[pixelninja]

So this past weekend I thought I'd check out this whole bittorrent thing. I read some faq's, downloaded the "official" app from http://www.bittorrent.com, disabled my Windows firewall, opened up ports 6881-6889 on my router and signed up with one of the more popular torrent sites, torrentspy. After poking around for a bit, I thought I'd try to download some tv shows, specifically Nip Tuck. I picked the torrent that seemed to have the best balance between the smallest file size and the most seeds and started the download. 5 hours later, I cancelled the download. My download speed NEVER got above 0 mb/sec and torrent app estimated it would be DAYS to download the file.

Any specific tips and tricks for getting a decent download speed (besides what I mentioned above)? Is there a better app than the one I tried using? Is this technology really as hit and miss as it seems? Everything I've read says that its the best file sharing technology, but if it takes days to download a 350mb file (over a cable modem), then I'm gonna have to pass.

 

[su_root]

I had the same problem, download azureus bittorrent client

 

[pixelninja]

I had the same problem, download azureus bittorrent client

Are you saying that azureus is a better app? Please give more details on how it helped you. Thanks!

 

[Pau11y]

That was my first torrent client and I haven't had a need to look for another. I used to use mIRC to get my music, but torrent is just too easy.
I kept my up speed to only 1/2 of my up bandwidth. Also, my XP SP2 firewall never became an issue at all so I don't know why you'd need to cripple your firewall. Do you know if you've got traffic going while your 'puter is just sitting there (for a very simple diag.: do nothing and look at the two 'puter icon by the clock. If you see traffic and there's no apps running, you may have some spyware issues taking up bandwidth). There's one other thing: QoS in your network configs (rumored to take up 20% of network bandwidth so MS can keep an eye on you and where your going so as to target ads at you). You can un-install it from your network configs (I do that to every machine I work on). MSConfig is another good place to look for stoopid built-in crap. A big CPU bandwidth hog is indexing service. Uncheck that bastard and QoS and you'll be much mo' schoomth. I also like to kill all the remote desktop, registry crap (don't kill remote access anything tho). If any of this doesn't help there maybe something in your router choking down the bandwidth.

Check tweakXP.com for howtos and performance tweaking. But a word up front, I take no responsibilities if you screw up your rig messing w/ tweaks.

 

[pixelninja]

I played around with azureus and was receiving up to 80k download speeds, so that's better.

And pau11y, I crippled my firewall because I wasn't sure how to open a port in it. I've figured that out now.

Another question: Any secruity issues associated with opening a port in my router and firewall and just leaving it open?

 

[Pau11y]

I played around with azureus and was receiving up to 80k download speeds, so that's better.

And pau11y, I crippled my firewall because I wasn't sure how to open a port in it. I've figured that out now.

Another question: Any secruity issues associated with opening a port in my router and firewall and just leaving it open?

I think you'll be pretty safe as long as the port number is above 1024. Everything below that is critical for your machine and don't want to be compromised.

 

[pixelninja]

I think you'll be pretty safe as long as the port number is above 1024. Everything below that is critical for your machine and don't want to be compromised.

So even though its common knowledge that bittorrent uses port 6881, leaving it open won't compromise access to my machine? Could someone gain access to my machine through this port?

This stuff is pretty new to me, so pardon my ignorance with networking stuff.

 

[Tenchiro]

So even though its common knowledge that bittorrent uses port 6881, leaving it open won't compromise access to my machine? Could someone gain access to my machine through this port?

This stuff is pretty new to me, so pardon my ignorance with networking stuff.

I use Bit Tornado which allows for custom port selection. My firewall is stealthed, port forwarded to an unused IP and drops all ICMP packets.

All that combined pretty much makes me invisible on the internet, even if someone does have my IP there is nothing they can do with it.

 

[Pau11y]

I use Bit Tornado which allows for custom port selection. My firewall is stealthed, port forwarded to an unused IP and drops all ICMP packets.

All that combined pretty much makes me invisible on the internet, even if someone does have my IP there is nothing they can do with it.

Yeah, most routers are NAT'd so there's an outside IP everyone sees and you use an inside IP. Once (and if - a big if) they get past your router, they'll have to figure out your inside IP (not too hard, but not too easy since most use DHCP). Plus, even if they do get thru, ports over the 1024 aren't usually allowed to modify too much, if any, system processes/services (I may be wrong here, but from what I've learn'd from my ipchains days...). What Techiro said about ICMP is key. (I believe) most of your DoS comes thru ICMP (if I remember right, very low port number...like 1-10...?). I think you'll be fine.
Plus, if anyone is going to go thru the trouble to get into somewhere, do you think you're important enough for them to burn their time when targets like CitiBank or DOD is much more...um...enticing?

On another note, I recently torrent'd the new NIN CD that uses .aiff file type... These look like .wav file sizes...an uncompressed cd capture maybe? Anyway, what can I use to turn these into .cda files to burn a disc (w/o compression - therefore no loss)?

 

[Tenchiro]

On another note, I recently torrent'd the new NIN CD that uses .aiff file type... These look like .wav file sizes...an uncompressed cd capture maybe? Anyway, what can I use to turn these into .cda files to burn a disc (w/o compression - therefore no loss)?

The Nero suite is sweet for doing all sorts of ripping and conversions. Coincidentally it can also be gotten off numerous torrents.

 

[Pau11y]

Oh wait, is aiff a quicktime/iTunes thing...?

 

[Tenchiro]

Oh wait, is aiff a quicktime/iTunes thing...?

It was developed by Apple years ago, but I thought iTunes were MP3's

 

[Pau11y]

PixelNinja, hey, PM Mike. He'll give you the lo' down on network stuff. He's a friggin' unix geek who should know about unix network security. That's where most of my info is based from. And since most routers follow a structure very close to iptables, a unix thing, best to hit a unix geeeeeeker like Mikey.