A Bit Torrent cilent Guide

[kAi]

A Bit Torrent (BT) guide.

Clients:

Bit Torrent Official
Bit Tornado - Recently gave this client in for µTorrent.
µTorrent - I've now switched over to this client, and there is a guide below. Probably the client to get now!
Azureus - A good client, uses Java and can be a memory hog.
ABC - I haven't used this client, but heard good things about it.
Bit Comet - Don't use it, but many people do.
Bit Torrent Experimental - I used to use this client but rather Bit Tornado.

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Many of these clients allow pause, and other good features, but I'll mainly talk about Bit Tornado as it is the one I'm most familiar with.

Bit Tornado has some good features, you can pause your torrents, set prioritise your downloads and other things.

The main interface shows you estimated and time elapsed, where the file is downloading to, the Download rate, Upload rate, how much you've downloaded and uploaded, and your share rating, also how many seeds/peers you are connected to.



In the details section is where you will find the Info Hash, Announce URL, Size, Pieces, Size of pieces, likely tracker. If the torrent is batched and has other files in it, this is where is shows you how much of the files you've download if any. This also shows you the percentage of what the file has downloaded



e.g.

/Naruto - 01.avi Done
/Naruto - 02.avi 94%
/Naruto - 03.avi
...etc

Now when you highlight a certain one and right click it, it comes up with a little pop-up that has different options.
Download First - Download Normally - Download Later - Never Download

These options do come in handy especially if you already have 'Naruto - 01.avi' and don't want to download this file, right click it and select Never Download, this file won't be downloaded now, and you can continue to get the files that you wish, if you were downloading ''Naruto - 02.avi' and the rest and you wanted to see Naruto - 02.avi' first, then right click it and set to Download First and this file will be downloaded first, the other will still be downloading, but the majority will be going to this file. The default downloading option is Download Normally, and will make it download like it would usually without highlight and changing any of these options. Also Download Later which would download very little until the other one's are done, or have more to it.

This option is really good if you for instance needed some files out of the batch and not all of them. Bit Tornado isn't the only client to do this, I don't know where you can do this in the other clients, but you get a vague idea of where it could be, or someone might post something on another client that could help you.

For instance say you had 'Naruto - 01.avi' to 'Naruto - 15.avi' and a new batch came out, and it was from 'Naruto - 05.avi' to 'Naruto - 20.avi' you would select episodes 'Naruto - 05.avi' to 'Naruto - 15.avi' and right click and then select Never Download.

The advanced option shows you the people's IP Addresses that you're currently connected to and downloading and uploading from and to. It also shows you what port you're listening on and the pieces you've currently received and partial downloads. There are also three button options.

What does "Manual Announce" mean?
"External Announce" ?
"Finish Allocation" ?

* "Manual Announce" forces the client to reconnect to the tracker. This is useful if your connection dies.

* "External Announce" lets you connect to another tracker hosting the same torrent set, bridging the two trackers and allowing you to share data with both sets of peers.

* "Finish Allocation": As mentioned before, BitTorrent downloads randomly though it fills disk space linearly. The Finish Allocation function fills the disk space in the background until all necessary disk space has been acquired. This is useful for various reasons, including re-ordering the data inside a torrent so the contents of a complete file are in the correct place and the file is usable.

Now to the Prefs option, would say that most of you should leave this alone, and see what it means, but also check out the Port Ranges that are in use. 6881-6889 is the default port, some ISPs block this port so you may need to use a different range, but Bit Tornado has it on a higher port and randomized for a default i think. It may be a good idea to take randomize off, if you're getting slow speeds use the port range in there and then forward the ports on your router to these ports. I won't go into detail about portforwarding but you should go check this place out http://www.portforward.com/



Don't be a leech and seed for as long as possible, you can watch the episode or read whatever is in the torrent while you're seeding.

If anyone wants to add anything I missed or wants to write something about another client then add it, please only constructive posts in here.

For an even more indepth guide check out http://wiki.etree.org/index.php?page=BitTorrent

[kAi]

µTorrent - This is the site, and where you can download this lightweight program,

Just installed this torrent client and I'm liking it very much, similar to the azureus style but without the java. Very light weight program that doesn't take the memory resources like Azureus.

Now, it's setup with different categories on the top left.

All, Downloading, Completed, Active, Inactive.

Clicking on one of these will show you the torrents that are in one or more of the categories to the right of it. Having all on will show you all the torrents you are downloading/uploading at the moment.

Clicking one of the torrent files will then bring up more information on that torrent file beneath. You can prioritise the actual torrents, with pause high or low priority, etc. There is also a RSS downloader, which I haven't played with or looked up any information on, I'll try and get to that later, but by the sounds of it, you just give it a site where torrents are that has RSS, and it will download the torrents and files automatically, if it is setup like that.
The different tabs for torrents are.

General, Peers, Pieces, Files, Speed, Logger

General
There is a little graph at the top which shows you, how much you've downloaded, the pieces you've gotten in the range, and the availability of those pieces through other peers. It also shows information on your transfers such as Downloaded, Uploaded, Speed, Time elapsed and remaining, share ratio, connections, and wasted. Tracker information, and general information is also available with where the file is downloaded to, how big it is and some comments from the creator.

Peers
This shows you the people you are connected to and downloading and uploading off, it has a little flag of their country if the program can figure it out, it shows, percentage, client used, speeds, transfers. Right-clicking this screen gives you some options as to copy the peer list, or even add one.

Pieces
This shows you the the pieces that you are currently downloading, it's size, and progress, availability, and # of blocks till completion.

Files
These are the files that you are downloading under the torrent, this is where you can prioritise the files, giving it high, normal, or low priority, or telling it not to download the file at all. High = it will download that file first. This is certainly good if you only need certain files out of the torrent, or if you already have the file it will check it and see if it's correct and completed.

Speed
This is a visual graph on the connection speed.

Logger
Speaks for itself really, just logs the information of the torrents if you so wish.

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I haven't gone into the preferences and options yet, but will go into that when I also look at the other features, like RSS, etc.

[masamuneehs]

I also use uTorrent and recommend it to everyone. Here's some little goodies I've come to found out about it:

Downloading One File out of a Batch
Ever want to DL Episode 4 of ___ anime, but only 13+ batch torrents are available? Don't sweat it! When you open the torrent with uTorrent it will automatically prompt you to indicate which seperate files you want to download! Simply uncheck all the boxes except the one you want to DL and you're set!
Note: Does not differentiate between numerous files in a .zip or .rar file

Speed Test
They aren't joking when they say you should run this before figuring out your settings for uTorrent. It makes a big difference.
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
I always set my max allocated bandwith to about 90% of my actual max connection.

Scheduler
Share your internet connection with other users who complain you slow down everyone's web? in 'Options' select 'Scheduler' There you can select individual hours of every work to keep uTorrent running or idle, and you can even select a 'limited activity' state where you can customize your max DL/UL rate for those hours!

Folder Options
Let's you select where data is stored during DL, where completed files are put, where the actual .torrent files are stored. Also under 'Options'

Bandwith Options
Select the Port you're on, or pick a random one. You can also limit max DL speed and max UL speed that you allow peers to connect to you at.

Torrent Options (THIS WILL ALTER YOUR SPEED SETTINGS)
Allows you to customize how many peers you connect to per torrent and how many upload slots you offer while uploading to others. Also controls max number of DLs and Seeds you allow uTorrent to run at one time

I only messed around with the other settings once before, and don't recommend it.