Bit Torrents

Stupot · Sat 04/07/2009 21:56:56

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?

Tuomas · Sat 04/07/2009 22:37:16

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.

Stupot · Sat 04/07/2009 22:51:39

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...

Mr Flibble · Sat 04/07/2009 23:01:58

Are your ports properly forwarded? That's the number one reason torrents are slow, though it only applies if you're using a router.

Stupot · 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.

Anian · Sun 05/07/2009 23:18:27

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.

InCreator · Sun 05/07/2009 23:21:33

Quotethere is still people actually using windows, haha, gotta laugh

...

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.

Mr Flibble · Mon 06/07/2009 00:05:17

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.

Stupot · Mon 06/07/2009 00:51:31

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 Â£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 :-(

Khris · Tue 07/07/2009 15:12:16

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.)

Mr Flibble · Tue 07/07/2009 23:25:22

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.)

R4L · Wed 08/07/2009 05:44:47

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.