20 BitTorrent Tips and Tricks

Written by Ernesto on September 03, 2007 

Here’s a list of 20 BitTorrent resources, tips and tricks, useful for both newcomers and more advanced users.

Tip: Want to download Torrents anonymously? Try TorrentPrivacy, the only way to download torrents securely.

BitTorrent For Beginners

1. How and Why BitTorrent Works

BitTorrent is often referred to as the best filesharing protocol for sharing large files. But why? What makes BitTorrent so unique? Well, lets take a sneak peek under the hood of your BitTorrent client, and list a couple of features that make BitTorrent as fast, stable, and robust as it is.

2. How to Make a Torrent

Torrents are great, they are the best way to share large files with your friends, or even with people you don’t know at all. But surprisingly enough, not many people create torrents when they need to share something. We show you how.

3. uTorrent Beginners Guide

The uTorrent website has a great beginners guide for BitTorrent newbies. Worth a visit if you just started using BitTorrent.

4. Where to find Torrents

By now you probably know how BitTorrent works, now you need a good place to find .torrent files. Here’s a list of 10 great BitTorrent sites. There’s also a list of 20 less known BitTorrent sites.

Fight Throttling ISPs and be Anonymous

5. ISPs Who throttle BitTorrent Traffic

Some Internet providers try to slow you down when you use torrents. The Azureus wiki has list of ISPs who throttle BitTorrent traffic. It also suggests what encryption levels you should use.

6. How To Encrypt BitTorrent Traffic

More and more ISP’s are limiting and throttling BitTorrent traffic on their networks. By throttling BitTorrent traffic the speed of BitTorrent downloads decreases, and high speed downloads are out of the question. We show you some techniques that should help you evade some of these measures.

7. How To Tunnel BitTorrent over SSH

Sometimes it is impossible to use BitTorrent, if you’re at work, school, Comcast! or connected to a public hotspot for example. But there is an easy solution to overcome this problem. If you use a secure connection (SSH), you will be able to bypass almost every firewall.

8. How to make BitTorrent Transfers Anonymous

The Swedish Pirate Party introduced a completely anonymous (VPN) service called Relakks. Relakks makes it possible to browse the web, and use p2p-applications (like BitTorrent) without being monitored by your ISP or anti-piracy gangs like the MPAA and RIAA.

Speed up your BitTorrent Downloads

9. How to Optimize Your BitTorrent Download Speed

BitTorrent can be fun, as long as you get decent speeds. Not satisfied with your current speeds? These suggestions might help you to optimize your download pleasures.

10. How to Speed Up Bitcomet and uTorrent

90% off all people use the default settings on their client, and that’s a problem. Azureus users might want to try this tutorial by Paul Stamatiou.

11. Calculate Your Optimal BitTorrent Settings

Configuring your BitTorrent client is extremely important if you want to get the best out of BitTorrent. However, the settings pane of the average BitTorrent client might be a bit overwhelming, and some people just don’t know where to start.

12. How to Protect Your Torrent From Failing Trackers

Nothing is more frustrating than your download getting stuck. The fact that a torrent has stopped downloading can have several reasons.

BitTorrent and RSS

13. How to Use RSS & BitTorrent to Download TV shows

Are you tired of scanning several BitTorrent sites for the latest episodes of your favorite TV show in HDTV? You should definitely try using RSS feeds then. RSS and BitTorrent are a perfect match.

14. How to Make a Custom TV Torrent Feed

How to create a personalized TV torrent feed, and have all your favorite TV torrents in one feed.

15. Subscribe to TV Shows Using BitTorrent and TVNanny

TVNanny is a BitTorrent site specializing in the indexing of TV show torrents. Using a subscription based interface, it’s possible to automatically download your favorite TV show episodes to your PC, utilizing the RSS feature in your chosen torrent client.

16. How to Use Gmail to Search Torrents

Gmail is more than a useful email service. In just a few steps you can turn it into your personal torrent search engine. And by using labels and filters you can keep your inbox clean.

uTorrent Tips and Tricks

17. How to Run uTorrent on a USB Stick

A portable version of uTorrent may come in handy when you’re with friends, at school, or at work. It will fit perfectly on every usb-stick, iPod, mobile phone, or any other device that is recognized a “removable disk”.

18. How to Run uTorrent in Mac OS X

uTorrent is currently only available for Windows. But that doesn’t going to stop us from running it in OS X.

19. How to Use Firefox to Remotely Control uTorrent

The uTorrent WebUI can be used to access uTorrent from an external computer. This Firefox extension will make it even easier.

20. Use uTorrent to Organize Your BitTorrent Downloads

BitTorrent is great, but all those downloaded torrents have the habit of making a mess of your harddrive. Do you still have all your downloaded stuff in a single folder? Take action, organize your torrents.

Feel free to drop a comment if you have anything to add to this list. Happy torrenting!

Previously: BitTorrent Brings Evil Villain Back from the Dead

Next: Opera 9.50 Kestrel Adds BitTorrent Peer Exchange

132 Responses

1 Sep 03, 2007 at 21:56 by Anonymous

Nicely compiled, just recently I had some trouble finding the article regarding the optimal settings for Bittorent programs. I’m sure this small index will be of use to any curious/troubled member.

2 Sep 03, 2007 at 22:14 by Ernesto

[quote comment="158066"]Nicely compiled, just recently I had some trouble finding the article regarding the optimal settings for Bittorent programs. I’m sure this small index will be of use to any curious/troubled member.[/quote]

Thanks, I’m glad you like it. We used to write more tutorials than we do now. It might be a good idea to make them a little more visible, perhaps in the sidebar or on a separate page.

I had to google most of the articles myself ;) The archives are a bit messy.

3 Sep 03, 2007 at 23:27 by Bolt_Gundam510

wow this is pretty good Ernesto i thought the archives would stright it self up but who am i to moan about it. i am going to post this on the pirate bay fourm for every one to read this. when ever i post your artical or any one elses i all ways bold yalls name to give the credit to when it’s due. but over all it’s a good artical to me. keep up the good work Ernesto!!!!

4 Sep 04, 2007 at 04:49 by Furik

check out http://www.bootstrike.com/Articles/BitTorrentGuide/ it helped me boost my speeds from 25 to 150!!

5 Sep 04, 2007 at 07:29 by Mary

Great post, thanks a lot!

I think having the how-to’s sectioned off in the sidebar or somehow otherwise grouped together is a great idea :)

6 Sep 04, 2007 at 09:13 by DK

Great summary of some of your excellent articles Ernesto.

A good place to show friends who are still BT virgins.

7 Sep 04, 2007 at 09:28 by Merav

Great post!

check out torrent-search-bar.com (edit: spyware) i use it every day… so cool!

8 Sep 04, 2007 at 09:37 by pJ

thank you :)
i’m newbie for bittorrent
this article help me a lot

9 Sep 04, 2007 at 09:46 by agmon

thank you

help spread life in outer space

http://www.beinspace.com/dna.php

you can also send digital information as well

if you have any ideas

10 Sep 04, 2007 at 10:15 by BvTaa

You are talking about fully encrypting the data stream but isn’t the encryption in µtorrent only protocol header encryption? That’s “hiding” the torrents but not encrypting any traffic itself.

11 Sep 04, 2007 at 12:17 by jamie

is there seriously no other way to make our BitTorrent annonymous unless we pay? 50 euros is qutie a sum in my country..

12 Sep 04, 2007 at 12:28 by Ernesto

[quote comment="158364"]You are talking about fully encrypting the data stream but isn’t the encryption in µtorrent only protocol header encryption?[/quote]
You’re right, the title is a bit misleading, it is more clear in the actual post.

13 Sep 04, 2007 at 19:07 by funchords

[quote comment="158364"]You are talking about fully encrypting the data stream but isn’t the encryption in µtorrent only protocol header encryption? [/quote]
µTorrent has encrypted the entire stream (headers AND data) since beta 1.4.1 build 407.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_protocol_encryption#Development_of_MSE.2FPE

HTH,

Robb

14 Sep 04, 2007 at 19:28 by Ernesto

[quote comment="158364"]
µTorrent has encrypted the entire stream (headers AND data) since beta 1.4.1 build 407.
[/quote]

True, uTorrent supports message stream encryption, but it is still easy to see what you’re downloading, so it doesn’t make you anonymous. This might confuse some people.

15 Sep 04, 2007 at 21:25 by jonny

thank u SO MUCH for the info about the vpn tunnel! OMG ive been looking for something like this for MONTHS but was never sure exactly what to look for! id pay 10X what theyre asking for the service. ur AWESOME!!!

16 Sep 07, 2007 at 01:55 by Riskable

Regarding the comments about uTorrent encryption… It isn’t anonymous. It is quite easy to see what you’re downloading via a packet sniffer or similar. It also doesn’t hide your IP address which is what you really need if you want to stay anonymous.

The only way to truly use Bittorrent anonymously is over a VPN or SSH tunnel. More importantly, that tunnel’s endpoint should be shared by many people (otherwise it isn’t really anonymous now is it?).

There are many services that do this but only a few actually allow you to use Bittorrent and even fewer are optimized for it (i.e. they have to have UPnP setup–without it, torrents start up very slowly and may never really get to your top speed).

If you’re in Europe, Relakks is probably a good option (no idea if they’ve setup UPnP). If you’re in the USA (especially if you’re on Comcast or an AT&T connection), you can try https://vpnout.com (disclaimer: I’m the owner/admin).

I’ve gone through great pains to make sure that Bittorrent and UPnP work through VPNOut and I’ve optimized iptables on the server to make sure that Bittorrent traffic stays as fast as possible.

It is my way of “doing something about” the crap that companies like Comcast have been pulling lately. By mucking around with your packets they’re invading your privacy *and* violating Network Neutrality. Why give them the option?

-Riskable
https://vpnout.com
“Security for who? The government, businesses, or the people?”

17 Sep 20, 2007 at 16:21 by dfnvqzx ximybouvh

cnrptij mznc rdinubaj pmuhtdyj pamkx xlerkv uyqtcgf

18 Oct 04, 2007 at 08:33 by kukanov

I love you people
George

19 Oct 24, 2007 at 03:04 by Katie

Yes! so hold.O

20 Oct 24, 2007 at 18:22 by marshal

excellent texture.h

21 Oct 25, 2007 at 07:39 by mishele

Big thanx to webmaster!W

22 Oct 26, 2007 at 03:12 by pomn

Hi our little brothers.r

23 Oct 26, 2007 at 14:04 by bek

Thanks a bunch!+

24 Oct 27, 2007 at 10:58 by rewb

It\’s a very good site!)

25 Oct 28, 2007 at 02:31 by beni

Very good web site, great work and thank you for your service.+i

26 Oct 28, 2007 at 19:43 by sara

Thank you for you work! Good Luck.

27 Oct 28, 2007 at 22:00 by yamomoto

Really perfect!i

28 Oct 31, 2007 at 17:03 by mishele

Good Site! Keep Doing That!a

29 Nov 01, 2007 at 10:11 by bek

I just wanted to say WOW!a

30 Nov 03, 2007 at 16:35 by Amanda

This is a great tutorial thanks!p

31 Nov 04, 2007 at 04:07 by Bob

very helpful, thanks!

32 Nov 04, 2007 at 14:46 by Smit

Thank for making this valuable information available to the public.e

33 Nov 04, 2007 at 14:47 by Smit

Thank+for+making+this+valuable+information+available+to+the+public.e

34 Nov 05, 2007 at 00:41 by Jones

I just wanted to say WOW!l

35 Nov 05, 2007 at 06:56 by vilyi

Nice effect.x

36 Nov 05, 2007 at 08:16 by gari

Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site.p

37 Nov 05, 2007 at 08:48 by glory

Very effective. Thanx.p

38 Nov 05, 2007 at 12:51 by Hillari

Big thanx to webmaster!

39 Nov 05, 2007 at 22:19 by Marilyn

Yes! so hold.n

40 Nov 06, 2007 at 15:30 by Hillary

blog purchase soma trackback url

41 Nov 06, 2007 at 22:40 by cxbf

Very nice work, admin :) Good luck!r

42 Nov 07, 2007 at 08:07 by Melly

simple but quality, thanks!#

43 Nov 08, 2007 at 07:42 by Jennifer

Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site.

44 Nov 08, 2007 at 14:32 by brus

Thank you very much.i

45 Nov 09, 2007 at 20:32 by jfe

O, super project.d

46 Nov 10, 2007 at 10:09 by ttre

Big thanx to webmaster!

47 Nov 10, 2007 at 17:54 by gjg

simple but quality, thanks!c

48 Nov 11, 2007 at 04:10 by maik

Thanks bro! Real good work!”

49 Nov 11, 2007 at 12:44 by samuil

Good site, thanks!y

50 Nov 12, 2007 at 14:17 by bgg

excellent!s

51 Nov 13, 2007 at 05:06 by sank

Really perfect!h

52 Nov 14, 2007 at 13:06 by sary

this one is simple & nice.t

53 Nov 16, 2007 at 01:17 by jak

I just wanted to say WOW!l

54 Nov 17, 2007 at 09:17 by Amanda

Nice effect.c

55 Nov 18, 2007 at 19:11 by kely

Wow!!!Z

56 Nov 19, 2007 at 21:11 by brus

O, super project.u

57 Nov 19, 2007 at 23:45 by yamomoto

Thank you for you work! Good Luck.!

58 Nov 21, 2007 at 01:28 by Tim

I like that!o

59 Nov 21, 2007 at 07:21 by sank

Nice resource, very interesting reading…

60 Nov 23, 2007 at 05:03 by alex

Pretty nice site, wants to see much more on it!l

61 Nov 24, 2007 at 03:36 by bing

Thanks a bunch!=

62 Nov 27, 2007 at 09:17 by alex

excellent texture.r

63 Nov 28, 2007 at 04:17 by richard

Thanks a bunch!y

64 Nov 29, 2007 at 12:53 by limmey

Excellent….stuff

65 Dec 03, 2007 at 11:54 by sara

I just wanted to say WOW!o

66 Dec 03, 2007 at 12:46 by Ron

Hello!

67 Dec 04, 2007 at 16:29 by Amanda

You have an outstanding good and well structured site. I enjoyed browsing through it.

68 Dec 04, 2007 at 19:09 by jan

Thank you sooooo much!a

69 Dec 06, 2007 at 09:02 by Nicole

Nice looking site.a

70 Dec 06, 2007 at 11:21 by Jennifer

Thanks a bunch!b

71 Dec 07, 2007 at 11:25 by gjg

O, super project.t

72 Dec 09, 2007 at 02:09 by zaas

very helpful, thanks!<

73 Dec 09, 2007 at 04:14 by ricko

Great Site – really useful information!l

74 Dec 10, 2007 at 05:12 by Melly

Thank you sooooo much!e

75 Dec 10, 2007 at 10:29 by dok

You have an outstanding good and well structured site. I enjoyed browsing through it.x

76 Dec 11, 2007 at 07:22 by Bill

Sitemaps

77 Dec 11, 2007 at 08:15 by mik

Nice effect.b

78 Dec 11, 2007 at 14:31 by uure

that\’s neat!k

79 Dec 12, 2007 at 14:34 by hely

Thanks a bunch!

80 Dec 12, 2007 at 18:43 by mishele

Great Site – really useful information!

81 Dec 13, 2007 at 10:18 by gjg

Hi our little brothers.t

82 Dec 15, 2007 at 20:33 by vilyi

Hello!^

83 Dec 15, 2007 at 23:23 by mink

Really perfect!i

84 Dec 17, 2007 at 04:08 by Britney

O, super project.m

85 Dec 18, 2007 at 00:26 by Jennifer

Good site – you\’re a pretty good writer..

86 Dec 18, 2007 at 12:01 by sara

Nice effect.t

87 Dec 19, 2007 at 12:52 by otuyi

Nice effect.

88 Dec 19, 2007 at 20:40 by sikh

Great site!

89 Dec 22, 2007 at 12:14 by djecki

Nice site!e

90 Dec 22, 2007 at 18:29 by Jones

Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site.r

91 Dec 23, 2007 at 16:53 by gari

Really perfect!

92 Dec 23, 2007 at 17:00 by iou

Big thanx to webmaster!

93 Dec 25, 2007 at 03:34 by Nicole

Hi!

94 Dec 25, 2007 at 12:32 by zaas

Great Site – really useful information!.

95 Dec 26, 2007 at 22:47 by ahmed

It\’s a very good site!
e

96 Dec 27, 2007 at 03:39 by http://www.extremebittorrent.com/

Visit this website http://www.extremebittorrent.com/ to downlaod BitTorrent movies, games and music albums fast. It increased my BitTorrent download speed by 600%. I was hit by ISP throttling. Now I can download at 8 mbps speed! I just downloaded The Kingdom in under 8 minutes… my personal best!

http://www.extremebittorrent.com/

Get the extreme bittorrent guide and read it. You’ll be thanking me for it.

Good luck downloading.

97 Dec 28, 2007 at 04:05 by Britney

Thanks bro! Real good work!n

98 Dec 29, 2007 at 08:53 by Bill

Very effective. Thanx.

99 Dec 29, 2007 at 23:46 by pomn

Very good web site, great work and thank you for your service.+d

100 Jan 06, 2008 at 14:47 by bily

Big thanx to webmaster!n

101 Jan 06, 2008 at 16:36 by yang

Good Site! Keep Doing That!g

102 Jan 07, 2008 at 10:27 by poiu

It\’s a very good site!a

103 Jan 09, 2008 at 02:20 by otuyi

Great tutorial.v

104 Jan 09, 2008 at 17:37 by cxbf

Awesome!!!g

105 Jan 09, 2008 at 21:53 by Jones

Thank you sooooo much!n

106 Jan 10, 2008 at 15:09 by Hillari

Thank you for you work! Good Luck.

107 Jan 30, 2008 at 21:37 by sikh

Really perfect!.

108 Feb 01, 2008 at 10:23 by mink

that\’s neat!O

109 Feb 01, 2008 at 16:47 by Bill

free lesbian sample movie clip %

110 Feb 08, 2008 at 13:58 by Britney

It\’s a great and valuable site!n

111 Feb 11, 2008 at 02:52 by Hillary

You guys do a wonderful job! Keep up the good work!!!.

112 Feb 12, 2008 at 10:14 by Hillary

Just serfed in. Great site, guys!

113 Feb 13, 2008 at 17:56 by Bush

Hi! Definitely nice and neat site you got there.u

114 Feb 19, 2008 at 16:23 by sary

Good job, here and there!

115 Feb 21, 2008 at 19:29 by Jennifer

Nice site!=

116 Feb 22, 2008 at 18:50 by aianduskool@aed.rapina.ee

kirjutuslauad -

117 Feb 24, 2008 at 14:09 by dirk

Wow!!!^

118 Feb 26, 2008 at 01:31 by aianduskool@aed.rapina.ee

map of site <

119 Feb 27, 2008 at 08:31 by bily

Thanks so very much for taking your time to create this very useful and informative site.o

120 Mar 08, 2008 at 10:13 by christmann

I know that i’m late, but i like to know “How to tunnel BIttorrent over SSH”. The Problem is, this link dot work :-/

Can you fix it, please?

121 Mar 15, 2008 at 07:34 by Diesel

122 Mar 15, 2008 at 14:51 by Still

123 Mar 15, 2008 at 15:36 by Aron

124 Mar 15, 2008 at 19:23 by Bill

125 Mar 15, 2008 at 20:07 by Dominic

126 Mar 15, 2008 at 20:47 by Arnie

127 Apr 17, 2008 at 14:46 by valgemaja.ehitus@mail.ee

altace <

128 Apr 18, 2008 at 18:08 by pilots%40pilots.ee

altace++a

129 Apr 20, 2008 at 21:27 by none

and if u still have trouble after all that then http://www.fastertorrent.co.uk/

130 Apr 23, 2008 at 07:24 by Gam$RcgylL

Say please me what weather in the different countries of the world interests?

131 May 10, 2008 at 23:27 by Djfrenkios

Hello , chto eto za forum takoij?
intersnio tut u vas

132 Jan 06, 2009 at 08:43 by varul

Torrent is the great site since I started to using it. But what is regretful is the site doesn't come nowadays. They are facing some legal issues regarding to the web I think. I am eager to welcome back again torrent. Look forward.

43 references to this post

Responses are closed

All remaining responses will continue to be archived. Use the TorrentFreak forums if you want to discuss something.