded a BT client so that I could get it. Its a huge file ... BT has been averaging about 10K/sec down but a WHOPPING 39-40k up. I've served off nearly 4x what I've actually gotten down.

This isn't very cool.

[gorickey]

What BT client are you using?

"Tomato Torrent" allows you to control how fast you upload (if at all), if that helps...

[nooon]

Originally posted by gorickey:
What BT client are you using?

"Tomato Torrent" allows you to control how fast you upload (if at all), if that helps...

The official client also does this. (press the top-right widget)

Bittorrent is excellent as long as you use recent torrents with lots of seeders.

[Krusty]

Thanks guys. I started with Tomato Torrent but just downloaded the official client as well. I wasn't able to find the upload limiting feature in TT quickly in the Help files. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction (for both clients).

[ambush]

Blame the users torrenting the file for limiting their UL... that's kinda bad

Anyway... users need to be good citizens and UL at LEAST a 100% ratio.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Well, I had need for a .torrent file yesterday so I downloaded a BT client so that I could get it. Its a huge file ... BT has been averaging about 10K/sec down but a WHOPPING 39-40k up. I've served off nearly 4x what I've actually gotten down.

This isn't very cool.

Do you have the proper ports opened on your firewall?

[lngtones]

Originally posted by kupan787:
Do you have the proper ports opened on your firewall?

Obviously because he said it was downloading at 10k/sec...

[-Q-]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Thanks guys. I started with Tomato Torrent but just downloaded the official client as well. I wasn't able to find the upload limiting feature in TT quickly in the Help files. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction (for both clients).

Once the torrent starts downloading, click the 'Show More' arrow. The upload limit is under 'configuration'.

And torrent can be hit or miss. Something recent can be downloaded in hours. Something older can be hard/impossible to download. But more often than not it works.

[kupan787]

Originally posted by lngtones:
Obviously because he said it was downloading at 10k/sec...

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. Before I opened the correct ports, I would get pretty crappy download speeds. Once I fixed the issue, I got blazing fast speeds.

[Dex13]

I always use this configuration 10/10, all always seems to go well with this ...

[Dex13]

Originally posted by kupan787:
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. Before I opened the correct ports, I would get pretty crappy download speeds. Once I fixed the issue, I got blazing fast speeds.

From my experience as well you will get crappy download speeds if not all ports are open, my computer always freezed when it hopped a port or what not if it wasn't open, so i opened the ports and all goes well now with bit torrent.

[chris_h]

Originally posted by ambush:
Blame the users torrenting the file for limiting their UL... that's kinda bad

Anyway... users need to be good citizens and UL at LEAST a 100% ratio.

Actually a torrent will always end up at 1:1 average ratio... so for every person who seeds 150%, someone else will only be able to get to 50%

[nooon]

Originally posted by kupan787:
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. Before I opened the correct ports, I would get pretty crappy download speeds. Once I fixed the issue, I got blazing fast speeds.

so what ports are we talking about here? 6881-6889?

[sanity assassin]

Originally posted by nooon:
so what ports are we talking about here? 6881-6889?

That should be ok, but there's some clients that ask for ports 6881-6999 to be open, but you should be fine going up to 6889.

If you're getting slow downloads it could be a number of things, but definitely reduce your upload ratio since that will throttle your download speeds.

[Taipan]

Originally posted by nooon:
so what ports are we talking about here? 6881-6889?

Hi!

That's one of the reasons why I'm using Azureus, it needs only one port (6881), no matter how many downloads you have. Good thing if you have a router that does not allow to forward port ranges.

[Groovy]

Originally posted by lngtones:
Obviously because he said it was downloading at 10k/sec...

Obviously you have no idea how torrents work

[Groovy]

Originally posted by nooon:
so what ports are we talking about here? 6881-6889?

those are tracker <--> client ports. you need peer to peer ports

LOTS OF THEM. a good amount for 1 torrent is 100+
ports so you can connect to 100+ others and max your
DL out. A good range is to just open the tracker ports
and p to p ports like this in your firewall

6881~7200 (good for 2 high speed torrents)

and of course assign that range to your torrent app which will use 6881
for the first tracker and should if the client is following spec IIRC
start at 6890 for the first p to p.

I DLed a huge doom 3 preview (the E3 one i think) and was connected
to 250+ peers for just that 1 torrent but i maxed out my DL at 600KBytes
a second which was sweet

[Groovy]

Originally posted by kupan787:
I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or not. Before I opened the correct ports, I would get pretty crappy download speeds. Once I fixed the issue, I got blazing fast speeds.

yup. most people only open the tracker to client range. (why most people do this
is a mystery to me ) the tracker takes 1 port per torrent. your UL will take at
least 1 port but the default is 4 so you are connecting to 4 others you are sending to
at any one time. That leaves you with only 4 more ports. well you can only connect
to 4 peers for DL then you get speeds liked well.... like the first poster

the client is only supposed to use tracker to client ports if all the p to p ports
are taken. So if you assign none then the tracker to client ports are used for p tp p
from the get go.

ok enough rambling lol

[Zimphire]

Originally posted by ambush:
Anyway... users need to be good citizens and UL at LEAST a 100% ratio.

Indeed, and not shutting down as soon as you get the file.

[cnelson87]

forgive a noobie please! how do you open LOTS OF THEM?

Originally posted by Groovy:
those are tracker <--> client ports. you need peer to peer ports

LOTS OF THEM. a good amount for 1 torrent is 100+
ports so you can connect to 100+ others and max your
DL out. A good range is to just open the tracker ports
and p to p ports like this in your firewall

6881~7200 (good for 2 high speed torrents)

and of course assign that range to your torrent app which will use 6881
for the first tracker and should if the client is following spec IIRC
start at 6890 for the first p to p.

I DLed a huge doom 3 preview (the E3 one i think) and was connected
to 250+ peers for just that 1 torrent but i maxed out my DL at 600KBytes
a second which was sweet

[typoon]

Anybody know any good torrents?

[-Q-]

Originally posted by typoon:
Anybody know any good torrents?

I like the one that got me the DVD version of the Star Wars movies from the Laserdisc, before Lucas went in and messed things up.

The ones for the unbroadcast episodes of Wonderfalls was also nice.

Some of the scans of the comic books from my youth were nice.

Or do you mean Torrent sites?

I like Apple

[typoon]

Originally posted by -Q-:
I like the one that got me the DVD version of the Star Wars movies from the Laserdisc, before Lucas went in and messed things up.

The ones for the unbroadcast episodes of Wonderfalls was also nice.

Some of the scans of the comic books from my youth were nice.

Or do you mean Torrent sites?

I like Apple

Yeah that's what I meant. Anyone know any more?

[angelmb]

Oh well, another newbie who though 'Torrent' was only a spaniard/mediterranean surname does the ports thing work in the same way with xDonkey?

[kupan787]

Originally posted by angelmb:
does the ports thing work in the same way with xDonkey?

I believe so. In the sense that with edonkey, if your ports aren't properly configed you will get a low ID, and you will get crappy download speeds.

[Fonzie]

Originally posted by typoon:
Yeah that's what I meant. Anyone know any more?

What does "torrent" or "torrent files" give you in Google ?? you should try it out

[nooon]

nice going fellas.
posting links to torrent-sites is always a good thing.

[bmedina]

Originally posted by chris_h:
Actually a torrent will always end up at 1:1 average ratio... so for every person who seeds 150%, someone else will only be able to get to 50%

Your math doesn't make sense. If you seed to 150 percent, you've uploaded the file 1.5 times. So in essence, you've supplied it to one person in whole and another person half way.

And the issue with ports: if you're behind a router doing NAT, you need to forward ports 6881-6889 to your computer. Otherwise, other clients won't be able to initiate connections to you (you'll only be able to initiate connections to others). With the official client, you can use the "Peer Detail" section to see if you're okay. If all the connections have an "l" next to them, you don't have things set up properly. If any of them have an "r," you're good to go.

[Groovy]

Originally posted by nooon:
nice going fellas.
posting links to torrent-sites is always a good thing.

2 seconds on google and they all show up. if people use certain sites that is on them.

FTP , usenet newgroups, (insert hundreds of ways here) can all be used for good or evil.
I have always felt it is up to the user if they should cross that line or not. I can't help
torrent users for legit stuff if I can't post the how to on the system. What they do with the
knowledge is up to them.

yeah yeah IMHO of course

[Groovy]

Originally posted by cnelson87:
forgive a noobie please! how do you open LOTS OF THEM?

you go to your firewall (be it hardware or software one) and open the port range.
how depends on your firewall which i can not tell you how that works because
i have no idea what you have and are using.

read the docs for the firewall you are using

[Groovy]

Originally posted by bmedina:

And the issue with ports: if you're behind a router doing NAT, you need to forward ports 6881-6889 to your computer.

true. I hope that anyone that has more than 1 computer on their LAN
would realize that but yes that should be said just in case. In fact
is is best to forward the whole port range.

for me it is a simple as

6881~8000 to 192.168.1.whatever

My router listens for when an app uses port 6969 (the announce port
for torrents) when it sees outgoing on port 6969 it opens 6881~8000
and forwards that range.

When data on any of those port stops flowing for 5 minutes my router
closes all those ports. (you can set the time limit to whatever you want)

it works very well.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by chris_h:
Actually a torrent will always end up at 1:1 average ratio... so for every person who seeds 150%, someone else will only be able to get to 50%

Your math is bwoken.

One point is that you're not the only one uploading.

Another is that you're not just uploading to a single user at a time.

Another is that if you've uploaded 150%, it doesn't mean that you've uploaded the entire file and half of it again. It just means that the total volume of chunks you've uploaded to all those potentially dozens of users connected to your machine exceeded the size of the download. You may actually have uploaded only 25% of the file, but that six times, while the users are getting the rest from somewhere else much faster.

[Krusty]

Still not going too FAST downstream for me (8-10k) but I limited to, and am serving about 16k up. Also, opened my ports up to 7000 ... must just be the nature of this particular torrent.

[samson1286]

if anyone is looking for some torrents of some great live music, then bt.etree.org is the place to be. be careful though, if u are anything like me it will take up a lot of your spare time.

peace

[Sarc]

that's exactly what happens when you are behind a firewall or on a NAT'ed network ... are you ?

if so ... don't blame BT for it.

[Grrr]

Yeah BT is a touchy beast when it comes to ports.. Need to triple check that your firewall is all set up correctly.
Secondly! Some Torrents seem to work better with some client software than others. For ages I had been using the official(?) 3.2.2 client. It was simple and did the job perfectly well. But I found that more recently it was giving me very poor download speeds with pretty much all torrents. Like no more than 10k and often very erratic speeds. I switched to the Tomato client (which seems overly complicated I might add!) and I am now getting much better download speeds. Usually at least 40k, which isn't too shabby for my .5mb adsl connection.

While im here, I have read many times that if you restrict upload speeds, then your download ultimately gets capped too. But numerous times I have experimented with this, and restricting upload never affected my download at all

[Zadian]

Originally posted by Groovy:
true. I hope that anyone that has more than 1 computer on their LAN
would realize that but yes that should be said just in case. In fact
is is best to forward the whole port range.

for me it is a simple as

6881~8000 to 192.168.1.whatever

Thanks for that information. BitTorrent worked for me without port forwarding and i normally get pretty good download rates.
But i don't use BitTorrent that often (only for some game demo movies and new Quake RA3 versions).

[cnelson87]

Thanks for the info on ports.
As far as torrents being used for good or evil... I know there is always going to be abuse, but one example for good is X-Plane, they use torrents for releasing updates. My .02.

[angelmb]

Originally posted by Groovy:
true. I hope that anyone that has more than 1 computer on their LAN
would realize that but yes that should be said just in case. In fact
is is best to forward the whole port range.

for me it is a simple as

6881~8000 to 192.168.1.whatever

My router listens for when an app uses port 6969 (the announce port
for torrents) when it sees outgoing on port 6969 it opens 6881~8000
and forwards that range.

When data on any of those port stops flowing for 5 minutes my router
closes all those ports. (you can set the time limit to whatever you want)

it works very well.

How do you do that?

[nooon]

The Tomato client doesn't start downloading unless I turn off my firewall. Even if I have ports 6881-6889 open..

[plugh]

Originally posted by nooon:
The Tomato client doesn't start downloading unless I turn off my firewall. Even if I have ports 6881-6889 open..

In Tomato, you can assign which port numbers are used, check there to see that they match your firewall

[blackbird_1.0]

After I open the ports, how do I set up Azureus for that?

[Devin Lane]

Just to clarify:

1. Since when is posting linkings to torrent sites ok on MacNN? Otherwise...

2. You don't need 100+ ports open per torrent. Most clients, with the exception of azureus, use ONE port per torrent, thus, you will need like 5-10 ports, ore more if your connection is beefy/you don't mind waiting weeks for a 5MB file.

I really wouldn't be surprised if this got locked real soon.

[dzhim]

Originally posted by Krusty:
Still not going too FAST downstream for me

Actually, I'm worried that we may be moving TOO FAST.

[Banghazi]

Originally posted by typoon:
Yeah that's what I meant. Anyone know any more?

isoHunt (do an I'm Feeling Lucky) has proved to be a godsend, especially if you are an IRC user.

[blackbird_1.0]

Originally posted by blackbird_1.0:
After I open the ports, how do I set up Azureus for that?

[bmedina]

The question about Azureus doesn't make sense. Azureus (and Bittorrent clients in general) uses those ports; once you open and forward them, there is no more to configure.

The nice thing about Azureus is that it gives a health meter. If your torrents get green health, you're ok. Otherwise, you have problems.

[blackbird_1.0]

I've got a software firewall and a router firewall on. Do I need both on?

[nforcer]

Originally posted by dzhim:
Actually, I'm worried that we may be moving TOO FAST.

GG Palmer

[Groovy]

Originally posted by Devin Lane:
Just to clarify:

1. Since when is posting linkings to torrent sites ok on MacNN? Otherwise...

it has always been ok. why wouldn't it? Many companies use torrents
to send out demos and videos. if you meant pirate ONLY sites that
is something else.

Originally posted by Devin Lane:

2. You don't need 100+ ports open per torrent. Most clients, with the exception of azureus, use ONE port per torrent, thus, you will need like 5-10 ports, ore more if your connection is beefy/you don't mind waiting weeks for a 5MB file.

not exactly. all clients use at least 3 ports during a torrent run when set up correctly.

6969 is the announce port. (used to start the process but then dropped)

6881~6890 is default tracker <-> client port. (used for things like
HEY CLIENT CONNECT TO THIS PEER always connected whole time to tracker etc....)

6891~ to whatever you want but at least 100 ports peer HIGH SPEED torrent with MANY peers.

Each peer needs 1 port so if you only have 5 to 10 ports you can only connect to 5 to 10
peers. that will mean a SLOW download unless you get lucky and 1 person is sending
out 500K to you but that is very rare and a good tracker will instruct that client to split
the BW among you and many others anyway. Now if there are 5 seeders and you
are the only leech AND the seeders are all sending 100K UP then you will hit 500K
but I have never seen that happen because the odds of you being the only
leech AND all the seeders sending at 100K is like billion to 1

since most people limit the UL speed to 5K (On PC side) you need 100 ports open to get
connected to 100 peers and thus 500K download speed. 5 to 10 ports will only get you
25K to 50K download speed on the average general torrent. Some mac only torrents do
much better because there is no way to limit UL in the basic mac client ( last time I used it
anyway, and that was awhile back) which most people still use. If they use Azureus they
almost always limit the UL speed a lot just like on the PC side clients.