Hello, I am new to linux so sorry if this is a really simple question. I am using Ubuntu and I am trying to download torrent files but they are going incredibly slow. I have tried bittorent, bittornado, and azureus. Bittorent and bittornado will download files but at rates of only 4-9kb/sec. When I use azureus, I cannot download the files at all. It says "DHT firewalled: there appears to be problem with the Distributed Database's UDP port mapping (NAT/firewall). I have already disabled my firewall, but the downloads have not gone any faster. What can I do to make them go faster or in the case of azureus, make them go at all. Thanks, I appreciate the help.

I can't say too much about the azureus problem (haven't used that myself etc..) but first of all, the speed depends on two things: how many seeders there are (people who share pieces of the file you want) and how many downloaders (100 downloaders for 1 seeder is slow, but 100 seeders for 1 downloader is extremely fast). You can try to find the same content on some other torrent that has more seeds compared to the amount of downloaders, since the seeders may have set a limit for their uploading speeds.

But if you do have enough seeders and think it should come faster, and know that your firewalling is ok (not blocking or slowing), I'm not sure (sorry, haven't got too deep into torrents yet, just know their idea). I'd try downloading some other torrents (Linux isos, that surely have seeders) and seeing if they come faster.

Thanks for the reply. I don't think its a problem with the files, because I just finished downloading the same files on a Windows computer and they went a lot faster. Is there anyway to check to see if its a problem with the firewall because I might not have disabled it since I am not the best with computers.

I noticed similar things in winXP when using uTorrent 1.6
TY bO for the explain, been wondering what the seeding was all about.

I DL w/ BitTorrent 4.0.x, it may have been slow in XP or Suse, but I always got something as listed below. Restarts always worked if I paused or lost connection, or SD computer until later. Not so uT 1.6 or XP DLM.
Do not know how DL Mgrs work in XP, never had any luck, even w/ the recommendations by MS when I try 2 DL Vista b2!
uT I got sometimes, but tried 3 or 4 days to DL install DVDs for; Suse10.1, FC5. Mandriva Odin (just DLd OK in Suse 10.1)

Go to https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2 for a port scan. Do a custum scan for the ports setup in your azureus configuration. Really if you have zero firewall running even the common port scan should provide the answer.

One indicator in azuereus is the average swarm speed in the details->general tab. Maybe it's going slowly for the whole swarm ?

btw, I just downloaded the latest ubuntu at speeds hitting > 400 kB/s. The DHT firewalled was glowing yellow the whole time. At those kind of speeds I'm in no great hurry to fix the error.

are you using a router to connect to the internet ?

I use a LAN to connect to the internet.

Have you forwarded the ports to your computer from the router? The ports are 6881-6999.

You can check out this page for more FAQs: http://www.dessent.net/btfaq/

try
>netstat -an | grep 6881

you should see somthing like

tcp 0 0 :::6881 :::* LISTEN

(where 6881 is the port you use with azureus)

if nothing then add it in you firewall with iptable somthing like

iptables -A INPUT -o eth0 -p ALL --dport 6881 -j ACCEPT

should do the trick

check your config of azureus to find out the right port your using

Personally I switched from the default azureus port to a much higher one (like 49500). I find that a lot of ISPs throttle specific ports or bit torrent traffic, so going to a different port sometimes helps. Plus in Azureus it's easy to do. No matter what port you use, you'll need to make sure it's actually open in iptables. I normally use the following line to open a port.