BitTorrent Unleashed
December 4th, 2006 by admin
First of all let's make one thing clear.The term bitTorrent has nothing to do with the official site BitTorrent. BitTorrent is the name of a method (or "protocol") for sharing files over the Internet. That site is just another SE that was very popular and mange to break a deal with some important movie companies.The bastards were so convinced they will end the online piracy because they thought the site is the owner of the technology.Read more.
The best BitTorrent Client
is by far uTorrent.This little baby is very small in size(600KB) and it has a lot and i mean a lot of power features in a simple and intuitive interface. It's free and it's a community development so it will continue to grow and improve. It's skin able and noob friendly. Other good clients are Azureus a java based Client and BitComet a C++ distribution. They don't even begin to compare with the friendly client I'm bragging about. I was just ready to release this article when somebody told me about Ktorrent.It really seems promising and it seems to be the best client for Ubuntu by far.Check it out.
Cool Stuff on uTorrent
You can do a lot with uTorrent and a few things I've found useful are
- When you want to download a big file (giga size) and you only want to get 1 single file : an mp3 for example. When the torrent opens you can choose by using some check boxes what to download from this huge file. So only that bit of information will be download to your computer.
- Also what happens if you want to download later another file from the main torrent? Well just click on the Files Tab - > Select the file -> Right Click -> Normal Priority to start the downloading. Or use the same steps but use Skip instead to stop receiving a file.
- The rss things it's so cool. It lets you add rss from BitTorrent sites and you can make this an automated process to retrieve files you're interested on. For a compressive guide read this.
- Preference->Connexion You can set up your favorite download speed and upload as well. This is very useful cause sometimes the bandwidth is sucked dried by this little beauty and you find your self in the impossibility to browse the net at a normal speed. So just test the right amounts that are good for you.
Safe downloading using PeerGuardian 2
This is a simple looking piece of windows software.What it does is blocking the specified Ip address of any of your P2P applications.It has a predefined list of ips suspected to be associated with Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) or the Motion Picture Association of America. So how can this help? Well it helps you not to be caught. Activate it ,updated it and download from Internet knowing that there is unlikely for an agent to see your ip cause they are cut off right from the start.
My personal tip : you can find a country ip list and create your personal ip file. Let's say your from Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan , you can make a list of all the ips ( shouldn't be to many ) and add it to the software. Not even Borat will be able to download from you anymore.
Don't be an ass and share
All you have to do is let people download from you. The upload/download ration is important and will help you download faster if you have a good ratio. So don't limit your upload speed to 1kb cause you're gone hurt yourself in the process.
- maximum upload speed should be upload speed * 80%
- maximum download speed should be download speed * 90%
- example : global Maximum upload rate (kb/s) 22 (for 256k connection)
Utorrent and firefox
A comprehensive articles here. If you want to manage your uTorrent from another computer you can do that will this cool extension. It works great.
MY TIP : READ THE INSTALL file. You have to copy some file to Documents and Settings not to Program Files.
Firefox and Addons
There are 2 cool things you can do in Firefox.
1.You can add the Torrentz.com SE to your quick SE in the upper right.
2.You can install a great extension Torrent Search that will add a handy tool bar to search in all of the well known SE for torrents.
Torrentz
Oh..the mother of all Torrent Search Engines.This baby scans all the other engines and display the results in a nice Web 2.0 way.There are a few tricks even when you search of course.
- Always look for comments. If you see a bunch of comments saying a password is missing or the file is corrupted or the movie looks like crap then that file doesn't deserve your bandwidth. Be smart don't waist your time.
- After you make a search look a bit at the search results for a specific torrent.You will see a bunch of sites that have that torrent but you should add a single site from all of that.
- Look for seeders and leach ratio.Remember it's better to have a seed/leech ratio of 100/20 then 1000/2000. You'll get your file faster with 100/20 combination.
- Look at the time of the torrent. If you see the file was posted 2 weeks ago then probably there is a lack of seeders. So go for the lower times. Like 2-3 hours cause the action is there.
Movies automations
So you have a favorite TV SHOW.You want to be able to get the series ASAP?
Try this strategy :
So you have a favorite TV SHOW.You want to be able to get the series ASAP?
Try this strategy :
- use this link to get a RSS link of your favorite tv show
- use this link to see when an episode should be released
- use TED - this little thing will search all day long for your favorite shows and will
add the latest episodes to the download list directly into your bitTorrent manager.
Wine and uTorrent
Are you a Linux user and struggling to find a nice torrent client. Well look no more. The WINE software will allow you to
run the uTorrent windows version with no headache. Just open the exe file with Wine and Utorrent it's up and ready to go.
Are you a Linux user and struggling to find a nice torrent client. Well look no more. The WINE software will allow you to
run the uTorrent windows version with no headache. Just open the exe file with Wine and Utorrent it's up and ready to go.
Rar files are BAD
They are useful for three things :
They are useful for three things :
- The checksum will show that a file is corrupted.
- If a file is damaged you can recopy just a part of the archive
- Useful for parallel downloading.
But BitTorrent takes care of all of this. Usually I tried to avoid rar files. They are password protected most of the time and the movies don't have a good quality.
If I can help you with more details about any of the above please leave a comment and I will get back to you.Also please share any other tips you may have for the community.
