Bittorrent Q&a - Problems & Solutions

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Bittorrent Q&a - Problems & Solutions

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SeedIt View Member Profile	Mar 28 2008, 03:40 AM Post #1
CopyRight©2008 All Rights Reserved Group: Contributor+ Received 1 Thanks Posts: 25 Joined: 26-March 08 From: Manchester, England Member No.: 43,262	Problems and Solutions Overview Azureus What do the smiley faces mean? Why are my smiley faces always yellow? I'm sure I have ports forwarded, why is the face still yellow? Why does my CPU usage show as 100% when running Azureus? How do you download part of a file with Azureus? How can I stay safe using Azureus? How do I seed (or re-seed) a torrent using Azureus? What does the ratio symbol shown when uploading mean? Why am I getting error messages in Azureus? I'm running XP SP2 and Azureus crashes all the time, why? General BitTorrent Questions How do I download torrent files? Why is my download so slow? Why do I have to seed (upload) when all I want to do is download? How do I forward the ports for my software firewall? How do I forward the ports for my hardware firewall? What port range can I / should I use? How many torrents can I run at once How do I make a torrent to share with others? What is a tracker Where can I download torrents from How can I increase my upload speed and overall performance? What is the best client to use? (in my humble opinion) How do I manage my ratio Tracker & Torrent Error Messages Helpful Hints and Tips Note to AOL shudder users Overview Torrents in general can be unpredictable. Torrents are only "alive" for as long as someone else is uploading it, if no one is uploading then it might be "dead". Sometimes you wont know if it's alive or dead until you've tried to download the file; sometimes you can see how many seeds or peers a torrent has before you download. If you are able to see the stats, the higher number of seeds and peers there are the better. The main thing to understand is that downloading and uploading torrents can take a bit longer than other P2P networks, sometimes it may take a while to get going. Just because you aren't getting lightning speeds or things aren't happening as you might expect it does not mean there are problems. Just give it some time and see what happens. BitTorrent FAQ What do the smiley faces mean? The health indicator is an evaluation of how well your torrent is going. GREYmeans that your torrent is stopped or queued - your torrent wont download while on grey REDmeans that you're not connected to any peer (including seeds) - your torrent will never download on red BLUEwhen seeding, it means that you're not yet connected to any peer - give it some time to see if it changes BLUEwhen downloading, it means that you are connected to some peers but the tracker is down - just wait for it to come back up YELLOWmeans that the tracker is ok, you're connected to peers, but you don't have any remote connection. You may have a NAT problem if your torrents stay on yellow status all the time GREENmeans that everything is going fine. Why are my smiley faces always yellow?* GREENmeans you have both Local and Remote connections. YELLOWmeans you have only Local connections. Local connection = connection you have initiated (i.e. you have connected to them) Remote connection = connected initiated by someone else (i.e. they connected to you) Someone with firewall problems will only ever get Local connections, as their router is blocking all attempts from others trying to connect to them. They will ALWAYS be on yellow. This slows down the torrent for everyone. Just because you only have Local connections it doesn't mean that something is wrong, as long as you get green sometimes then there is no problem. It's more likely that you are involved in a small swarm without many peers or seeders. I'm sure I have the ports forwarded, why is the face still yellow? * Make sure you don't have a software firewall turned on by mistake. If you use a software firewall you will have to forward the ports in that too. * There may only be a small number of peers to upload to all running on Local connections * There may be tracker connection problems. Why does my CPU usage show as 100& when running Azureus? This is often caused by updating your old Azureus or Java without COMPLETELY removing the old one first. To fix the problem uninstall both Azureus and Java from your system, delete any left over program files, download the latest version of both (click here) and then install Java before Azureus. Both Azureus and Java should be updated at the same time. How do you download part of a file with Azureus? Follow: Right click on torrent > chose Show Details from menu > click on Files tab > right click on pieces you DO NOT want to download and select Set Priority > Do not download. These steps will stop Azureus downloading the pieces you have chosen leaving it to download those you haven't chosen. How can I stay safe using Azureus? When you connect to a swarm your IP is visible to everyone else in the swarm and visa-versa. To stop any 'bad' IP's connecting to you, use the Safepeer Plugin for Azureus. It imports an updated blocklist and goes some way to protecting you against any potential threat. How do I seed (or re-seed) a torrent using azureus? Make sure you have 'Save to default data directory' disabled (Tools > Options > Files) Download the torrent from the forum or tracker you have uploaded to. Open this torrent with Azureus Azureus will now ask you where to save the file - choose the place where the file you are sharing is located Azureus will now realise you have the file and begin to seed. http://www.bittorrentguide.co.uk/howtoseed.html What does the ratio symbol shown when uploading mean? This symbol means Infinity. It means you are the original seeder/uploader and therefore your ratio of upload to download is infinite. back to top Why am I getting error messages in Azureus? You need the TCP Limit Fix - Download and install this to fix the problem. Code: http://www.lvllord.de/?url=downloads#4226patchWith SP2 Micro$oft set the number of concurrent connections to 10, this is to help halt the spread of viruses and other nasties. It also limits your P2P connections, so use this patch you up the number of concurrent connections available and you should be fine. Why is my download so slow? The speed at which you download is determined by things such as the Seed to Peer ratio, the seed(ers) upload bandwidth and of course your available download bandwidth. Try to download torrents that have lots of seeders and/or fewer peers in order to get faster speeds. Also make sure you have forwarded your ports correctly. How many torrents can I run at once? You need to upload as much as you download. It will take you much longer to upload than it will to download (usually). The more you download, the more you have to upload. You get the idea. A general rule to follow is only download and upload 2 torrents at a time. What port range can I / should I use? By default BitTorrent uses ports 6881 to 6889. Some trackers don't accept connections on these ports including the POTUK one. Some ISP's throttle bandwidth on these ports. You should chose a range of 10 ports between 50000 and 60000 (i.e 50010 - 50020) and use them. http://www.bittorrentguide.co.uk/tor...de.html#router By default BitTorrent uses ports 6881 to 6889. Some trackers don't accept connections on these ports including the POTUK one. Some ISP's throttle bandwidth on these ports. You should chose a range of 10 ports between 50000 and 60000 (i.e 50010 - 50020) and use them. http://www.bittorrentguide.co.uk/tor...de.html#router How do I manage my ratio? You need to upload as much as you download. Your client should be able to show you what your ratio is for each torrent, do not stop the torrent until it has reached 1:1 or above. If you are having trouble getting to 1:1, perhaps because no one else wants to download it from you, then try making a torrent and uploading that. This is especially effective when you use the same tracker as the other torrents you download as all trackers look at your overall ratio, not just individual torrents. Tracker & Torrent Errors Trackers can also be unpredictable. They sometimes experience very heavy load and because of this the connection to them may be lost or not gained temporarily. If you think the torrent is active but your client is telling you otherwise, it's probably a tracker issue. Just give it a bit of time to see if it sorts itself out first of all. If your client has problems connecting, it will keep on retrying over and over again. Just give it time. If you have given it time or you are getting error messages then have a look at the common BitTorrent error messages seen below for a possible solution. * Problem connecting to tracker - (10061, "Connection refused") * Problem connecting to tracker - (10054, 'Connection reset by peer') * Problem connecting to tracker - (111, 'Connection refused') * Problem connecting to tracker - (10060, 'Connection timed out') * Problem connecting to tracker - HTTP Error 503: Connect failed * Problem connecting to tracker - HTTP Error 404: Not Found These can appear for a number of reasons. One is that the tracker might be down for a short while (as I mentioned above, this could be for a number of reasons), another is your net connection might be down, or the torrent may no longer be on the tracker (possibly deleted). You could also be banned from the tracker in some cases (for leeching a file). * Problem connecting to tracker - HTTP Error 400: Not Authorized Sometimes you need to be a member of a certain forum / tracker before you can download a file. If this is the case you will usually see a web address in the problem field (or maybe in the name of the file) - go there and register to access their downloads. It can also be because someone has uploaded a torrent onto a tracker that doesn't want to carry that type of file and it gets binned. If you think something is wrong, you can drag and drop the torrent into TorrentSpy for more detailed information. Have a look on their site for more information and a free download. Hints and Tips If you are using a client such as Azureus you can set your upload and download limits. By setting your max upload limit to around 80% of capacity, you will maybe increase your speeds. Whenever you receive a piece of a file, your computer will send an acknowledgement back to say that it received it OK and another piece can be sent. If your upload speed is at max, then it will have troubles sending back the acknowledgement and you will have to wait longer for your next piece. Try to pick torrents that have a lot of seeds and/or peers. Generally speaking, the more people sharing the quicker your download will be. Make sure that you have correctly configured your firewall or router if you have one. By default most firewalls and routers will block BitTorrent traffic. Be wary of downloading things that aren't popular. If you download a big file which no one else is interested in you will have trouble seeding it again after. If you don't seed then your download to upload ratio goes way down and you could end up getting banned from sites. If you are having problems downloading a file for whatever reason and can't find a solution on this site the next best place to look is the forum associated with the site you are downloading from. Ask around, explain the problem and hopefully someone will help you. If you can, maybe send an instant message or email to the original uploader. If you download a file which then requires a password before you can open it (usually compressed files), the password can sometimes be part of the filename, especially if it has a web address in (the web address is most likely to be the password). If that doesn't work then ask around on the forum or site it came from. This post has been edited by SeedIt: Mar 28 2008, 09:54 AM

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