But the gadget is not limited to listing information, you can also:

- drag & drop to add new torrents
- start, stop pause torrents
- set priority for individual files

It’s based on the “Azureus stats” gadget for Windows Vista, but has some extra features. The WebUI works on 32-bit as well as the 64-bit Vista, and it has a auto update function.

The sidebar gadget will only work if you run the uTorrent webUI. The WebUI makes it easy to access uTorrent from an external computer, and it opens up a world of possibilities for uTorrent users to create fancy widgets, scripts, and other add-ons.

To enable the webui go to Options –> Preferences –> Advanced –> WebUI, and enter you details there. There is also FireFox extension available for the WebUI.

The latest Beta of the Vista sidebar gadget for uTorrent can be downloaded over here. You can track the latest updates, or post your questions and suggestions in the thread over at the uTorrent forums.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

A comment posted on Mostly Muppet yesterday (the 27th) has brought up the issue once again:

Dreamhost shut down my BitTorrent set-up before I even got a chance to use it. I have 3 personal videos that I made and was planning to distribute. I installed broadcast machine and was in the middle of uploading the torrents when dreamhost shut me down.

Frank, the commenter tried to run the EFF‘s Broadcast Machine, a tool many podcasters use to distribute their content over BitTorrent, on his server. A huge benefit of offering media files for download over BitTorrent is that it takes the load off your server and decreases the chance of your site becomming inaccessible due to excessive bandwidth consumption. It can become quite a costly affair if you surpass the bandwidth limit set by your host.

He contacted Dreamhost’s support with his problem. Here’s an excerpt of their reply:

BitTorrent is strictly forbidden, both as a client and as a server right now. Although we are looking into it, it’s forbidden. I believe the misunderstanding, was that what you just pasted hinted at a policy of “If we don’t notice, go what you want.” Although some people can get away with that, it is still something that is not allowed.

It seems like there’s a lot of confusion over at Dreamhost HQ on whether running a BitTorrent tracker is or isn’t allowed. After the whole escapade last year, Dreamhost said it would update its Terms Of Service to accomodate the technology, sadly the agreement still says that the use of “BitTorrent software [is] not encouraged.”

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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

2. How to encrypt BitTorrent traffic

More and more ISP’s are limiting throttling BitTorrent traffic on their networks. By throttling BitTorrent traffic the speed of BitTorrent downloads decrease, and high speed downloads are out of the question.

3. How to create 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.

4. How to make a custom TV-torrent feed

All your favorite TV-torrents in one feed. Let’s create a feed for the latest 24, Lost and Prison Break HDTV episodes.

5. How to Organize your Torrents with uTorrent

Being a TorrentFreak is great of course, but all those downloaded torrents have the habit to make a mess out of your harddrive. Do you still have all your downloaded stuff in a single folder? Take action, organize your torrents.

6. 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.

7. How to Speed up Bitcomet and uTorrent

I recently discovered that 90% off all people use the default settings on their client, and that’s a problem.

8. How to talk like a BitTorrent expert

Because I sometimes implicitly assume that everybody is completely familiar with the BitTorrent jargon. I decided to make a little BitTorrent dictionary to explain some of the nerdy stuff. I hope this hope this is useful to some of you.

9. How to find torrents

So Here it is, TorrentFreak’s one and only top torrent sites + firefox search plugins, June 2006. No Login required.

Enjoy

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Check it out.

More speed tips:
Speed up Bitcomet and uTorrent
Speed up your torrents
Speed up your torrents II

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Note that there’s a difference between kb/s (kilobits/second) and kB/s (kilobytes/second). To be precise, kb/s = kB/s divided by 8. In this tutorial we use kB/s (like most torrent clients do). This means that you might need to calculate your max speed in kB/s yourself if the speedtest only gives you the results in kb\s (so divide by 8 then).

Settings 1-4 can be found in the options, settings or preference tab of most torrent clients.

1. Maximum upload speed

Probably one of the most important setting there is. Your connection is (sort of) like a pipeline, if you use you maximum upload speed there’s not enough space left for the files you are downloading. So you have to cap your upload speed.

Use the following formula to determine your optimal upload speed…

for relatively fast connections (upload >20 kB/s)

upload speed * 85%

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal upload rate is

40 * 85% = 34

Slower connections (upload <20 kB/s) need a little more space so I use this formula

upload speed * 75%

so if your maximum upload speed is 12 kB/s, the optimal upload rate is

12 * 75% = 9

2. Maximum download speed

Although setting your maximum download speed to unlimited may sound interesting, in reality it will only hurt your connection.

Use the following formula to determine your optimal download speed…

for relatively fast connections (download >60 kB/s)

download speed * 95%

so if your maximum download speed is 200 kB/s, the optimal download rate is

200 * 95% = 190

And again I experienced that Slower connections (upload <60 kB/s) need a little more space so I use this formula

(download speed * 85%

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal upload rate is

40 * 85% = 34

3. Maximum connected peers per torrent

Yet another setting that you don’t want to max out. I experimented quite a lot with the max connected peers settings and came to the conclusion that both high and low number hurt the download speed of a torrent. The following setting worked best for me.

upload speed * 1.3

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal amount of connected peers per torrent is

40 * 1.3 = 52

I didn’t noticed a difference for fast or slow connections here.

4. Maximum upload slots

1 + (upload speed / 6)

so if your maximum upload speed is 30 kB/s, the optimal number of upload slots is

1 + (30 / 6) = 6

5. Maximum half-open tcp connections

This tweak was mentioned in previous post and I noticed some debate about the optimal settings. So I played around with this tweak on different machines and came to the conclusion that the best setting is

for relatively fast connections (download >60 kB/s)

upload speed * 2 (I will advise to never go higher than 1000)

And for Slower connections (download <60 kB/s) can have a little extra.

upload speed * 4

These numbers are not as holy as the other tips, but they are a good guideline. For more info on the max half-open tcp tweak read our previous post.

6. Optimize your internet connection

The TCP optimizer is a freeware utility that optimizes your internet connection. I found it very useful and it helped speeding up my connection for regular internet activity and for downloading torrents. Just download it, and move the slidebar to your maximum download rate (note that it’s in kb/s). Don’t try to set it higher because that will hurt your download speeds!

I hope these tips are useful and help you to get the most out of BitTorrent. Note that these these tips are the result of extensive “trial and erroring” but still very subjective. For the uTorrent users out there, 1c3d0g wrote a great tutorial, the numbers might slightly differ from the ones I found though.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.