With port-forwarding enabled on my router, I attain d'l speeds of >400
kb/s from the trackers I favor. Note that speed is also dependent on the
seeder(s) and peer(s) you're connected to. Take a look at
http://portforward.com/ for details; check the Zonealarm section from
the "Firewalling" menu for details on that app.
As for BT clients, its a matter of personal prefs. There are P2P apps
that handle multiple protocols, including bittorrents. Some users swear
by one or another and claim greater speeds using certain clients. I
personally use plain old vanilla BitTorando (no bells and whistles, and
rather than have one interface for multiple torrents, opens up a client
for each. No dealbreaker for me, and its light on resources) I can't
comment on your "5 days" issue; I would think whatever client you're
using would state what it means.
Regarding premium services, personally its not for me. If you're
seeking "questionable" files (movieZ, wareZ, etc) I'd certainly advise
against submitting billing info in order to d'load. I have in the past
paid for premium nntp(newsgroups) service since roadrunner's servers
have sh!tty retention rates (btw, Verizon has or had, its been a while,
better retention). If you are after afore-mentioned "questionable"
material, and your ISP has decent newsgroups coverage and retention,
consider searching for title(s) via http://www.binsearch.info/; select a
collection (all the files forming a particular release) and the site
will create an nzb file (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nzb). With
that nzb file, a client like Grabit (www.shemes.com) will go out and
auto-fetch all the parts for you (provided the group(s) file(s) were
posted to is/are accessible via your newsserver). HTH
Ian Carmichael
----- Original Message -----
From: Don Penlington <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Saturday, May 19, 2007 9:13 pm
Subject: Re: [PCSOFT] BitTorrent
To: [log in to unmask]
> Is there anyone out there who has successfully used BitTorrent?
>
> I'm trying to come to grips with the rather mysterious BitTorrent
> system, albeit with very limited success.
>
> The best download speed I seem to get is about 4 KB/s, which is
> about 40 times slower than dialup. That's pretty useless when I'm on 1500
> ADSL and totally useless when I'm trying to download a 500 Mb file. I may
> not live that long! I've read that much faster speeds are attainable with
> some juggling, the details of which seem to remain cryptic to say the
> least. I've looked at various tutorials, most of which seem to be sadly
> lacking in detail.
>
> For example, one says that I should configure my firewall to open
> various port numbers, but fails to say how I'm supposed to do that. I've
> looked in Zone Alarm but can't find anything in there about ports.
>
> Does anyone know how to enable or open ports when using ZA?
>
> Are there any other things I should know about BitTorrent? I can
> download and open the appropriate BitTorrent files OK, but nothing much
> seems to happen after that---one file I'm now trying to get gives the
> cryptic message "5 days". Does that mean it's going to take 5 days to
> download? Or am I 5 days down the queue to start? Or what?
>
> I've also tried BitSpirit and Burst but they all seem to be much
> the same.
>
> I think I dimly know about seeding and leaching, though not sure. I
> assume seeding means leaving your computer on so that others can download
> from your computer, and leaching is when you are downloading from
> several different servers.
>
> Is there any benefit from paying a premium to go to specialised
> servers which charge a fee to download?
>
> I realise the inherent security risks of peer-to-peer filesharing.
>
> Don Penlington
> From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
> Computer tutorials, local scenery, and other things at my website:
> http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html
>
> The NOSPIN Group has added a new feature on our website,
> web based bulletinboard for questions and answers:
> Visit our sister website at http://nospin.com
>
"Hold No Punches.." Rode brings you great shareware/freeware
programs with his honest opinions in this weekly column.
http://freepctech.com/rode
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