Over a decade has passed since the arrival of BitTorrent & it is continuing to evolve & remains one of the best file-sharing tools available. Read the full guide below if you really want to make your downloads faster & make it secure.
Some of you may find BitTorrent a bit old but that doesn’t mean BitTorrent doesn’t have a place in your routine. It’s still the more widespread.
We’ve divided the post into three sections:
- Increase Your Speed and Privacy with a Few Easy Settings
- Keep That Newfound Speed from Hijacking All Your Bandwidth
- Hide Your Traffic with External Solutions
For the purposes of this guide, we’re focusing on two BitTorrent clients: uTorrent for Windows and Transmission for Mac OS X. That doesn’t mean you can’t use other clients like Vuze (or KTorrent and Transmission for Linux, if you are of the Linux persuasion), but there are just too many clients out there for us to give specific instructions for each. uTorrent and Transmission are some of the most popular clients out there, so where appropriate, we’ll give you specific instructions for each client. Note that uTorrent for Mac is not nearly as mature as uTorrent for Windows, and may not have some of these features. So, in this particular case, when we reference uTorrent, we mean uTorrent for Windows.
1.Keep Your BitTorrent Speed & Privacy at the Max with a Few Simple Settings
BitTorrent clients have come a long way in the past few years, and where it used to be much more difficult to hide your BitTorrent activity, it’s now a matter of checking the right boxes. Here are a few settings every BitTorrent user should have enabled.
>Randomize and Forward Your Router Ports
If you’re connected to your internet through a router, it’s likely that many of your ports are closed, meaning your speeds will be much slower than you’d like. You’ll need to let your router know which ones you want open for BitTorrent traffic, which is known as port forwarding. Furthermore, many ISPs or organizations (say, if your neighborhood or leasing company provides your internet) will block popular BitTorrent ports, so you’ll want to switch up the port you use every once in a while to keep them guessing.
Both of these are extremely simple in uTorrent and Transmission. in uTorrent, just to go Options > Preferences and hit the connection tab. Make sure all four boxes under the “Listening Port” section are checked. Enable UPnP Port Mapping, Enable NAT-PMP Port Mapping, Randomize Port Each Start, and Add Windows Firewall Exception.
In Transmission, open up the app’s preferences and head to the Network pane. Check both the Randomize Port on Launch and Automatically Map Port boxes. If you see that the light next to the port’s number goes from red to green, then you’ve successfully opened your current port to BitTorrent traffic, and you should notice a good increase in speed.
Note: For best results, you’ll want to make sure your router is UPnP capable and has UPnP enabled. Most routers are UPnP ready, but if you find that you’re having trouble, you may need to look at your router’s manual and settings page to enable its use.
