Torrenting.. :(

[CylonGlitch]

I just finished ripping all 307 DVDs in my collection, with one exception. I have a movie, just one, that is scratched and cannot be watched. I just went and searched for a torrent and tried to download it. I know, I shouldn't but I did pay for it but can't watch it. Anyway, this experiment is ending just like every other torrent experience I've ever had. I load the torrent file, and it sits there. Hours go by and 0 bytes uploaded / downloaded. Occasionally I get a few kb here and there; but maybe in 6 months I'll end up with the whole thing.

Is this normal, it always seems so lame that it isn't worth it. I'm guessing if I was looking for NEW things, I should find more seeds but I don't need new stuff, I need to get things that are old because I'm just trying to replace lost / broken stuff.

 

[michael.lauden]

Mroogle: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/433841/

Google: http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/optimizing-transmission-bittorrent-client-speed.htm

 

[CylonGlitch]

Thanks but every once in a while things are blazing along, but 99.9% of the time, I get nothing. That's what confuses me. I'll play around more with the settings and see if I can get something to work.

 

[MagicBoy]

How many people are seeding the torrent?

 

[ul1984]

As long as there are just a few seeders, and you have a decent internet connection(works best if your upload is good as well*) that isn't traffic shaped for bittorrent traffic, I have never seen a torrent that failed to download, very rarely takes more than a few minutes.

Don't think you need to play with that many settings, just make sure you're connectable, and if you have a good connection and router that doesn't crash, you could increase the max connections as well(but this will likely have no effect if its an unpopular torrent with few seeders/leechers)

*with a good upload speed you will help distribute all the pieces that you get from a seeder to the other leechers, this way they can download other pieces from the seeders instead, and thus the overall download speed is increased)


If its as slow as you say, i'm guessing you found a torrent with 0 seeders, which means there is no one who has the whole file: Find another torrent if you can.

 

[CylonGlitch]

Funny thing. Normally I have used tomato torrent, almost exclusively. Today, after the first post, I downloaded transmission and presto, works fine. I get OK download rates, 150k/s (I have a 25Mbps connection) but it's an old file and there are only a few seeders. I'm about to head out for the night and leave it running. Upload rate pegged at 50k/s.

 

[MagicBoy]

Could well be the tracker restricting access to approved Torrent Apps then.

I tried a few and settled on Transmission pretty quickly. It used to be very bare bones a few years ago but now it has all the common features requested yet is still lightweight. It's a hundred times better than something like Vuze which used to regularly steal most the CPU on my original Rev MacBook Pro with it's Java bloatedness and set the fans screaming.