FileShareFreak THE source for BitTorrent & P2P Tips, Tricks and Info.

If µTorrent is bogging down your high-speed Internet connection - whereby web browsing becomes extremely slow or either stops altogether - symptoms point towards an unpatched TCP/IP half-open limit. Most patchers directly modify the TCPIP.SYS file, which usually results in undesirable MS security issues and/or false positives from antivirus software. TCP-Z is different, as it alters the TCP/IP limit in memory, for a safe & fast solution under any Windows OS environment (including x64 Vista and the new Windows 7). Release the power of your network; download faster, and run more Internet tasks simultaneously - all without the side-effects of other patchers.

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Unless today is your first day on the ‘Net, we probably don’t have to tell you that new music is often handily available for download weeks, even months before an official ’street’ CD retail release date. If you’re looking for the newest leaked music releases - check out Did It Leak - not only do they report the latest music leaks but also offer the coinciding official street date alongside the leaks. How cool is that?!

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For Comcast and other major ISP subscribers, BitTorrent is not exactly a user-friendly protocol. Sandvining and other throttling techniques employed to block, limit or shape BT traffic are more commonplace than ever before. Comcast in particular is increasingly becoming more efficient at sandvining, and almost all BitTorrent clients are now non- or low-resistant to this scheme. Fortunately there’s an arsenal of services that can efficiently used to promote torrenting, such as paid VPN services and remote seedboxes.

For those who are tight for cash, here’s one free solution that has had moderate success with Comcast subscribers in particular. It’s called OpenDNS - and it works through computers (on a variety of OSes), routers, and even through existing DNS services.

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If you do a lot of downloading from BitTorrent & P2P then you probably already have a good anti-virus program installed, we should hope. But with all the choices for anti-virus these days, is there truly a ‘best’ solution? It’s impossible to side with just one, especially with all those "false positives" that one program will report, while the other claims the file is clean. This is commonly the case for users of McAfee and Nod32 - so which one should you trust? You could feasibly install a third, or even fourth antivirus program, but this just isn’t practical.

So why not get yourself a second opinion - or how about 36 of them. That’s where an online virus/malware multi-scan comes in handy. Great for scanning those cracks & keygens you downloaded before you unzip/unrar them. Note: There’s a 20 MB size limit per file for both of these services.

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In recent times, the piracy "scene" has been shifting away from DVD Screeners (DVDScr) in favour of the newer (and superior) R5 movie format. To quote Wiki, "In an effort to compete with movie piracy in Russia, the movie industry chose to create a new format for DVD releases that could be produced more quickly and less expensively than traditional DVD releases. R5 releases differ from normal releases in that they lack both the image post-processing and special features that are common on DVD releases. This allows the film to be released for sale at the same time that DVD Screeners are released." R5’s are an excellent alternative to those who want a good copy of a film long before a scheduled DVD release date. But what makes the R5 format so remarkable is that their "release dates" are somewhat predictable, and even published.

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We all know how big of a pain it is having to extract all those RAR files after downloading a torrent, especially if it’s a large game ISO or DVDr movie. Even on a zippy computer it takes up to 5 minutes to extract a full DVD release - let alone if you’re stuck using an old clunker. So why not set up µTorrent to do the hard work for you while you’re at work or busy sleeping? Who doesn’t like the idea of waking up and finding your finished torrents already extracted, ready-to-watch?

This tip will allow you to set up µTorrent to automatically unRAR the files in a torrent once it’s finished downloading. Here’s how to do it:

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(Most of this guide was posted at OiNK.cd and presently resides in the Waffles forums, but these tips pertain to just about any private music tracker).

Tip #1A — Freeleech. Ah, freeleech - the magical elixir to bad ratios. Most trackers have some form of freeleech, be it on selected types of torrents, or for special time periods (holidays, site milestones, etc.). Either way, become very interested in freeleech. And we mean interested! Download everything you can - fill up your seedbox (if you have one) and rotate the torrents, but keep it full. Also be sure to fill up your home BitTorrent client, as well. You want to complete as many torrents as you can in the freeleech timeframe - some sites will have ‘freeleech weekends’ or other short promotions. You should save your completed downloads - then, once freeleech is over, you can (re)seed those torrents and completed files for free upload ratio, during non-freeleech times (whenever you want).

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When attempting to troubleshoot BitTorrent problems, there are a zillion factors that need to be considered. Many issues involve the BT client configuration, ports and connectivity. Other errors are rooted in the BT tracker, bad ISP, faulty torrents, or software incompatibility issues. Put all this together and you’ve got endless possibilities for errors, dropped connections and hair-pulling frustration.

Here’s a list of some of the most common BitTorrent error messages, what they mean, and how to fix them.

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Many torrenters aren’t aware of this, but by default µTorrent functions on some very uncharitable out-of-the-box settings. This is to accommodate users who have a slow Internet connection (dialup) or have a small TCP limit. Or perhaps they’re just an evil crew that wants to download faster than you! Whatever the motives, here’s how to get µTorrent running in tip-top shape.

Before we begin, you’ll need the latest stable version of µTorrent. Most private trackers are moving away from allowing any version that is not 1.7.7 or 1.8.x (but be sure to check their FAQ for more info), and most likely beta versions are also banned. Got it? Great!

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Fastest BitTorrent Clients - The Tests - A Comparison of Speeds in Realtime

Every BitTorrent software developer claims that theirs is the fastest BitTorrent client, but which one really IS the fastest? There are so many variables to be considered: Seed/peer ratio of individual torrents, public or private trackers (and number of trackers in a torrent), DHT “trackerless” support and UPnP port forwarding, just to name a few. Even the default “factory” settings of each client can have an big impact on download speeds.

So how it is truly possible to really know? Conduct speed tests in a controlled experiment, natch! Let’s put ‘em to a test!

About The Tests

To create a semi-controlled environment in which the data could realistically be used, we needed to conduct the experiment in realtime - in a scenario where ALL BitTorrent clients were using the exact same torrent (loaded simultaneously in each) and thus were ideally downloading at the same time. Not only that, but we repeated the same text three times with 3 different .torrents (all 5 clients were loaded with the exact same torrent at the same time, on three separate occasions).

OK, no peeking - don’t scroll down to the bottom just yet. Out of the five tested clients (µtorrent, BitComet, Azureus, BitTorrent and BitLord), which one do YOU think won the races?

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