.Torrents, and how to use them

[The Midnighter]

Alright, so I figured it's about time I enlighten the rest of you as to how the rest of the world is downloading files at over 400kbs - ISP speed pending

For this little tutorial, you'll need the following:
uTorrent (Found at: http://download.utorrent.com/1.6/utorrent.exe)

That client is used to handle .Torrent files, which you're going to download from here:
http://www.isohunt.com <-- That's my favorite site to get torrents from, it's in Canada too, which means that it's got a very small chance that it'll go down, but in case it does use this one:
http://www.torrent-finder.com It's not as organized, but it searches all the torrent sites it can find.

Alright, now we have to setup uTorrent with your router / Firewall!
Of course I'm not going to go through every single router and explain how to open a port, when someone else has already done it for me! See http://portforward.com/ on how to open ports in your router. I recommend a port between 6886-12000 - They seem to give me the least amount of trouble.

Alright, so now that you've got uTorrent up and running, when you're in uTorrents main window press "Ctrl+G" which should bring up the "Speed Guide" - If for whatever reason it doesn't, you can also access this menu through: Options -> Speed Guide..

Select your connection type (which you can find out at http://www.dslreports.com By running a speed test closest to you) and finally, enter the port # in the bottom box, and hopefully you're on your way!

Now, this doesn't mean that the ports are necessarily all open, you could have Windows Firewall (Laughable) enabled, or a different program that's blocking ports (ZoneAlarm, BlackIce, etc..) - To test this, after you've entered your port in the box, click the button next to it that says "Test to see if my port is opened correctly" - This will start a new internet session, and point you towards http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=X - Where X is your port.
If for whatever reason your port is closed, post here and I'll do my best to help you get it open!

There are many features towards uTorrent, you can easily configure it - but if you'd like an indepth description of how to configure it, let me know. =)

Edit** I forgot to explain which torrents are good! On ISO Hunt.com after you perform a search you'll see a bunch of torrents, followed by a "S" and "L" on the title bar of the searches, those stand for "Seeders" and "Leechers" - A seeder is someone who's already downloaded the fill file, and is now letting the "Leechers" download the files from them. So essentially, you want to get a torrent with as many seeders, and as few leechers as possible!

[Massive Attack]

Thanks. I'm gonna try- when I download torrents it only goes at 5.0KB a second....

Other Torrent Sites:

Demonoid- You can only register on weekends.
PodTropolis- It's meant for your iPod but whatever...

[The Midnighter]

And your ports are opened correctly? What kind of internet connection do you have? what torrent did you download? (Link me to it )

[Massive Attack]

Originally Posted by The Midnighter

And your ports are opened correctly? What kind of internet connection do you have? what torrent did you download? (Link me to it )

Yup.

I live in New Zealand and here the internet speed is.... well.... bad, but this will help.

V For Vendetta

[The Midnighter]

Yeah, you only have 5 seeders and 5 leechers, which means you're basically downloading from one person if you're lucky. So, you're going to get a bad speed =( find a better .torrent

[Zero Sora]

Torrents are so much better then Bear Share and Limewire. Torrents is how I get my weekly Bleach and Naruto fix =D and the other anime I feel like getting. xD

[Digital Gopher]

I trust downloading torrents more than I trust downloading files off of bearshare, limewire etc, etc.
I guess I'll throw a few more bones in for everybody.

www.torrentz.com - a 'google'-ish torrent search engines.
and if you want to find any show that you wanna watch. (Given, it's a good show, 30 rock, studio 60, house, etc) just type in "eztv" into any search engine and you'll fine every show you'd wanna watch.

[The Midnighter]

Thanks for the links guys, but everyone each of you posted - Is searched by both the torrent sites I named.
If there are any more questions, just let me know. =)

[Milkman]

I use Azureus as my Torrent Client, is Utorrent better?

[The Marauder]

They're about the same. I've tried both and prefer uTorrent, but they are both good clients. Just about anything is better than the default... XD

[Azurith]

And yet, no one has mentioned http://thepiratebay.org ????

WTH, middy?

http://torrentspy.com
http://isohunt.com

Or just use google..

Oh, and there is a more useful feature for azureus than utorrent.
The ability to use 'ToR' networks.. but it's not necessary. Only if you are paranoid. ;)

~~Azurith

[Square Ninja]

Any tips on hacking open ports on a network?

I tried port forwarding and messing around with my firewall, but that didn't get me anywhere. Evidently my network only allows me one measly port. I want to change that...or get around it.

[The Midnighter]

Define "Hacking" - because there are a lot of different things you can do with an open port...

[Square Ninja]

Originally Posted by The Midnighter

Define "Hacking" - because there are a lot of different things you can do with an open port...

Very well, let me rephrase that.

I am constricted to only one port. Torrent clients evidently require more than one open port to operate (also WH40K: Dawn of War). What I would like to know is if there is a way I could open or gain access to more ports on my network. The university has all this bandwidth, and it just hoardes it. Just fire out any ideas you have.

[The Midnighter]

You can do what I did, I turned my home PC into a little "Port Server" - By connecting to it on port 80, it allowed me to tunnel through my home PC and use it's open ports Of course, explaining this to you would take a lot more time and devotion than I have the time / patients to do, look it up on google. <3