Right. First things first. An admission... I've never downloaded a torrent in my life. At least not knowingly. I've certainly never used a client. In all honesty I'm not entirely sure what torrents are nor what the difference is between them and any other file sharing system.
I've come across a file I need in .torrent format and I suppose now's as good a time as any to join the 21st Century. So where should I begin? I obviously need a client. I've found a list of about 80. Which ones do you guys use? I'm not after any fancy features, I just want a safe and effective way to download this file.
Cheers all.
PS. I also don't use an mp3 player (well I do, but I use it as a memory stick for files - there are no songs on it)
PPS. I also have only burnt 2 CDs in my life.. and that was only a months ago, when I finally got around to backing up the recovery files on my computer.
man, for someone who has been an internet dweller for over ten years, I'm pretty shit at the internet.
You need a torrent client, like µTorrent (also known as uTorrent). It'll take the .torrent file, find all the seeds (people will the full file or set of files) and peers (others like you who need to DL the file(s)) and start downloading from them.
I forgot if you need to download something else before µTorrent, but I'm not sure.
I personally use www.torrentrelay.com (it's a free service, but it's better if you pay), which downloads the torrent for you (saving bandwidth on your end), then allows you to download the resulting file(s) directly from their own server.
Yeps, that's about it. In short: save the .torrent file to your disk. Download the client like µTorrent (http://www.utorrent.com/) and run it. Choose for File/Add torrent and browse to the downloaded .torrent file. You can now choose one of the files listed in the torrent or download it all.
If it's about the MAGS-torrent and you don't want to go through the hassle for one game, I can post separates.
Okay, cheers guys. Ah, nah it's not for MAGS. It's a book I can't find anywhere else.
I'll try this uTorrent thingy.
[update]
Well I'm doing it. It's a shame you can't chat to the other people who you're downloading it off.
Or can you?
I swear you used to be able to do that with Napster back when it was illegal.
I can't understand why nobody mentioned BitTorrent and that it's even the title of this thread. I use BitTorrent since quite a few years and I'm happy with it.
You don't even have to save the torrents to disk, you can open them directly from the browser and the file will download without having the torrent file on your HD.
+1 for uTorrent
I like it because it's small, simple, easy to use, and frequently updated.
If you're new to torrenting, remember to keep track of how much you're uploading. If it's bizzaro stuff like hard to find books or eccentric music no ones heard of, you won't get any nasty letters from your ISP about downloading or copyright infringement, but seed some of those more popular torrents and you can quickly go from uploading a few mb to a few gig in no time. I always set uTorrent to shut down when downloads complete, and delete torrents as soon as they are done downloading. It's kind of an ass thing to do, but I seed those hard to find rarities of the internet. At least for a little while.
Yes, BitTorrent is the name of a client AND the protocol. BitTorrent the client is perfectly fine for downloading torrents, but I and, I believe, most other people prefer other clients like uTorrent.
The thing that you're talking about with opening them straight from the browser can also be done by any other torrent client, including uTorrent. (Though you're wrong about the torrent file not being on your HD. It's there, it's just being stored in a temp directory somewhere depending on your settings.)
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Wed 01/07/2009 00:43:24
The thing that you're talking about with opening them straight from the browser can also be done by any other torrent client, including uTorrent.
Yeah, that wasn't (necessarily) meant to be an advantage of BitTorrent, just a general point.
Quote from: Vince Twelve on Wed 01/07/2009 00:43:24
(Though you're wrong about the torrent file not being on your HD. It's there, it's just being stored in a temp directory somewhere depending on your settings.)
True. But I consider it a bit cleaner and less messy when it's temporarily stored and then automatically deleted.
uTorrent is the only good client out there nowadays, in terms of the others being full of bloat or the dreaded Java.
My word to the wise, however, is to use a version earlier than 1.6. This is a bit of a tinfoil hat situation related to a change of management which took place after that version.
Quote from: Evil on Wed 01/07/2009 00:41:20
It's kind of an ass thing to do
The system wouldn't function if we
all thought "It's okay if only I don't seed" :)
A distant second to uTorrent is a P2P client that handles torrents, like LimeWire or FrostWire. But the 'Wire programs have become crap nowadays. All I get is junk, so I stick with torrents entirely.
So never mind, basically. :P
Basically my provider blocks every p2ps but allows torrents, so I use them. However, I'm not sure how ok it is to bring it up here, after all, it is mostly about illegal downloads, right?
I use utorrent myself, as most here, but I'd like to say, that Opera for one can download torrents too itself as a browser, so if you're using Opera, you don't even have to download the files. I don't know about firefox, IE doesn't do that as far as I know, I might be wrong, but still.
I find it easier just to have all the torrents on one folder on my computer. Then I'll always know where to go after they're finished downloading and delete them or something. The most awful would be to have them in a temp. folder when you'd never know if it's on your computer or not. That's why I basically always save everything to a certain folder I've made for them.
uTorrent allows you to add a torrent from a URL, but it just saves it to a temp folder, and I would guess Opera works the same way. I also place all of my .torrents in one folder, which helps me manage what I've already downloaded, not that that's much better. It's definitely just a false sense of security. :P
Not really addition to security no, but help managing them a lot, and that means a lot to me personally.
I have a subfolder of its own under my downloaded torrents folder for the .torrent files themselves, just so I know where they all are in case I might for a reason or another need the .torrent file itself later. And as they're really rather small there's no harm in having them at hand.
Quote from: Ishmael on Wed 01/07/2009 03:20:03
I have a subfolder of its own under my downloaded torrents folder for the .torrent files themselves, just so I know where they all are in case I might for a reason or another need the .torrent file itself later. And as they're really rather small there's no harm in having them at hand.
Same here. I like to stay in control of the files I download, that's why. Of course you can download everything directly from the browser but each app has it's own temp folder and your disk gets filled unknowingly. It's called a temp-folder but I never found files that are really temp in there... anyway, enough off-topic chat.
Opera can handle torrent files but I find that inconvenient since torrents can often be very long to download and seed, even with a fast connection and I just don't want to have all these torrents hogging my browser for weeks. Plus I don't find it very convenient to keep track of my seeding ratio.
QuoteBasically my provider blocks every p2ps but allows torrents, so I use them. However, I'm not sure how ok it is to bring it up here, after all, it is mostly about illegal downloads, right?
The system itself is legal, what people do with the system may or may not be. A lot of people use it to upload their own projects since finding enough mirrors/bandwidth for free to upload a big file, like the MAGS giga-torrent, can often be a pain.
QuoteMy word to the wise, however, is to use a version earlier than 1.6. This is a bit of a tinfoil hat situation related to a change of management which took place after that version.
It's exactly what I'm doing. When they announced there was a critical vulnerability (http://torrentfreak.com/critical-vulnerability-discovered-in-utorrent-080812/) in old version of uTorrent, I tried Azureus only to discover they turned the bloated client into an even more bloated web 2.0 media management center, complete with the "Check the latest cool videos and trailers!" and "Add your friends to your client and see what they are downloading!". Then I tried Deluge which I kept hearing good things about, but it didn't last long since 30 minutes after I installed it, I wasted 15 minutes trying to open the client's window, which was permanently stuck between being minimized or not minimized but none the less invisible on the monitor. After that I just decided to take my chance with the possible critical vulnerability since utorrent 1.5 was and is still be the best torrent client I've ever seen.
Quote from: Evil on Wed 01/07/2009 00:41:20
If you're new to torrenting, remember to keep track of how much you're uploading. If it's bizzaro stuff like hard to find books or eccentric music no ones heard of, you won't get any nasty letters from your ISP about downloading or copyright infringement, but seed some of those more popular torrents and you can quickly go from uploading a few mb to a few gig in no time. I always set uTorrent to shut down when downloads complete, and delete torrents as soon as they are done downloading. It's kind of an ass thing to do, but I seed those hard to find rarities of the internet. At least for a little while.
There's an upload limit option in BitTorrent. My upload limit usually gets set to about 30 kB/s everytime I start the PC, I set it to Unlimited whenever the PC is working and I'm not using the net.
And there is a chat section in Ares, a p2p tool. I thought it would be interesting to use this chat, but the users are mostly jerks. Don't expect something good.
Yeah, torrents are tricky when you want to modify them to your specific needs (like forwarding), but with just a bit of learning it becomes great.
I use uTorrent, cause it doesn't actually install on your system, you download and use it and that has the advantge, which I used when I didn't have flat rate at home, it can work on pcs that are protected (like computers in colleges and schools) where you can't install anything but the internet connection is great. ;D Not 100% legal but hey, it works.
I used Torrents to download Zak Mc Craken Between Time and Space and Broken sword 2 1/2
I use ubuntu, and I use deluge which I've found is better than the others, but that's because it was the first one I found using ubuntu and stuck with it. I think they've got a windows version these days, so not sure what the windows version is like, but haha, there is still people actually using windows, haha, gotta laugh
Edit: but just out of interest, I went to jaunty, but went back to hardy, too many bugs, I think hardy is where ubuntu is the shit, after that, FUCKED, just crashes just using firefox after 5 mins, so I don't know where to go after this, if anyone has some better operating system let me know (just not a windows or mac cunt fuck)
edit 2: yeah sorry about the cunt language, haha
How long should it take to download, say, 1GB worth of torrents?
I'm guessing it depends on the number of seeders and whatnot. But how long would most of you expet to wait for a file that big... my ETA is looking like 6days... and theres roughly 15 seeders. Is that normal, or have I just got a really slow connection?
Are there any tricks to getting things faster?
Yeah, get a faster connection. Not really though. I had a 100Mb connection at my apartment, and got 600Mbs in say 2hours to 3 days depending on how many seeders there are. If it's 15, and they're all active, then yes, you're connection seems a bit slow to me. Try limiting your uploads for one.
It seems to have picked up speed. It's on 3.5% now with an ETA of about 17 hrs... number of seeders is about the same, so it must have just been having a slow start. Still think it should be fater though...
Are your ports properly forwarded? That's the number one reason torrents are slow, though it only applies if you're using a router.
Damn, I somehow missed yor post Flibble. Wish I'd seen that earlier.
I am indeed behind a router. How does one go about forwarding ports?
It's ridiculous, my download has been going for 14hrs so far and I'm only 3/4 of the way through :-(
The number of seeders has fluctuated a bit, but remains roughly the same.
This is what I used, find the name of your router and then follow instructions:
http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm
Hope it helps.
Quotethere is still people actually using windows, haha, gotta laugh
:-X
...
Bittorrent is probably no. 1 tool for pirating right now.
To get most out of your torrenting, google for some client setup tips, few changed numbers in preferences go long way in means of downloading time.
Quote from: Stupot on Sun 05/07/2009 22:49:59
Damn, I somehow missed yor post Flibble. Wish I'd seen that earlier.
I am indeed behind a router. How does one go about forwarding ports?
It's ridiculous, my download has been going for 14hrs so far and I'm only 3/4 of the way through :-(
The number of seeders has fluctuated a bit, but remains roughly the same.
The link Anian posted is the link I would have posted. You'll also need to set up a static IP for yourself but this is very easy to do (since the port forwarding thing needs to open a port for a particular IP address). There should be a guide for it on that site. If not you can google it, it's fairly simple though.
After that, you need to make sure you limit your upload and download speeds properly, depending on your connection. I have a 1mb connection and I limit my download at 60kBps and upload at 25kBps. This is important, because if you don't put limits on, you'll suffer reduced speed. It's odd, but that's how it works. Also you may want to reduce the number of concurrent connections (mine's at 150 I think?) because more connections doesn't mean faster speed.
Ahh, cheers guys. I'll take that all on board.
My current download has had a sudden spurt of pace and is now nearly finished. It has taken nearly 16hrs to download 1.36GB :-(
My mate can download whole movies in seconds... not quite sure how he does it, but he's the kind of guy who has the toppest-end computer and then forks out £3000 worth of updates for it to make it even more topper-end.
I guess I just wasn't destined to join the 21st Century quite yet :-(
Even if a standard LAN cable actually let through 100Mbit in practice, the average movie file (700MB) would still take 56 seconds. Needless to say, even fast internet connections are usually much slower than that. Downloading a 700MB movie in a few seconds isn't possible unless he's "downloading" it from a server in the same network via an optical fibre connection.
A high-end computer also has nothing to do with it. Unless we're talking about 15 year old hardware, connection speed and processor speed are not related in any significant way.
It's a common fallacy to assume that fast computers will somehow result in a "faster internet". It's true that bloated flash sites will probably lag on outdated hardware, but that's due to slow graphic processing, download speed isn't affected.
(A faster CPU might handle 200 simultaneous torrent connections a bit faster, but the difference is negligible.)
The only case in which hardware would be an issue would be the read/write speed of your harddrive, but frankly your internet connection is going to cause a bottleneck LONG before the hard drive does.
(Although if you're sending stuff just over your own LAN, hard-drive speeds are the reason you don't get near the theoretical speed limit.)
I use BitTorrent which is easy to get used to IMO. Also, I go to Demonoid.com for my torrents. They almost always have seeders, and you can find anything you want most of the time. The only setback is that you need an invite code to be a member, but I can supply you with one granted you don't invite people. :)
It's one thing my "inviter" told me. :P