your thoughts on BitTorrent?

[Messerschmitt Man]

I can't afford jet stream, so I have to live with my dial-up internet which only get's as high as 3kb/sec.

At the moment I use Lime Wire & Kazaa to download. When I heard about BitTorrent it sounded real good.

"BitTorrent is a protocol that enables fast downloading of large files using minimum Internet bandwidth. BitTorrent costs nothing to use and includes no spyware or pop-up advertising.

Unlike other download methods, BitTorrent maximizes transfer speed by gathering pieces of the file you want and downloading these pieces simultaneously from people who already have them. This process makes popular and very large files, such as videos and television programs, download much faster than is possible with other protocols. "


My question is before I download it, what do others think of it? Also what Download speed increase could I expect with my dial-up considering normal speeds for me are 3kb/sec.


cheers guys!

[janni-chan]

Bittorrent for me is usually 14kb/sec, and I use it approximately once every day or (on bad weeks) once every week to *coughcough* borrow *coughcough* anime from various sites- I use the version that can be found here: http://www.bittorrent.com/ . But you can find faster versions, I just use this because I always have and thus, it's easier to work with

So I adore bittorrent I've used it for more than a year, for both dialup and DSL, and I can't complain at all- especially not since the danish police has started tracking down everyone who downloads illegal stuff on Kazaa and lime

[Messerschmitt Man]

to *coughcough* borrow *coughcough* anime from various sites

LMAO!

Honestly though, if it means Steven Speilberg, has to go without buying a 50th Mercedes to finish off his car collection, in his 19th holiday home mansion's garage, because I was one of 10,000 people to download his work, big deal, i'll still sleep well at night.

I've just downloaded bittorrent, it's pretty confusing figuring out how to sort out the firewall thing!

I was reading http://userpages.umbc.edu/%7Ehamilto....html#FWConfig .Under "Firewall Configuration" It lists instructions for some firewalls. My firewall is the one that comes with Windows xp, yet that one isn't mentioned.

jannichan or someone else could you pleeeeeeeease talk me through it from start to finish? I've downloaded the BitTorrent-4.1.3-Beta application file (3.81mb), and installed it, but where to from here?

[Shadower]

I think it is to slow and I don't like the fact that you have to upload in order to download something.

I usually download from newsgroups (usenet). With that I can fully take advantige of my bandwith (350Kbyte p/s) and I don't have to upload anything unless I want to (uploading is the only thing they can nail you for over here).

[janni-chan]

I'm sorry Messer, I just disable my firewall when I use Bittorrent, so I really don't know- on the other hand, when you need to download something, you find the so called torrent file on the web (file-name.torrent). Once you have downloaded that normally (it's usually not even 10 kb big), you can download the actual movie, clip or game that you want to get.

Shadower, you can find faster clients- some bt-clients doesn't go faster than 3 kb/s while some go as fast as your dsl connection, which is pretty nifty But there IS the uploading issue... but as far as I know, you're just a "seeder", you don't upload anything- you just make the downloading go faster for others by seeding the files. Please correct me if I'm wrong

[Genessee]

I found it to be very slow, like most p2p crap

[Crazy764]

BitTorrent is awesome. If you set up your settings right.

My connection is only around 2mbit, and I get 200kb/s - 400 kb/s most of the time.

[janni-chan]

BitTorrent is awesome. If you set up your settings right.

My connection is only around 2mbit, and I get 200kb/s - 400 kb/s most of the time.

I think I need that one Care to fill me in (on the name of the bt client and the settings)? My connection is 2mbit, and I still "only" get the low rate I mentioned earlier.

[Shadower]

BitTorrent is awesome. If you set up your settings right.

My connection is only around 2mbit, and I get 200kb/s - 400 kb/s most of the time.

400kbit/s is only 1/5th of your available bandwith, not very fast imo

[janni-chan]

Probably not, shadower But for me, there's no alternative- you cannot direct download the stuff I'm getting, even though it would be a lot easier and faster, agreed

[Crazy764]

First make sure you have a static IP and that you use port forwarding.