Bit Torrent Question
 

Can I pause a bit torrent download? If I turn off my computer, do I have to start the download all over again? Just wondering. Thanks

sure but you'll have to find the seeds again.

You'll have to find the seeds again, but not start the download all over. I recommend using this program for bittorrent - gives great control: http://www.torrentstorm.com/

So, if I want to download an entire season of Star Trek, I have to leave my computer on for 1425 hours? Just wondering. Thanks

well the "time remaining" is only acurate for the download speed you're currently at. if it's 1425 hours when its 3 kbs, it might be 20 hours at 30 kbs.

but no, you can stop the down load, and when you restart your computer, go to the place where you found it, and when you click it again, it will pick up where you left off.

Be aware that BT seeds don't last forever, though. Places like Filerush only keep them up for a few weeks.

Just copy the torrent file to your desktop.

Then, if you have to stop it, just click on the torrent, and select the location and it will resume.

No.

That means that it resumes the file download but needs to refind the sources.

Also, one of the reasons I recomment TorrentStorm is because you can set it so you can close the client and open it and it will still have the torrent loaded and resume downloading right away.

Hmm I've tried a few torrent programmes but I find it very slow. I'll give Torrentstorm a go just for the hell of it. I do miss Sharereactor - emule was always good for me.

I don't know what programs you guys are using, but all the ones I've tried you do NOT have to "find the torrent again." Just save the .torrent file (say, for an episode of Star Trek) into your Torrent folder, and the download will start. If you restart your computer, and run the bittorent program again, it will "hash" the partially downloaded episode of Star Trek, and finish the download. no "finding the torrent again" necessary :)

Yep and if you want a good Java-based, non-bloatfest-while-rehashing program, try out Azureus. It gives a great wealth of information.

Yes, Sharereactor rocked. But, as for speed, you should be experiencing bittorrent being like a bullet train compared to a .... mule. ;) Bittorrent should be extremely fast...it's my guess that you're trying to download things that for whatever reason don't have a lot of seeds or something. But even then it should be faster than edonkey

Regarding performace, you should not two things.

One, you can pause and restart your downloading whenever you like and however often you like (as long as the tracker is still there) but you will lose all credit for doing so. You see, what makes Bit Torrent so great is that it only allows you to download as much as you're uploading (with a few caveats I won't go into, at the moment) so no one can "leech." This ensures a healthy network and, in turn, gives everyone good bandwidth. However, if you restart, it can't know how much you've already contributed and will treat you like a leecher, again. So, it really is better to download the file in one fell swoop (for you, anyway). This might explain why you're not getting the speeds you were hoping. It takes a while for the system to get to it's peak download speed but when it does, it is awesome!

Second, your peak performace will be hampered if you are behind a firewall/NAT server. You see, the more people that can participate with you, the better the system will work for you. However, if you are behind one of these things then, while you can connect to people, no one can connect to you. This uni-direction connectivity gives you less connections and, therefore, lower bandwidth. If you are behind such a thing, you must set up a forwarding rule to get the best performance.

I hope you enjoy your Star Trek and happy downloading!

This isn't entirely accurate. I'm currently writing a Bit Torrent client, and though this is how it ought to work, 99% of clients (including the official client) only return in bandwidth what they are currently recieving. Basically the attitude is, "ok, so what have you done for me recently?" So if you're currently uploading to someone, there's a good chance they'll upload back at you, but let's say you've uploaded some guy to 50%, and now he's actually at 75%, but he has all the data you've downloaded so you can no longer upload to him. He'll most likely not give you the 25% you need since you no longer have an upload rate to him (even if he hasn't sent a single bit to you). This doesn't happen too often, though, since after an initial new user benefit of the doubt, your client probably acts the same way as theirs does.

My client will not use this method, and actually has an option to set an upload/download ratio to keep with all clients (so if you set it to 1:1, then most likely by the time you start seeding, there's only a small chance that you'll have uploaded substantially more than you downloaded). You can't set the ratio to less than 1:1, btw, so it's not a "leecher" client. You can disable this feature and have it act just like all the other clients, though.

By the way, the codebase I'm using for my client (I didn't write it) is current in beta testing and can be found at http://libtorrent.sourceforge.net/

I'm using this codebase and making a GUI in .NET for Windows, and it currently uses less CPU and RAM on average than most other clients I've seen. Still has a few bugs though, so I'm not going to release it to the public for a while yet.

there was a version of bittorrent called shadow's experimental being circulated at one point, and it could do everything you wanted and more from within gui. now, all you are left with is to pause the download, close the torrent, and it will scan the directory for what you've already got when you restart the btgui file. restarting doesn't mean you have to start over, but the file comparison software (bittorrent knows what it's supposed to get, and compares it to what you already have) is pretty slow. i was never too big a fan of bittorrent, personally, as it is a MAJOR bandwidth hog, and uses far more bandwidth than it says it is using in the output window.

TorrentStoprm uses Shadow's Experimental.

That's what I've noticed about BT. I'll be d/l'ing something using BT at a low rate and uploading at an even lower rate but somehow most of the remaining several hundred KB/s is sucked up and everything else runs really slow.

Because you recomended it I tried it, but the progarm doesn't work at all for me :confused:

I uninstalled my other torrent client before installing this one. Oh well.

Well, if people are going to plug their favourite Bit Torrent clients, I'll recommend ABC . It has configurable traffic limits, in both directions, even across multiple torrents (I'd been looking for this feature for quite a while), and it has a nice, configurable, and informative interface.

Although, I'm susprised that the client you tried didn't work for you, sixate. One must always wonder why an application that works for many other people mysteriously doesn't work for you, especially considering your previous client worked just fine (I'm assuming)...

That's why I'm confused.
And yes, the one I use works fine.

I second the suggestion of Azuerus. It's a great java client that runs in one window (and only uses one port for everything). When I ran Theshadow or bittornado, it was one window/torrent, which I hated. It also required me to open a bunch of ports on my firewall.

Azuerus has everything nicely laid out in one window. It's more towards the type of layout you see w/ a kazaa-type client.

I second the suggestion of Azureus. It's a great java client that runs in one window (and only uses one port for everything). When I ran Theshadow or bittornado, it was one window/torrent, which I hated. It also required me to open a bunch of ports on my firewall.

Azureus has everything nicely laid out in one window. It's more towards the type of layout you see w/ a kazaa-type client.

You can resume.

Make sure that before you select a file, right click and save it to your desktop.

This way you don't have to hunt for the link again.

All you need to do is double click on the link, and your set.

if you grab Azureus or BT++, you don't have to play with links again. Just right click on the d/l, select pause. When you want to resume, right click and select resume.

keep in mind that pausing a d/l runs the risk of you not getting the whole file, since if the file drops off the network while you're paused, you're out of luck unless someone reseeds it for you.