bittorrent

June 30, 2013

6 Tips To Increase BitTorrent Download Speed

Rafay Farooq Internet, List bittorrent 1 Comment

The main purpose of BitTorrent is to share and distribute large amount of data over the internet. They decrease the server dependency on downloading large files over any peer-to-peer network and make a “Swarm” where user can join as a host and download and upload files from each other at the same time.

In this article, we will discuss some tips about boosting torrent download speeds.

1- Get a suitable BitTorrent client

When you think to choose any BitTorrent application for your PC or Laptop, take some time and read the reviews about that application you are going to installed. Some Torrent clients are easy to use, but are difficult to configure, and vice versa. You can check the best BitTorrent client for Windows. Wikipedia has a huge list of detailed BitTorrent applications with respect to Operating system, features, interface, vulnerabilities etc.

2- Healthy Seeders and Wealthy Peers

Seeders and peers or leechers are the most important part of any torrent file. Large number of both will affect your downloading speed. Basically seeders are those computers who have downloaded that piece of file and helping others to download quickly, while peers are those who are currently downloading and uploading the file simultaneously. Choose the download file which has more seeders and less peers.

It is also important to note that if you see a file with 0 seeders or a file with large number of peers, then there might be a chance that file contain viruses. So always check reviews and comments before choosing any torrent file.

3- High bandwidth allocation

When running any torrent download, always make sure that you mark its bandwidth allocation to High. Bandwidth allocation depends upon your internet speed of downloading and uploading also called up and down.

In uTorrent, you can adjust the bandwidth by going to Options->Preference->Bandwidth.

When you are downloading multiple files then it is suggested to keep the bandwidth of higher priority file to high and the rest to low so that the speed could be managed and distributed equally. It is also suggested to keep the uploading limit to Low.

4- Allow torrents from your firewalls

By default, BitTorrent applications are not allowed and permitted to communicate through firewall which results in blocking of most of the torrent clients.

To enable Torrent to communicate through your firewall, you just need to configure your Control Panel settings and ask the firewall to allow the BitTorrent applications.

5- Choose the right port

BitTorrent uses default ports when installed on any computer. They transfer the data packets using different port numbers and if one port is too busy for waiting acknowledgments, then it will unable to send more packets results in slow downloading.

So always configure your BitTorrent port number greater than 10,000. Recommended range of Port number is in between 200000 to 600000. These port numbers are recommended because they are less frequently used by other applications.

6- Limit the number of peers connection

As stated earlier, it is not good for a torrent file having large number of peers and low number of Seeders. So you should always limit your connection with peers. In uTorrent, this can be done by going to Options –> Preference –> Bandwidth. There you see three different settings for configuration under Number of Connections.

The first setting determines and limits the maximum no. of connections your BitTorrent can have with other clients on the Internet. This should not to be too high nor too low, otherwise either your downloading stops or becomes very slow.

The second setting allows you to connect the number of peers you restrict per download. This should also be set to low so that you have enough packets to boost up your downloading speed.

The third setting allows other computer to download from you. Keep this low restrict them to do so, but keeping it too low recognize you as a bad user. So choose the right number according to your internet speed and usage of torrent.

These are some of key tips which can help your BitTorrent speed up the downloading of torrent files. Experiment with these tips and let us know which tips you found very useful.

January 24, 2013

Send Large Files And Folders Online With uTorrent

Arfa Mahmood Internet, Tips/Troubleshooting bittorrent, send large files 2 Comments

No email system or instant messenger allows the user to send large files online. If you have a big video, or a movie or a lot of pictures to send, you should take the concept of ‘mailing them’ out of your mind. For Google, you can only send a maximum file size of 25 MB. Most other email services will use the same limit. Uploading files to cloud storage takes a lot of time. Even downloading them is not an easy task.

If you have huge amounts of data and want to send it to your friends, uTorrent can do the transfer work for you without actually uploading the data online. Since uTorrent works for all platforms including Windows, Linux, Mac OS etc., this method should work on all Operating Systems. We will be running this tutorial on Windows 8.

The benefit of downloading files through uTorrent is that the downloads can be queued and can actually be “resumed” when the source (where the original files reside) becomes available. In this article, we will go through how to send large files through uTorrent with resuming capabilities.

Sending large files and folders through uTorrent

The first requirement for this tutorial is that the sender and the receiver should have uTorrent installed on their systems. You can also make use of the portable version of uTorrent. Let’s go through the sender part first.

Once you have opened uTorrent window, go to the directory in which your file is present and drag it to the uTorrent window.

After you drag and drop the file to uTorrent window, you get a window where you can click on the Get Link button to get the torrent file link. Please note that you can also drag and drop complete folders to uTorrent. There is no need to first compress the folders into one file and send it.

Rename your file if you want, otherwise click on “Get Link” button. Now the application will start creating the torrent.

Once this process is complete, a windows will appear with a link which you can share with anyone who wants to download your data.

Click on copy button to copy the link. The process does not take much time and is the simplest way to send files online. When the receiver opens the link, a webpage will appear with the torrent download link.

uTorrent allows its users to send files privately as well as publicly. Now whenever your computer is connected to the Internet, the receiver will be able to download the files and folders you have shared to their computer. If your computer is turned off, the download process simply pauses. It resumes immediately after you computer gets connected to the Internet again.

uTorrent file security

If you are sending files using this method, you should be careful about the data security. If someone else gets or guesses the URL of shared content, he will be able to download the seeded files as well. Just make sure that no one else other than the actual receiver gets the torrent URL or file. After the file has been downloaded successfully, you should remove the seeded torrent from uTorrent to be on the safer side.

What are your thoughts about this processing of sending files through uTorrent? Which method do you use for sending big files over the Internet?

Download uTorrent

January 16, 2012

What Is The Difference Between A Torrent File And A Magnet link

UK Tips/Troubleshooting bittorrent 1 Comment

If you frequently visit and use Bittorrent sites, you should have noticed that there are two types of downloads given for each torrent. One is a magnet link and other is a torrent file. Both of them are used in peer to peer networks but they are completely different from each other while satisfying the same purpose. Today we will discuss the difference between the two and their advantages and disadvantages.

Torrent File

Torrent file is a file with the extension .torrent. You need to download the torrent file to your computer and open it in a bittorrent client in order to start the downloading process. The torrent file makes use of trackers (DHT Networks) which can connect to different peers in order to download the file in parts. Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages of a torrent file.

Advantages:

Faster Connection meaning that you’ll be able to connect to peers faster as it is managed by a central tracker.
Easier to search through web than magnets. You can easily download the torrent files and save them on your computer for downloading later. You can also share the torrent files easily.

Disadvantages:

Trackers are needed when downloading a file. If the tracker is down and there are no existing connections, you will never be able to download the file.
Most torrent clients do not have search functions. You need to find the torrents from the Internet.
If a torrent file was stored on web for a long time, the tracker may be expired already. It is almost impossible to find currently existing seeds or leechers.

Magnet link

Magnet link is a link in-spite of a file. The magnet link itself contains all the information it needs to identify the peers and start downloading the requested file. The magnet link does not require any centralized authority like a tracker in order to work properly. First let us see how the magnet link looks like. A typical magnet link looks like this:

magnet:?xt=urn:sha1:YNCKHTQCWBTRNJIV4WNAE52SJUQCZO5C

Lets look at each part of the magnet link individually:

magnet: (The magnet protocol like HTTP)

?xt=urn:sha1 (defines bittorrent hashing information)

YNCKHTQCWBTRNJIV4WNAE52SJUQCZO5C (the content hash)

There are other parameters of the magnet link which you can find in the Wikipedia magnet link wiki.

Let’s look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of a magnet link.

Advantages:

No need to have a central authority like a tracker in torrent file making magnet link a decentralized form of download from the peers.
The magnet links are platform independent. You only need an application that can read magnet links to start the download process.
They are more user based and easy to use.
Sharing resources using a magnet link is relatively easier than a torrent file.
Most of the apps that support magnet links do have a search function in which you can search any kind of magnet links.

Disadvantages:

The performance and speed of magnet links is usually slower than the torrents.
Less control on speed and downloaded.

You may want to look at the best bittorrent clients which also support magnet links.

November 22, 2011

The Best Free BitTorrent Client For Downloading Torrent Files

UK Featured, List, Software Adobe Flash, bittorrent, list 2 Comments

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing protocol that has become very popular for sharing files and downloading large files that cannot be uploaded to a single server due to high amount of space and bandwidth requirements. It is popularly known for downloading illegal videos, movies and music because of its dispersed nature. The best way to search for a torrent file is using Google or other search engines and then download the actual file using the free bittorrent client. You can use the following format in Google search in order to search for a particular file:

query_name filetype:torrent

Where query_name is the file name you are looking for. Otherwise you can search torrents from specialized torrent search engines. I mostly use Torrentz and btjunkie.

Using the methods given above you will be able to download the torrent file. You will need a torrent client in order to use the torrent file and download the actual file that is required. I am will be giving the top 3 best free bittorrent clients which in my opinion are the best among a load of other clients. It’s up to you to decide which one you like.

uTorrent

uTorrent popularly known as u-torrent or micro-torrent is the best and my favorite most bittorrent client. It is very easy to use. You can download the installer which you can install on your computer or else you can have a portable version which you can keep in your USB Flash drive to use anywhere you want. The latest version of uTorrent also includes the search functionality so you can easily search for torrents from within uTorrent without even opening a web browser.

Summary

Easy to use
Efficient and stable
Portability
Built-in search functionality
Widely accepted in private sites
By default installs a toolbar

Download uTorrent

Alternative download

qBittorrent

qBittorrent is rather a new software in the lineup of bittorrents. It is especially known for its performance and low CPU and RAM usage. It is also easy to use. A novice user can easily use qBittorrent without any problems. The only problem I have seen in qBittorrent is that it is not accepted by most private torrent sites and networks as it is not as widely used as uTorrent.

Summary

Easy to use
Efficient and stable
No extras installed
Portability
Accepted by private torrent sites

Download qBittorrent

Alternative download

BitComet

BitComet has been my long time favorite but it has some issues that is why I started using uTorrent instead of BitComet. It is a little slow when starting the download of new torrents. Although BitComet has many unique features, it lags behind in terms of user interface. The interface is a little cluttered and I don’t like the advertisements that are displayed in the client. It also gives options to install some add-ons which are checked by default but should never be installed in my opinion.

Summary

Unique features that other clients don’t have
Efficient and stable
Accepted by most private torrent sites
Slow torrent initialization
Portability
Extras options enabled by default

Download BitComet

Alternative download

Other notable Bittorrent clients

If you still want to explore more clients, we have a list of clients that we have explored while writing this article. If you have any suggestions, please let me know through comments.

BitTorrent is one of the most widely used client which has a similar interface as uTorrent.

Tixati is an easy to use free bittorrent client with an attractive interface

Vuze formerly known as Azureus offers a plethora of features but is more or less a bloatware.

Deluge Torrent is a specialized torrent client for Mac OS and Linux

Transmission Bittorrent is another client just for Mac OS and Linux

TurboBT comes in different languages. So if you want a torrent client other than English, give it a go

Another Bittorrent Client also known as ABC offers very good functionality with a classic old interface

What is your favorite free Bittorrent client?

April 20, 2011

Windows 8 Activation Tool Available! (KMS Activator For Windows 8 Milestone 1 Build 7850)

UK Microsoft, Windows 7 bittorrent, windows 7, Windows 8 0 Comments

Windows 8 Milestone 1 Build 7850 has already been leaked and is available for download on the torrent sites. We have also reported about the anti-hacker technology of Windows 8 which Microsoft is developing to counter the cracking of Microsoft software. But the latest news is that Windows 8 Milestone 1 has already been cracked and the activation tool for Windows 8 Milestone 1 is already available for download.

The fact is that the leaked Windows 8 Milestone 1 is actually a working copy of Windows 7 with some features of Windows 8. So I hope Microsoft hasn’t integrated the new Windows 8 anti-hacking technology that it intends to protect its products from software pirates. But for now, KMS Activator is available to activate Windows 8 Milestone 1 Build 7850. The KMS Activator is also able to remove the timebomb limit which Microsoft puts in its products before the final version release.

Microsoft must be watching all this cracking activity and will hopefully come up with a hardened solution to piracy problem but for now, you can search Google for the KMS Activator for Windows 8 Milestone 1 Build 7850 to get the activator and apply it on Windows 8.

April 17, 2011

Windows 8 Milestone 1 Download Available!

UK Microsoft bittorrent, Windows 8 0 Comments

Windows 8 is a hot topic among the geeks nowadays. After the news that Windows 8 will be available to Microsoft partners, everyone was waiting to get their hands on Windows 8 download. So finally the time has come and as usual, Windows 8 Milestone 1 has been leaked and is available for download on private FTP and torrent sites. The latest build is Windows 8 Build 7850 (Final M1).

Windows 8 Milestone 1 download

The ISO image of Windows 8 Milestone 1 is available on the torrent sites. The file name of the ISO image is 6.1.7850.0.winmain_win8m1.100922-1508_x86fre_client-enterprise_en-us.iso. You can copy the file name and search it in Google. You’ll find the torrent to download the ISO file.

Here are some of the details of the ISO image:

File Name: 6.1.7850.0.winmain_win8m1.100922-1508_x86fre_client-enterprise_en-us.iso
Size: 2.45 GB (2,637,101,056 bytes)
SHA-1: DCA69DF6074BCA8B5DBA5C8D6D030D53CB6D82C
MD5: EA2DCFADA6BBA517A0A0649D15E1EB3D
CRC32: 32EB1881

Although this is the first Milestone and the latest news is about the leaked Milestone 3, it is a great opportunity to get our hands on the first looks of Windows 8 which will ultimately be released in 2012 finally but the beta is said to be made available at the end of 2011.