Downloading BitTorrent Files

What is BitTorrent in Plain English?

BitTorrent is a program you download. It is similar to a peer-to-peer file sharing service. Basically it goes like this: You download the installer. You get the link to a file that ends in .torrent and enter that URL into your browser (preferably Internet Explorer). This opens the BitTorrent download window. It starts downloading the file, or episode that you wanted (eg. alias2x01.torrent). As it downloads, it uploads the parts that you have to other people so many people can get it at once. When you've finished downloading the file, you can leave the window open (don't press finish or close the window) and other people can still download from you. This is very much encouraged.

I'm new to all this. How do I download with BitTorrent???

First we need to download and install a BitTorrent client

Official client 3.3

CODE

http://www.bitconjurer.org/BitTorrent/index.html

Experimental client 3.2.1b-2

CODE

http://ei.kefro.st/projects/btclient

TheShad0w Experimental S-5.8.3

CODE

http://home.elp.rr.com/tur

Azureus 2.0.3.0

CODE

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

burst! RC5d

CODE

http://krypt.dyndns.org:81/torrent/download.phtml

BT++ 0.5.4 alpha [code]http://btplusplus.sourceforge.net

Shareaza 1.8.9.22

CODE

http://www.shareaza.com

Nova Torrent 0.2.0

CODE

http://blackflaw.dyndns.org

SimpleBT 0.1.9

CODE

http://sourceforge.net/projects/simplebt

BitAnarch 1.0.5a

CODE

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitanarch/

Personal Torrent Collector 0.8.2.2

CODE

http://ptc.sourceforge.net

Effusion 0.3.3 beta

CODE

http://www.azrael-uk.f2s.com/az/effusion

Snark 0.5 beta

CODE

http://www.klomp.org/snark

ByteTorrent 0.95

CODE

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bytetorrent/

ABC 2.5

CODE

http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net

Note:

If you?re client freezes during D/Ls, it?s a problem with you?re network card or modem, this happens when you connect to more peers than you?re card or modem can handle & windows shuts it down. There is a cure. Shad0ws Experimental client allows you to set how many incoming peers to allow.

All about BT:

CODE

http://www.dessent.net/btfaq/#now_what

How to D/L Torrent files

BitTorrent is not like other peer-to-peer applications (such as Winmx, Kazaa, Gnutella, etc.) in that it does not have its own \"universe.\" Put another way, BT lives on top of the Web, which means that all of the searching/listing of available files is done on the web. When you find a file you want to download, you click on it and the BitTorrent client program will run and ask you where to put it, and then start downloading. Or you save target as. Save the file somewhere then click on it when you?re ready to start the D/L.

It doesn't do anything it says:

Problem connecting to tracker - timeout exceeded

Problem connecting to tracker - HTTP Error 503: Connect failed

Problem connecting to tracker - [Error socket error] (10061, \" Connection refused\")

Problem connecting to tracker - (111, \'Connection refused\'

Generally just wait ... this normally means that the \'Tracker\' is maybe too busy. Leave your window open and it will try to connect every 2 minutes or so.

Note: BT dose resume downloads, just click the torrent file again when you are ready to resume the D/L and save it to same place as the original. All clients have an option for default D/L directory. I suggest setting this option.

My speed is always very slow!!!!!!!!!!

Speeds can be real slow if your one of the below, they all can bet set to allow BT in and out

#1 behind a firewall

#2 behind a router

#3 on a network

#4 Xps firewall is enabled

ports 6881 thru 6999 need to be open to get good speeds

If you need info on bit torrent and how to set it up with a firewall or router

CODE

http://knowbuddy.dyndns.org/torrent/btclientconfig.html

Get general info on how torrent works and how it uses ports

CODE

http://knowbuddy.dyndns.org/torrent/btclientconfig.html

http://www.dessent.net/btfaq/

Where do I get torrent files???

Suprnova mirrors are the best site?s, updated every 20 minutes.

CODE

http://www.suprnova.org

There are others you can use here is another one:

CODE

http://www.torrentbox.com

Places to find other torrent sites

CODE

http://torrentlinks.com/index.php?action=displaycat&catid=10

http://members.chello.nl/~p.wiersema/

http://home.quicknet.nl/qn/prive/romeria/bittorrentsites.htm

Torrent Search engine

CODE

http://novasearch.net/

Keeping up with the torrent network

CODE

http://www.digital-update.com/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=163113

http://www.filesoup.com/phpBB2/index.php

http://www.lickmytaint.com/

http://suprnova.org/

PeerGuardian

What does PeerGuardian actually do?

PeerGuardian does two things to help P2P users. The first is the obvious one, it closes connections on certain IP addresses. The second is that it optionally logs all connections made to your computer. The reason for this is so that if you do use PeerGuardian but still get sent a legal threat, you can cross-reference the date/time of the alleged infringement with the log. This gives us a list of IPs, one of which will be the IP that's doing the busting. It's basically to help us identify which IPs are doing the busting and weren't known to PeerGuardian before. - Hope that makes sense.

Is PeerGuardian 100% Protection?

CERTAINLY NOT!!! - PeerGuardian relies on users sharing information to stay up to date. It IS contributory to protection and (I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet here!!) it seems to be the most up-to-date and open database of this nature on the internet (as far as I know). The more people who are using full-logging and report the relevant IPs when they get a C&D threat (see above paragraph), the more people we can save. ANONYMOUS P2P is the way ahead IMHO, PeerGuardian isn't 100% effective.. I've NEVER claimed that and never will and I look forward to the day that PG (not just the app, more.. the database and communication between p2p'ers on blocking IPs) becomes totally redundant. I'm just trying to help supply the next-best thing until we get to that stage.

I use PeerGuardian and have still been sent a legal threat.

What do I do?

First of all, stop sharing the file you got busted with. If you're worried, try sharing older/rarer files. If you share Bourne Identity, Terminator 3 and a load of Busta Rhymes mp3s after being busted, you'll be asking for trouble. Second thing to do, check the "full connection log" in PeerGuardian. (you did have it enabled didn't you?) - Work out the difference in timezones on the infringement warning and cross-reference it with the log. From this you should be able to identify a handful of IPs. Either post that list to the PG forums for one of our admins/moderators/members to investigate or investigate it yourself and post the p2p enemy IP to the on-line database. - There are plans to automate this whole process in the future.

CODE

http://www.peerguardian.net/

Well it isn't really much of a tutorial but I spent a lot of time on this so please help me out if it is wrong.

With my post I would like to share with all of you, my resources when it comes to downloading USEFUL things from the internet. Some of these things are useful to chuck on cds/dvds and others are useful to use he he he

Most of your know about P2P using programs such as kazaa, edonkey and what not. This is what everyone uses. (EVEN ME WHEN THE BELOW 3 FAIL or I want old and obscure stuff that only some weirdo in Kazakhistan may have). If you are going to use Kazaa, use kazaalite as it has no spyware

Before you download any files i recommend that you get the K-Lite Coded Pack that contains in a single file all the codecs for most media file types that you are likely to download and use. The address to the site is

CODE

http://doa2.host.sk/codecs/

. The site also contains alternatives to Apple Quicktime and Real Player which run more efficiently and are less annoying, especially Real player and the forcefull advertising.

People that are serious about downloading useful quality stuff usually don't use those sort of programs.

Your 3 best friends are FTP, IRC & Bittorrents and as of lately DC++!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The tools which you will need are:

An IRC client:

CODE

www.mirc.com

An FTP client:

CODE

www.flashfxp.com

and a bittorent client:

CODE

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/

PART 0

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I highly recommend DC++?? which you can download from

CODE

http://dcplusplus.sourceforge.net/

its basically like kazaa and similar.

In Aussie Land this is the program that you MUST have if you want to leech at big LANs. everyone shares using this program and you search, browse users shared folders and download. Very Handy.

Even more handy is that fact that you can also use it on the internet to connect to various networks (HUBS) and get stuff from ppl that share 300+ gigs of stuff. yeh AMAZING.

I have played around with this program and highly recommend it now. The amount of content you can get from it is astonishing. The only setting up that you need is to allow a certain port to be open with both (tcp (used for file transfers) and udp (used for searching) allowed. You can specify this in your firewall if you have one, otherwise don't worry (note: winxp has a firewall enabled by default). I also recommend that you share, as many HUBs wil not allow you to connect to them otherwise. When you open up a port you run in Active mode ( others connect to you) you can also run in passive mode (you connect to other people). So why not run in passive mode all the time ? because if 2 people are in passive mode, you will not be able to connect to one another.

When you connect to a hub you and do a search, tick display results with open slots only. and thats it. You can also browse peoples share folders, if you right click on one of their results and select "get file list"

For Help, please refer to About, Help / Newbie Help

Please read this file as it is short, and nicely summarises all the options and available commands. Also just click around (right clicking is good) and see what you can do.

typing /fav in the chat window will add the current hub to your favourites (very usefull)

What I do not like about this program is that, you are not able to download the same file from a number of people, or resume the same file from another person like you can in other programs. In the latest version you are unable to limit your upload rate, and can in this way, slow your connection down to a crawl. Lastly you are only able to get one file (or directory) at a time from a single person, without the ability to queue a number of files (or directories).

So if that person has a lot of things that you may want, it could be very annoying to get them from them. However I do like the fact that you can connect to a number of hubs at the same time, and easily search all of them or only one of them (you can select) with a single search.

PS. this program is made for people on broadband only, in fact i don't think any hubs will even let you connect on a dial-up connection. Bad luck to all you turtles.

Thanks to OLI who wrote these guides.