Okay, question for you torrent professionals. I have & use the official Bit Torrent, and I'm experiencing long & unsuccessful download times. I attempted to download the 10-6-2004 Asheville show from the TSIS bit torrent section last night but after 4 1/2 hours and only 6.4% downloaded, I gave up. My questions are this;

1. What is the typical download time I can expect when downloading a bit torrent show file?
2. I have DSL for my internet connection, I disable my firewall and configure the bit torrent to "dsl/cable modem-fast", is there anything else I should be doing or configuiring to achieve better performance when downloading?

(and if you are wondering I believe I had my uploads set at 10 and I was seeing a green smiley face)

Any help is appreciated...

Peace,

J.

you should use a bit torrent client, the one i use is bit tornado , you coan download it from here:

http://bittornado.com/download.html

this should help resolve mos of the issues, i think..

the time for download depends on how many seeders, your connection, and of course the size of the show

Well I was trying to avoid downloading another torrent client as I feel the official Bit Torrent client should work...but I guess if no one else has any insight to the problems I seem to experience everytime I try to download a torrent file, I just may have to try that torrent client you mentioned. Thanks for your response though!

So anyone else have any further insight??

Peace,

J.

you need to configure your router.

http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/0401842428674831/

no problem,

you're welcome.

Also, check your firewall. Windows XP runs a firewall, and you'll need to change some port settings to allow bittorrent through. Did you check the torrent details page when you were downloading the show. It will show you if you're firewalled, and will give you a link with some advice on fixing the problem.

Also, here's a faq with tons of info:
http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=BitTorrent

you may want to set your upload a little higher than that if possible. also are you sure the port you're using is open (usually 6881). Check the tracker for the show you're downloading (what site are you at?) - several of the trackers now show if you're firewalled or with an un-opened ports, by showing your port number in parentheses.

Thanks everyone for all of the info and tips...I'm downloading it again. It's been only 3 1/2 hours this time around, but i have about 65% of it downloaded.

Peace,

J.

so you opened up ports on your router?

even if you open the ports on your router you download times can take a long time due to how many seeders vs leechers there are.

I've gotten dl times of 150K and sometimes it's 10K it all depends

that is a good point too - and a good reason to get on if its a fresh big swarm. i think too, the number of firewalled OTHER people can affect the whole thing because 2 firewalled machines can't talk to each other, so they're only going to be able to leech from non-firewalled others.

nope...i had the firewall disabled, so I knew that wasn't the problem. I think there just wasn't enough "seeders" at the time I was trying to download it the first time around. Was able to successfully download the file the next evening.

Peace,

J.

Can someone send me a pm and tell me exactly how this bit torrent system works. I have no idea and I'd like to take advantage of these downloads. Thanks