BT babysteps

[hoby]

So, yeah, I've spent a lot of years dealing with audio but have only just recently gotten high-speed access and am therefore a total nube when it comes to this torrent stuff.

I've already downloaded more stuff than I can keep track of, but am often left wondering if I'm doing something wrong - or at least not as right as I could.

I'll be downloading just fine and then my dl rate will plummet and my time remaining will climb to the point where it'll be more than a day before the download is complete.

If I go look at the show's page at etree, it looks like the same # of seeds and leeches are there. So what's up? Is there spomething I'm missing in that info that makes the difference? If it's just a fact of life in the bt world, that's cool. I was just wondering if it's something I'm doing or not doing.

Funny, I'm sitting here troubleshooting my high-speed music downloads while our furnace is broken and we're heating with our backup woodstove.

So, what DO we call this decade?

hoby

[Cleantone]

www.portforward.com

You need to forward your ports for proper torrenting. Look up your router on the linked page.

[hoby]

Thanks, Clean. I'll check it out.

[hoby]

I went to portforward.com. What a great resource!!

I tracked down the instructions I needed and worked through them.

Everything went more or less smoothly until I got to the part where I'm supposed to enter my DNS servers. I hadn't come across that info anywhere, so I called my ISP (Road Runner), just like the instructions said.

But unlike what the instructions said ("this is easy because your ISP answers this question all the time"), tech support said there are no DNS servers and I shouldn't need that info.

The last guy I talked to (after the Level 1 person got permission to transfer me ) was someone who used BT himself and he told me that he just disables the firewall in his router and everything is fine.

Well, I tried that last night to download 12/15, and my dl speed wasn't any better.

I guess I can call back today and try to move further up the tech support food chain, but I thought I'd check in and see if anyone has any thoughts on this "no DNS server needed" thing.

Here's a question: If I have my own domain (moondogeast.org) is that where I should be looking for DNS info as opposed to Road Runner?

Thanks,

hoby

[harrymcq]

I don't know why you need to know your DNS servers for bittorrent. If you are running a router and getting an address via DHCP or PPPoE you should be able to see in status what they are.

Also disabling your whole firewall isn't the best idea really, you should just open the ports so people don't try to get in on other ones but the thing you need to do in addition to opening ports in your firewall is to forward the ports to your computer. You will probably need to give your computer a fixed IP address in your local subnet and then set the router to forward the proper ports to that. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.