Title, I haven't Yo ho ho'd in forever in internet time.. What/where do I need to start again? I'm tired of ads and 3+ streaming services to watch stuff that's interesting. Running windows. Thanks dudes and dudettes.
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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qBittorrent is probably the best torrent client for Windows
~~Mullvad is a relatively cheap and trustworthy VPN provider~~ (they unfortunately removed port forwarding, which is important for torrenting)
AirVPN and Proton VPN are trustworthy VPN providers that support port forwarding
Servarr is the way to go if you want to set up a server that automates everything for you
Jellyfin is the best media server, far ahead of Plex and fully FOSS
FMHY and the Champagne Piracy Wiki have lots of valuable information
But Mullvad dropped port-forwarding which is relevant in the context of torrenting.
God dammit
I keep forgetting that. I didn't really notice it, since I use a seedbox anyway, but that might be a little to much for a new user.
Why is port forwarding important? I have my torrent server running, downloading and uploading perfectly fine. Is port forwarding needed for like something else besides general down/uploading?
To my understanding, it works like this: your client talks to the torrent tracker, then it sends you the data about seeders and leechers. Then your client tries to connect to them, but if neither you nor the other peer have port forwarding, you cannot connect to each other. This is not a problem for popular torrents with lots of peers, but when there are not so many it can be a problem because the other peers might as well not have port forwarding, so peers cannot connect to each other and the torrent will eventually die.
That's why it is recommended to use a VPN with port forwarding. When not using a VPN, if your router supports uPnP you are already port forwarded (with the default settings in qbittorrent).
Thank you! I did some reading and that's also how I understand it: at least one peer has to have port forwarding enabled / listen on a port for two peers to connect. Also I found out about "Hole punching" or "NAT punching" where a middleman server is used to open up ports on two peers that do not have ports forwarded yet to allow them to talk to each other directly. This is also used in BitTorrent. And also explains why it works without explicit port forwarding enabled.