BitTorrent (2/4)
This post is the second part of a series. You can read the first part here. As the other posts are published, I will add links here.
In my last post, I explained to you what BitTorrent is and what it is about. In this post, I will introduce what is currently the best BitTorrent client on the “market” - it is, of course, free to use.
Behold µTorrent. Yes, that’s the “Mu” letter from the Greek alphabet. Don’t worry, nobody actually calls it that, and you too can refer to it as “you-torrent”.
Let’s skip over the part of the installation that is completely obvious, and at the first screen that might confuse you:
In short - leave all these as they are. Slightly less short: first are the filetype associations. If you don’t use any other BitTorrent clients or programs, it is safe to just leave all of these on, even though only the .torrent filetype is used much these days. The second set of options contains two unrelated checkboxes. The first deals with Windows Firewall. Don’t turn that off. The client obviously needs to connect to the Internet, so unless you trust yourself to manually allow it to use the right ports, trust the installer to do it for you. The second should be obvious.
You better pay attention on the next screen:
You really, really want to turn off every option in that one. What it does is prompt you to install one of these retarded toolbars that you’ll never ever get rid of again, as well as setting your browser to point you to Ask.com on every turn. You probably don’t want that. I certainly don’t.
Understand that this is how the µTorrent programmers make their money, so if you opt not to install that stupid toolbar, think about donating some bucks to them instead.
After you unchecked those three boxes, click install and proceed to the next and last mandatory options screen:
Now, if you plan to read this post to the end, you can just skip this one and use the default settings. If you’re already bored, and want to stop reading ASAP, you can read this and the next paragraph to the end and then stop reading.
The top part of the options screen is well explained, and the only part that might confuse you is how to get the specified port to forward properly (since most of us sit behind routers these days). Since there are like a million different routers, explaining it in detail would go far beyond the scope of this post, but there is a very easy to use, intuitive website that walks you through forwarding a port: http://www.portforward.com/
Ok, if you are still reading, you pressed “Use selected settings” in the last screen and have µTorrent running. Press Ctrl+P, and we will go through important and interesting options one by one. There are still lots of helpful options that I didn’t list here, because they are up to personal preferences (such as the UI settings). It is certainly worth it to go through the non-listed options yourself if you have the time.
General: I would recommend activating the options “Append .!ut to incomplete files” and “Pre-allocate all files“. The first makes it easier to see which files are finished downloading, and the second will improve performance - µTorrent is so well coded, that you can run it in the background even when playing games or such if you have this option enabled.
Connection: as I mentioned before, you can find out how to forward a port on http://www.portforward.com/ if you are behind a router. You can chose a random port you want to use (pick a random number between 10000 and 60000), but make sure the option “Randomize port each start” is disabled if you are behind a router.
Bandwidth: this is a big one. If you configure this wrong, you might seriously hurt your download speed, so pay some attention. The perfect values for you will require a little trial and error on your part. The basic problem is this: if you set your upload speed to more than you actually have (i.e. setting it to 100 when you only have 50kb/s upload) will flood your line so much that your download will actually be hurt. On the other hand, if you set your upload much lower than your actual upload, many BitTorrent sites and trackers will ban you for “leeching” - that means taking without giving back. Remember, the BitTorrent system depends on you uploading to others while downloading.
My best advice is to download a popular torrent, setting the maximum upload rate to 0 (which means unlimited), and watching your upload speed for a few minutes. Then, set your maximum upload to a number 10-15 below that. For example, if you see that with unlimited upload, your upload speed dances around 83kb/s, 85kb/s, set your maximum upload to 70kb/s or 75kb/s. Download speed should, of course, always be set to 0. After all, we want to download as fast as we can. In the age of ADHD, nobody has time to wait hours for their movies or games.
The second part here that can hurt your download speed are the maximum numbers of connections. This is a hard field to figure out the perfect value for, but in general, Global connections and Connections per torrent should always hold the same number, and that number should be below 500 and above 100. Generally, the better your connection is, the higher you should set the number, but again, it takes some trial and error to see what number is perfect for you.
Now, youre good to go and can start downloading stuff. Next week, I’ll show you where to find the torrents you are looking for and how to tell a good torrent from a bad torrent. Have fun.
