I've gotta say the "YouTorrent" mashup is nice. I put it to the gummi bear test (where in I search for obscure random crap from the 80s, like the Gummi Bears or Mr. Belvedere) and it passed! All five seasons of the Gummi Bears no less.

JFitzpatrick

youtorrent is good for popular files but scrapetorrent is better for random files. its also meta search engine and has a good design. cant go wrong with utorrent though.

Khamel

uTorrent is actually developed to work in WINE and is totally flawless in linux.

graybird

No love for deluge (Linux)?

bswilson

@JFitzpatrick: Thanks. I'm running Tomato Firmware on a WRT-54G, so I'll give it a go.

conigs

The link to "Outwit Your Traffic-Shaping ISP" was broken. Here's the correct one:

[howto.wired.com]

cdog6000

Another nice tool is Fenopy's Fake Finder. Copy a torrent's hash in the fake finder and you'll know instantly whether your torrent is real or fake!

[fenopy.com]

elmo13th

@conigs: I can't speak for your exact situation and your combination of connection speed and router, but I can tell you how I solved the exact same problem on my own connection. Before I implemented the following solution my network was so saturated with "phantom" connections you couldn't even load google.

The problem you're most likely having is this: P2P clients open up -tons- of short lived connections. Routers weren't designed with P2P in mind they were designed with the comfort of the user in mind. Thus they don't normally have a ton of available ports for us and the connections the router makes are set to stay open for (usually) around 10 minutes or so.

You need to increase the number of available ports on your router, and decrease the amount of time the router will keep each port open. In my case I increased the number of available ports on my router to 4096. I'm running DD-WRT on a Linksys router, for specific instructions on how to do it with DD-WRT look at this link and read down to "Solution 1"

[www.dd-wrt.com]

You may have to do a little digging with a search engine to find the exact way to implement this solution on your own network, but the problem is pretty common.

Hope this helps =)

JFitzpatrick

@dillenger69
Right on for peerGuardian!

MoBlock for linux does the same thing and Deluge has IP filtering plugins.

digitalpincushion

Linux users:

Top native Linux BitTorrent clients [www.howtoubuntu.com]

How to install uTorrent in Ubuntu with wine [www.howtoubuntu.com]

epps

@jigt3k: That's true, but for ease of everything, it's conventionally written as uTorrent (it's even their URL).

Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor

I found this web site earlier this week due to my university blocking the download of .torrent files: [txtor.dwerg.net]

You enter the URL of a torrent into the input field, and save the file that it outputs as a .torrent (make sure to actually change the extension). It works great and allows me to download .torrents without having to jump through hoops.

Evil Incarnate

@Dillenger69: Honestly, I amlost totally forgot about it. I covered PeerGuardian in my intermediate BitTorrent guide, and though it's not a sure thing by any means, it's worth a mention. Thanks for the recommendation!

Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor

No Mention of Peer Guardian?
I don't need vigilantes, trackers, and snoops keeping track of me when I'm using Bit Torrent for legitimate purposes.

Dillenger69

I believe its µTorrent, so I've always called it "MicroTorrent". ;) But yeah, before switching to Mac, I loved it... Now I'm back on Azureus with VUZE and its a nice program, but its got a large footprint. I'm looking forward to trying this Transmission program later this evening, it sounds cool. Thanks for the list!

jigt3k

@conigs: Ditto, I'm running xp on the torrenting machine, and vista on the gaming machine. Ping in online games jumps from 30 to 300 when I'm torrenting, regardless of the speed of the download.

Ghede

I'm ebarrassed to say that I have never explored this world.

I'd probably be looking for boring stuff like hardware drivers for various OSs.

Would it be good for that?

strider_mt2k

Seems the link to "Outwit Your Traffic-Shaping ISP" is dead. May be Lifehacked, may be broken link....

Felis

@Khamel: My experience with Scrapetorrent was great when it was first released, but since it's become a pop-up blocker's nightmare... firing up this very NSFW pop-up in Firefox when I search there. Oh no no no, Scrapetorrent.

Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor

Decent tips. But I have a question.

At home, when I fire up a torrent, my entire internet connection slows to a crawl, primarily in DNS lookups. I have changed the default port (and have it forwarded in the router), NAT test is fine, all BT traffic is encrypted, and the connection isn't even saturated (plus I limit the ul to 30k and dl to 500k). I could be connected to 5 seeds and 2 peers with dl of 32kb and an ul of 0-5kb on a 7M/512k (Time Warner Cable) line and the connection still slows to a crawl for all computers on the network.

This is running Azureus on Macs, so I may have to give Transmission a try, but has anyone else experienced such an issue?

conigs

miss a good anti-sniffing plugin to avoid being traced...

Dude27

Wo! I can't beleive torrentflux isn't in there ([www.torrentflux.com]). Cross-platform web-based too to download torrents with greate customization options and lots or settings to play around with.

It uses BitTorrent processes in the backgroud. I've been using it to download torrents back home from work for 2 years now without a single problem. You can even select the ports to use by torrent if you want (some sites blacklist specific ports).

rolang

Guess what? uTorrent works in wine! Yippie!

giblets

bookmarked!

RastaSega

@dgcaste: Weird, it was working earlier. Thanks for the heads up, updating the post.

Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor

youtorrent is good for popular files but scrapetorrent is better for random files. its also meta search engine and has a good design. cant go wrong with utorrent though.@Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor: really? someone else mentioned that but i have yet to see a popup. maybe its all the ad blockers i have. if thats the case then i say use it but with all the ad blockers you can find.

Khamel

I can't believe some mac users don't know about Transmission... it's awesome and very lightweight

also, when you say "(barring some really good private tracker that most of us are not members of)."
what is this referring to? demonoid? oh god how I wish they'd come back online...

zikman

Anybody know if Miro can encrypt its torrents? That's one of the only things that bothers me when I use it.

skadus

I've been using PeerGuardian2 for while now, but I recently upgraded to Leopard, and now PeerGuardian2 wont...open? I googled the issue, and there doesn't seem to be a new release out yet. Anybody have any alternatives/suggestions?

david.elliot

Also, my very helpful and productive uTorrent tip for getting things done?

In uTorrent, Punching "T" on the keyboard when viewing the "About uTorrent..." in the Help menu will start a game of Tetris.

Coming Into The Game ♪♪ ♪♪♪ #Roc23 -- The Superstar Receiver, ofyourupperdeck TORONTOOOooBJSss

@conigs:
try what JFITZPATRICK said in his post. But if you can't change that in your router, I suggest you to limit the number of connections your bittorrent makes. In utorrent I set the limit at 200, which seems to be sufficient for my need (download at max speed). Try to find a similar option on yours. (btw I am not referring to max number of downloads, but connections)
good luck

with_a_pH

You forgot to mention BitChe. It's the best program there is for torrent searching. It's basically like YouTorrent as mentioned above, but it's downloaded to your computer for easier access and integration with utorrent.

SonicFury

This is a damn good article for a BIT Tor Rent amateur.
Now, I don't need to reset my connection for every rapidshare download.

@Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor: I always thought naughty ads were suppose to be half the fun when diving into the underground that is torrent searching.

Coming Into The Game ♪♪ ♪♪♪ #Roc23 -- The Superstar Receiver, ofyourupperdeck TORONTOOOooBJSss

Use this link instead:
[howto.wired.com]

dgcaste

It seems the anti-traffic-shaping link is down ("Outwit your Traffic Shaping ISP")

dgcaste

If you are looking for a good Peerguardian replacement for Linux you might want to check out iplist. Alot easier to operate than moblock. Just download the .deb, double-click and install. That's it.

Oh.. and about clients: Deluge at first looked like a great slim client. But it seems to be still very buggy. It doesn't use the full upstream bandwidth you give it (thus penalizing your download speeds) while µTorrent and Azureus work nicely. Oh.. and µTorrent is buggy in wine. But still better than all alternatives I've seen (KTorrent is supposed to be quite okay)..

rawfan

Yes, Deluge is a fantastic Linux client. Too bad they had to scrap their anonymizing browser, now I use Tor with Torbutton, and force-encrypt all my torrents; it at least helps. Deluge I think is intended to be a micro(u)torrent clone, so I heartily recommend it for those who love the u, but also love the Linux.

sceo

Oh, Plus you can set up uTorrent RSS for anime, manga, and stuff like that using TokyoTosho's RSS feed. I've got all my TV and anime shows automatically downloading.

HaloZero

uTorrent RSS is as good as TED 99% if you just use EZTV's RSS feed.

HaloZero

No. 6 Wired Link on Optimize BitTorrent To Outwit Traffic Shaping ISPs How-To -

[howto.wired.com]

harmx

Referring to the uTorrent + Wine, in my experience it has worked very buggy at best, and inoperable at worst, when I was running it with compiz. The program is irreplacable in windows, but unfortunately is ugly and slow in *nix. For the longest while I used azureus, but the memory hog is just too much to bear. Recently I've switched to using Deluge, a gnome client that blends in quite well with the rest of my desktop. Also, I've noticed a very distinct speed increase in my downloads as well. The only thing I really miss is the ability to change the filename of a downlaod before it begins (I use TED, and I'm quite a bit anal about my media library). What about other people using *nix? Any other people have any better experience with bittorrent and linux?

-emory-

@bswilson: I was thinking the same down, i prefer it hands down to Transmission, even has it's own WebUI plugin, plus being written in python/GTK makes it b-e-a-utiful.

AnthoMacP

I love utorrent, deluge +1

nikoPSK

[www.rlslog.net]

Better than any torrent site, as it filters out the fakes for you.

Compact

"Seems the link to "Outwit Your Traffic-Shaping ISP" is dead. May be Lifehacked, may be broken"
link....[howto.wired.com]

bugilt

For the folks having slow connections when running/starting Torrents it's actually an WinXP SP2 issue and your TCP/IP Stack. Windows XP SP2 changed the value to 10 connections per seconds and this causes a huge slow down when downloading via torrents.

Check out this link on how to change it:
[www.speedguide.net]

I've made mine 100 connections and it works fine. I also tweaked my routers to change the number of max TCP connections to 4096 and the timeout to be 90 (the default was higher). I also enabled QoS on the router just in case. I'm using DD-WRT.

If you don't want to change anything on the router at bear minimum change the limit on the TCP connections for Windows XP SP2 and you'll see a drastic improvement after a reboot. :)

ecltech

@blacknoir: Yea, i don't know why newsgroups, ie. Newzbin haven't caught on. I download with as much bandwith as my ISP gives me... for instance, downloading a DIVX encoded (800mb) movie takes between 7-8 minutes to download, then it takes 1 minute to unrar the file.

Or you could torrent, where you're being tracked, it takes forever, there's a lot of retards posting things under the wrong name, and of course viruses.

guitarmunkey05

You can't say uTorrent is the best BT client ever. Azureus is leaps and bounds better IF, and I emphasize IF, you have a system that can run it properly. Because yes, that Java overhead can suck real bad.

You probably have to know a lot about networking to take full advantage too, not too sure what is considered common knowledge in networking because I can't remember what I figured out on my own/saw on the web and what I learned in my many networking classes. Cisco AND Nortel biatch!

-P.S. Don't do this, they are practically the same classes with material taught in a different order, I can't really explain why I took both, although Cisco provided way more equipment to use and seemed more professional.

shibathedog

Forget Torrents, Newsgroups is where it's at.. Newsleecher Baby!

blacknoir

Deluge is by far the best BitTorrent client for Linux. Best one I've ever used in any OS, actually.

quoderat

@Evil Incarnate: I dont know about you but many sites i visit allow downloading as zip files for this exact purpose.

DJWeezy

what about BitComet?

Aside from working pretty well with torrents (and it's schedule tool is just great, allows to donwload when no one uses your internet connection, and allow others to surf the web with no problem).
But maybe the part i like the most is it's functionality with FlashGot, so it replaces any other download manager in my computer.

Letsan

I've used uTorrent and Azureus, and I just liked uTorrent a lot more. If you're on linux, I'd use qBittorrent as a replacement. And moblock as a replacement for Peer Guardian.

BrentNewland

use torrentools toolbar to find torrent:
[torrentools.communitytoolbars.com]

Torrentools is a browser toolbar for Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer; allows to search 41 specialized torrent search sites for needed files.

Extra feature: torrent newsfeed, links to 30 torrent's sites, links to 12 torrent's group of discussion, links to 12 torrent's forum.

bugmenot21

Opera has a built in bit torrent client, by far the easiest way to have a novice download a few torrents.

vrb

uTorrent is by far the best torrent software for windows (and linux), I use it both OS.
Great post!

Daniel Andrade

I found utorrent flawless on Windows. It's pretty good on linux too, but highly unstable. It either works or it doesn't. If that fails, it's Deluge.

leftystrat

Oh yay for Tetris!

Kelebek

I sure do loves me some bittorrent.

Now if only OS X had stereo bluetooth support.

Wow, that was arbitrary even by my standards.

Myles

Another tool is TorrentSpam

[www.torrentspam.com]

(Fenopy uses its API)
Plus it has a AJAX file-sharing chat room.

captain_woot

Besides Fenopy Fake Finder, there is [www.torrentspam.com]

You can search on the filename or hash to see if a file is fake.

The users report the fake torrents and Fenopy is using it's API.

Torrentspam also has a web-based file sharing chat room, which nobody else has.

captain_woot

Adam (and others), do you know of a good PeerGuardian-type solution that works on Leopard?

pingudownunder

For linux, ktorrent runs great natively (without wine) and is available as a deb package for ubuntu both 64 and 32 bit (try googling "ktorrent ubuntu deb" plus your architecture. It supports the encrypted headers protocol (highly recommended) available in utorrent, and most other utorrent features. It has a great IPFILTER plugin which when enabled will check the bluetack blocklists daily, essentially what peer guardian does for windows. A stand-alone peer guardian replacement for linux is MOBLOCK, [moblock-deb.sourceforge.net] , also available as debs for ubuntu all architectures.

aj9463

@Mindstyle: We've actually already covered that here.

Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor

Cool guide as usual from LH but wondering if there is any tutorial for setting up PeerGuardian. A while ago, I tried to setup and failed, eventually I gave up. Any such tutorial will be a god-send. Thanks.

Mindstyle

Azureus is still a really great torrent client. Has about every feature one could want, can be remote controlled in a command line window or remote controlled via a very full-featured remote control program (AzSMRC) and runs perfectly on most systems that have Java, including my home server that runs Solaris. It also has a great RSS plugin available to make Ted obsolete.

The only drawback is the overhead of running Java, which is outweighed by the many benefits in my opinion. Memory is cheap. ;)

Peerguardian meanwhile is just dumb. I mean even RIAA and MPAA have enough brains to download it, look at the IP list and then use other IP's... and it sucks up computing power that could be used for other things. PG is for suckers, again in my opinion. But go ahead if it gives you that warm fuzzy feeling of a false sense of security. ;)

cr0ft

@conigs: Have you changed any advanced options? Specifically your "net.max_halfopen" value? If it's not already, go ahead and change it to 4.

I followed a uTorrent "optimizing guide" and that very setting gave me hell later. Sounded like what you're going through right now.

Kloud

Transmission on the Mac is brilliant apart from one small (but mightily annoying thing). Fire up Azureus and your torrents will download many times faster. I don't know why this is, but the difference is so noticeable that I'm starting to use Azureus as my main client.

BiEr

Personally I hate bit-torrent. Always slow when downloading. I never knew you had to go through a heck of a lot of trouble just to get a simple client to work properly.

So what ports should I use on my router?
What torrent client should I use?(I use uTorrent)
What settings should I set in my Firewall?

If you can help me with this, I can figure out the rest of the basic setup requirements for this to work properly.

MasterWitt

i've been using azureus for years, but it's become so bloated lately that i think i'm ready to look at alternatives. i think i'll give utorrent a whirl.

firesign

Peerguardian 2 tip:

TURN OFF THE LOG FILE IT GENERATES!

mine got up to 10gb

engtech

Deluge for the win!
I had been using Ktorrent in Gnome, and stumbled upon Deluge in a bid to rid my system of any KDE apps, still looking for a good gnome based K3b replacement...

Recently I installed it on my girlfriend's vista machine, no problems so far.

Confuzius

@BiEr: I totally agree with you on Transmission. I was looking for something to replace Azureus as it sucks my connection to a crawl and usually slows my whole system. I used Transmission for a few weeks, but found Azureus to be so much faster that I have been using it despite all the negatives.

mguerena

@A@Adam Pash, LH Senior Editor: Just a heads up that uTorrent is not strictly Windows only. It is designed to run under WINE, and so any Linux user has full functionality as well.

Aeolien

Anyone have a torrent client that works well under Vista (Ultimate). My favorite, uTorrent (v1.7.7), freezes and goes ghosted either when I try to exit or even before, in the middle of a download. Task Manager can't break out of it. Using a Taskkill shortcut sometimes works, sometimes not. I've now also tried Azureus/Vuze and BitSpirit. They both freeze/ghost even faster, before completing jobs, and don't respond with either Task Manager or Taskkill. I have to do a hard reboot. BTW, this is over Comcast and with Vista's firewall turned off and the latest ZoneAlarm Free running but allowing all torrent traffic.

Beldar

@Beldar: Seeing how not only µTorrent, but also Azureus and BitSpirit crash on your computer, I'd say it's not the client but you computer that needs a check-up.
How do other programs behave?

Shady69

This is a newly built computer 10 days ago with a fresh Vista install. No other problems with other software (yet). AVG Free reports no virii or trojans, Spybot finds nothing, fully stealthed ports according to Shields Up over at GRC.com, running ZoneAlarm Free v.7.1.248.000 and WinPatrol Free v.14.0.2007.

Beldar

I have an interesting need/tool that I am looking for....

I want a bit torrent screensaver, or something that knows that my PC/bandwidth is idle, and therefore can be used for my bit torrent queue. Right now, I do this manually by pausing live torrents when I sit down to do some traditional browser surfing, but I would dig a tool that would know that I am surfing the throttle down the bandwidth, like those group computing screensaver models.

Any tools out there like that? I havent really looked to hard, but I figure my favorite site Lifehacker might be able to help.

tinyorangepig

I second TINYORANGEPIG. I love transmission, but some sort of dynamic bandwidth manager would be excellent.

Are there any bittorent clients that will do this?

roloc

Can I get some help setting up a proxy so that I can use utorrent at my college? I had it setup perfectly (using Your-Freedom) before I formatted my computer, but I believe it was luck that I set it up correctly. Any help is greatly appreciated. f1am1ngfugaz1e5@gmail.com

dudestuffiscool