Absolute F*cking newbie w/NO CLUE

[Racketguy25]

Well, as I'm sure the title to this thread says most of my issues already, heres a little background: I am semi-familiar with general bittorrent downloading but am brand new to this site. In order to make my and all members of the sites lives eassier I want to follow the correct etiquette and prtocall on the site. I have read through much of the FAQ's but am still totally lost. I consider myself to be somewhat computer saavy but not as much as I'd like to be. Currently I am running Bitlord and though am aware that this is not a recommended program to use with the site, have not had any luck using any other programs as I am behind a firewall and seem to be getting the best luck with Bitlord (if that makes sense AT ALL). ANyway I am running Windows XP, with a Belkin Router Model # F5d7230-4 and using McAfee Security. As i mentioned befre I have some experience downloading with Bittorrents but not much at all. I understand the benefit to it but am still seemingly getting very slow download speeds. In essence, I need help, and ahelluva lot of it I think. ANybody with any patience or advice would be much appreciated, and no need to remind me that I am most likely doing EVERYTHING wrong and probably screwing downloads up for a ton of other people as thats why I'm posting this thread to learn. Thanks All!

[Racketguy25]

Alright, I guess I underestimated the kindness of strangers, can someone at least just point me in the right direction . . . ?

[robducati]

What kind of D/L speeds are you getting?

You gotta work on that firewall ASAP.

[ccrider895]

Originally Posted by Racketguy25

Alright, I guess I underestimated the kindness of strangers, can someone at least just point me in the right direction . . . ?

Er, okay. First of all patience might be a help, as this is the weekend, and lots of us are off doin' stuff that we can't do during the week.

As far as a BT client I would recommend either Azuereus or utorrent. Probably utorrent if you're a newb. It's a little easier to work with, and uses less bandwidth.

once you install your new BT client, change the default port # your client uses to a random one:

PORT RANGES

A range within the region 49152 through 65535 is preferable, cf. IANA. Notice that some clients, like Azureus 2.0.7.0 or higher, use a single port for all torrents, while most others use one port per open torrent. The size of the range you choose should take this into account (typically less than 10 ports wide. There is no benefit whatsoever in choosing a wide range, and there are possible security implications).

Write down the 5 digit port number you chose, as you will need it to forward your ports and become un-firewalled.

You first should forward your port number in McAfee. You need to get into the firewall tab and keep hitting "advanced" options until you get to the port section. I think it's called something else like "utilities" I don't use it anymore so I don't remember exactly.

When you find the section you must "add" the name of the bittorent application, and then enter the port number you chose into all the ingoing & outgoing connections (like 4 times).


next, this link: http://www.portforward.com/

will tell you how to configure your router to open your bitorrent ports. Just look up your router & follow directions. There's a few messy ones that require a static ip, so if that's the case you will have to get one from your isp.

You can still use bitorrent if you are firewalled, but it works so much better when you're not. If you get on a torrent with only one seed who's also firewalled, then you're SOL. Ya dig?

*Last, but important. If your isp happens to be Comcast, then you're probably being "sandvined". You can look that up on this site if necessary. Long story short, you'll also need to enable encryption in your BT client.



Whatever one you choose, just search out the wiki for your new client and read more about it before you need to ask questions that will be answered in there.

Good luck!

[Five]

we wrote the FAQ to avoid retyping the same stuff over and over... you should find what you're looking for here:
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...faq_bittorrent

if you get stuck post back

[Racketguy25]

Thanks! Trying all that now, and will let you know. I apologize for my snide comment regarding kindness of strangers, it was after I had seen 17 peolple look at my post and not a one show your effort to help out a fellow music fan. I'll let yah know how it goes!

[Fried Chicken Boy]

For what it's worth, I found (in my case) that the single most important thing I did was to set up my IP address as static rather than dynamic; they can walk you through that at the portforward.com website. Everything else seemed to fall right into place after that. It could be different depending on your router, ISP, etc... My .02.

[slewofboots]

Originally Posted by Fried Chicken Boy

For what it's worth, I found (in my case) that the single most important thing I did was to set up my IP address as static rather than dynamic; they can walk you through that at the portforward.com website. Everything else seemed to fall right into place after that. It could be different depending on your router, ISP, etc... My .02.

Or, just make sure your PC used for down/uploading of torrents is the first one that gets a DHCP assigned IP address from your router, that way it should never change. for example, if your router is 192.168.0.1, the first device you add to this network should get 192.168.0.2. This assumes your router starts assigning DHCP at 192.168.0.2 and goes up from there, so next PC / laptop you add to the network will get 192.168.0.3, and so on.

When you follow the instructions from portforward.com setup your "port forwarding" (often this is under the Advanced section of your router's configuration screens) and apply it to the TCP (don't forget adding a rule for UDP port, too!) that you chose when you setup Azureus or uTorrent for the IP of 192.168.0.2 (or whatever is the IP address of the machine for which you are setting up port forwarding). I choose an easy to remember number, something like port 52222 so that it would fall in the suggested range mentioned above in this thread.