How to keep Torrent files open?

April 28, 2005 5:51 PM

When I download files with "Bits On Wheels" the torrents remain in a folder on my drive, but they are inactive. How does one keep them 'seeding' and searchable by other P2P people? When I search for programs, it appears only recent episodes are available. I'd like to make all my older torrents available too.
posted by DickStock to computers & internet (6 answers total)

Bits on Wheels Support Forums might be a good place to ask about your specific program question. Some clients automatically turn off seeding after you've given back a particular percentage, and the way to change that setting would be probably be known by someone on the BoW forums.

As for keeping much older torrents alive, it depends on the central tracker that you're using to initiate the download in the first place. As long as the files are listed on the tracker, you can keep your copy up for aid with seeding. Once it has been pulled from the tracker (for bandwidth reasons or whatever), the torrent is basically finished.

If you want to host your own tracker for the purposes of seeding additional, older files, there are many BitTorrent programs that can help you. Azureus is one such client with a built-in tracker.
posted by bcwinters at 6:11 PM on April 28, 2005

Download bitcomet.

What is BitComet?

BitComet is a p2p file-sharing freeware fully compatible with Bittorrent, which is one of the most popular p2p protocol designed for high-speed distribution of 100MB or GB sized files. BitComet is a powerful, clean, fast, and easy-to-use bittorrent client. It supports simultaneous downloads, download queue, selected downloads in torrent package, fast-resume, chatting, disk cache, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, ip-filter, etc.
Why use BitComet?

* Clean and free, without any adware or spyware. ( Please note: Spybot may misreport "Comet Cursor" [read here] )
* Completely new core written in C++, stable and fast, very low CPU usage. (detail)
* Multiple simultaneous downloads, ability to select download files in one torrent and set file priority. (detail)
* Ability to limit the upload speed as well as download speed. (detail)
* Intelligent Connection Optimize, Auto Optimization for different connections, runs well using all default settings.
* Intelligent Rate Control, optimize the upload distribution in order to get the max download rate.
* Intelligent Disk Cache, decrease the potential damage to the hard disk when high-speed downloading (>500KB/s) by decrease the read / write frequency, extra memory usage is the cost. (detail)
* Intelligent Disk Allocating, no long-time disk allocation, also decrease the disk fragment to almost zero.
* Intelligent Hash Scan, no time-consuming scanning when seeding / resume. (detail)
* Firewall and NAT Traversal, users behind differect NAT can now connect to each other (new in v0.55) (detail)
* Auto config ICF (Internet Connection Firewall) and ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) in Windows XP
* Auto config port mapping in router (UPnP support is required in router, Windows XP is required). (detail)
* Ability to block IP temporarily or permanently, compatiable with eMule ipfilter.dat.
* Ability to chat with other downloaders ( disabled by default )
* Compatiable with Windows XP SP2 TCP/IP restriction (new in v0.55, more detail)
* ZIP package is also provided, which runs withoust installation.
* Using only one TCP listening port. (detail)
* Support Multi-tracker, and utf-8 extension, UDP tracker Protocol v2.
posted by phredhead at 7:34 PM on April 28, 2005

phredhead - Bits On Wheels is a Mac-only client, and BitComet is Windows-only.
posted by nathan_teske at 7:41 PM on April 28, 2005

Azureus
posted by jimmy at 8:33 PM on April 28, 2005

Grab the torrent file from something you downloaded a while ago, and open it once more. It should examine the file, and find that it's complete. You will then simply be seeding that file to everyone else. (With all the clients I use, when you close the torrent window, you stop seeding. If you open up the torrent file again, you start seeding again. Not 100% Bits on Wheels works this way.)
posted by chunking express at 5:55 AM on April 29, 2005

Kudos to BCWinters,

You my "Main Man".

AZUREUS
posted by DickStock at 8:22 AM on April 29, 2005