Help with SOYA Torrent Download
March 13, 2013 1:19 PM Subscribe
I'm about to leave for a two-day long car trip and I thought I could listen to some podcasts to pass the time. I'm a huge Bullseye with Jesse Thorn (formerly Sound of Young America) fan and I saw a link on the Maximum Fun website to download a torrent of all of the old episodes.
So I downloaded the .torrent file and opened it on uTorrent but nothing happened. Any help on my predicament? What am I doing wrong and what can I do to properly download the files?
Assuming you have some working knowledge of uTorrent:
Do you have uTorrent set up to ask you where to save the files you are downloading?
Did that happen (see above)?
If the torrent was successfully added, you should see some info in the "General" tab at the bottom of the screen, including the tracker's URL. Do you see any of that?
I'd help more, but I have to be at home to do torrent downloading and still have 6 agonizing minutes of work left...
posted by kuanes at 1:24 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
Do you have uTorrent set up to ask you where to save the files you are downloading?
Did that happen (see above)?
If the torrent was successfully added, you should see some info in the "General" tab at the bottom of the screen, including the tracker's URL. Do you see any of that?
I'd help more, but I have to be at home to do torrent downloading and still have 6 agonizing minutes of work left...
posted by kuanes at 1:24 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
Are the necessary ports on your router open? If your network is locked down it might not work. It's a 16GB file, so it should take a while to download, but it should start in a matter of seconds after opening the torrent file with uTorrent.
posted by COD at 1:45 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by COD at 1:45 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
Best answer: 1: Try randomizing (just once) the port number used by uTorrent (which is a terrific client, by the way).
2: Select the torrent in uTorrent and look through the tabs at the bottom for any error messages from the tracker, such as "Connection refused" or "Client not supported."
3: Set the upload speed to about 70% of your maximum upload. This is general BT advice; BT uses a TCP connection between you and other peers, and that means that traffic you send induces other machines to acknowledge receipt, and these acknowledgements require some room on your connection.
4: Make sure your software Firewall on Windows is admitting uTorrent
4b: Make sure your DSL Bridge or Cable Modem's respective firewalls are admitting traffic to your above-randomized port and port-forwarding that port to the internal address of your machine running uTorrent. The firewalls in typical consumer internet modems (routers) are "Stateful" meaning in this case that unsolicited connections are not admitted, but solicited (i.e. machines inside the home network requested) connections are. When BT is active, the tracker will assign you up to several dozen peers and give them your IP to start the file-trade, and connections from those machines are considered unsolicited by your firewall.
Alternative to 4b: In your modem's firewall, place your home computer's IP address in the DMZ (a firewall setting). Open any software firewalls. Remove your computer from DMZ once you have uploaded >1:1. It's best to avoid this since you're leaving your computer behind (I assume). And you can always complete your uploading after you return-- the torrent swarm will benefit from this.
5: Thank you for remembering that bittorrent is file sharing, not merely file downloading.
posted by Sunburnt at 1:51 PM on March 13, 2013
2: Select the torrent in uTorrent and look through the tabs at the bottom for any error messages from the tracker, such as "Connection refused" or "Client not supported."
3: Set the upload speed to about 70% of your maximum upload. This is general BT advice; BT uses a TCP connection between you and other peers, and that means that traffic you send induces other machines to acknowledge receipt, and these acknowledgements require some room on your connection.
4: Make sure your software Firewall on Windows is admitting uTorrent
4b: Make sure your DSL Bridge or Cable Modem's respective firewalls are admitting traffic to your above-randomized port and port-forwarding that port to the internal address of your machine running uTorrent. The firewalls in typical consumer internet modems (routers) are "Stateful" meaning in this case that unsolicited connections are not admitted, but solicited (i.e. machines inside the home network requested) connections are. When BT is active, the tracker will assign you up to several dozen peers and give them your IP to start the file-trade, and connections from those machines are considered unsolicited by your firewall.
Alternative to 4b: In your modem's firewall, place your home computer's IP address in the DMZ (a firewall setting). Open any software firewalls. Remove your computer from DMZ once you have uploaded >1:1. It's best to avoid this since you're leaving your computer behind (I assume). And you can always complete your uploading after you return-- the torrent swarm will benefit from this.
5: Thank you for remembering that bittorrent is file sharing, not merely file downloading.
posted by Sunburnt at 1:51 PM on March 13, 2013
Best answer: This doesn't solve the torrent problem, but you can download all the episodes from archive.org
posted by O9scar at 1:56 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by O9scar at 1:56 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
Are there seeders? No seeds, no data, even if you have the .torrent.
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:39 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
posted by snuffleupagus at 2:39 PM on March 13, 2013 [1 favorite]
Maybe your ISP is throttling you. uTorrent has an option to force encryption -- toggle it.
posted by oceanjesse at 7:22 AM on March 14, 2013
posted by oceanjesse at 7:22 AM on March 14, 2013
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by PaulZ at 1:24 PM on March 13, 2013