Bittorrent

[demon9k]

BT can be very slow at times, but...

If you're getting slow speeds then make sure you are forwarding the Bit Torrent ports (6881-6999) to your PC.

Do you know how to do this on a home network to ISDN?

I have got the ISDN>PC>My PC. Both have WinXP and the normal winodws firewall running. How do I open those ports? Cos I am getting the dreaded yellow effect.

[Valken]

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/ics/icsconfiguration.htm

[Fusion]

see, i left BT downloading 4 albums last night - and when i checked this morning, none of them were even near complete - but upon checking the folders - i checked the mp3s inside, and they were the complete files.

anyone?

[Valken]

A bit more info on connection, client, OS, router, firewall, ISP etc please mate... otherwise I'd be just guessing.

If you're on 150k and tried to download 4 albums of say 60MB a piece one after another that's 240MB at I guess about a megabyte a minute which is 4 hours.

The thing is if you upload (or don't upload as the case may be) you don't get that speed and you'll never get the "best" speed you can get.

Concurrent downloads only compounds this problem.

[?pint]

Well, you see, that's what Bit Torrent does. Even though a download may not be complete, it will still give the file its completed size, if you know what I mean. I've got some video files, and even though it says they're complete, I can't open them because I get errors (cos they're not).

A good way to stop your upload bandwidth being hogged is, as mentioned before, to download Net Blocker. It's a really good utility, not just for Bit Torrent, but it also lets you prioritise downloads as well. Like if there's something important you're downloading that you want done first, you can limit the amount of bandwidth that Internet Explorer uses etc.

[Kirby]

The original BT client will allocate the entire file size upon starting the torrent. So if your download is 100Mb then it will create the 100Mb file first, then allocate the pieces to it.

Without resorting to sarcasm (although it's hard to take my eyes off the shiny progress bar), reasons why Shadows client is better than the original:

1) Less CPU overhead on huge torrents
2) Throttle upload (which works fine here)
3) Doesn't allocate HD space for entire file at startup
4) MUCH faster hashing on slow machines (like mine).

It's not just a question of the fact BT will use 25 of my 25k/sec up, but the fact it totally saturates bandwidth. Uploading using FTP at full speed and i can browse the internet fine. If i do that with BT then the internet is unusable.

[Valken]

The original BT client will allocate the entire file size upon starting the torrent. So if your download is 100Mb then it will create the 100Mb file first, then allocate the pieces to it.

Without resorting to sarcasm (although it's hard to take my eyes off the shiny progress bar), reasons why Shadows client is better than the original:

1) Less CPU overhead on huge torrents
2) Throttle upload (which works fine here)
3) Doesn't allocate HD space for entire file at startup
4) MUCH faster hashing on slow machines (like mine).

It's not just a question of the fact BT will use 25 of my 25k/sec up, but the fact it totally saturates bandwidth. Uploading using FTP at full speed and i can browse the internet fine. If i do that with BT then the internet is unusable.

Actually version 3.3 doesnt allocate the entire file... nor does it consume *that* much CPU time but we could argue about it all day... I'm simply saying that the original client has always worked fine for me.

[Kirby]

There's nothing wrong with the original client, just Shadows has stuff which is useful to me in.

Although the original one hammered my CPU with large torrents (1Gb+). I couldn't even play my NES emulator without it skipping liking crazy. I only have a PIII 700 though.

[Hodge]

Been trying to resume a download on a file for the past day down but all i get is a "Error bad data from tracker" and just waits there connecting to peers. Any ideas?

[ExpertKing]

had some experience with BT in the past, and like most people say its all to do with the number of seeds etc..


although a handy tip is to get the IP of the host ( i.e supernova etc) and enter the details along with the url into the following:-

c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
then doubleclick "hosts"
open with notepad


Can sometimes have a dramatic effect on the dl speed.

My best speed in recent times was 108kbp/s on a 2gig file

worst time..........0..1 on 10 gig file ><

[dgnr7982]

I have been using this for a couple of weeks now, the max DL speed I have managed was 116k/b sec (1MB line). I had yellow light at that speed despite the fact the needed ports were open, don't pay too much attention to the colours!

I use peerguardian and I get a lot of blocked stuff on there, stuff like adservers and P2P trackers show up in there, obvisously that won't stop your ISP chasing you up but its worth having nonetheless.

You need to be really patient with it, half the time my DL's are going at something like 0.2k/b sec but then all of a sudden jump to 30 - you never know how fast it will go so you just have to leave stuff on and be patient with it. Even if you get errors just leave it. I've had stuff sit there for days going nowhere, I've found it gets very slow during weekends due to the amount of users so its best to use during the week. You'll get much higher download speeds when you have a lot of the file as well like 80%+

I'm with Blueyonder, if I should get a letter telling me to stop downloading stuff I will, until then I will just make the most of it whilst I can, I usually limit my uploads (I use ABC which I find much better at getting connections) so I'm not killing bandwidth and can still browse the net.

I would imagine using max speeds all day and night would alert the ISP so maybe its best not to be too greedy and give it a rest for a few days every so often.


/edit just looking at the first post again it says the film company contacted his ISP re the downloading, this is somethng that peerguardian should protect against as all the main studios are listed in their bad IP range. It's gets updated every few days with new IP's so I'd recommend getting it if you use BT, if you do get caught you are a bit unlucky.

[Chadruharazzeb]

I keep getting a message saying "Problem connecting to tracker -<urlopen error (10061, 'connection refused')>"



Whassat? Problem my end? With my firewall? With my ISP? Or with BT itself?

I've set the firewall as suggested (ports 6881-6889 open), but nothing happens.

[Vaipon]

I keep getting a message saying "Problem connecting to tracker -<urlopen error (10061, 'connection refused')>"



Whassat? Problem my end? With my firewall? With my ISP? Or with BT itself?

I've set the firewall as suggested (ports 6881-6889 open), but nothing happens.

Just ignore that. Depending on how busy the tracker your .torrent file uses is, or what the rotation policy is for seeding whatever it is you are after, you'll get varying amounts of those messages. If you want to check the tracker is still up, you can edit the torrent file in an ascii editor and pull the hostname from the URL in the header. Then you can ping it to see if it's still alive. If not, get another torrent file. Larger torrents are normally better as they point to files which have been split into more smaller chunks, which tend to propogate more quickly. If you minimise the client, they should supress. The torrent client only needs a single update from a tracker to get things rolling, and if you leave it long enough it should eventually get a slot. Some public trackers rotate which files they are currently servicing, so you may have to wait a couple of hours until it becomes available again. It's not your firewall (no need to open specific ports unless you are running a hardware firewall or you are behind a router, software ones do it per application, so just grant btdownloadgui.exe access), or your ISP. The only thing you should do is cap the upload (ask Ravon about that). With BitTorrent, you should just start it and then leave it alone. It'll get what you are after eventually.

[Chadruharazzeb]

I've tried about 15 different files now and keep getting the same message. So if I cancel the error and leave the torrent open it will download eventually?

[Vaipon]

I've tried about 15 different files now and keep getting the same message. So if I cancel the error and leave the torrent open it will download eventually?

Yeah, basically that's what you should do. You have PM.