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General Advice On Bit Torrent

S

Stan

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 1, 2003
93
0
As a relatively new Mac user (PPC), I am still getting to grips with some of the trickier bits and bobs, and as such was wondering if anyone could give me advice on the following:

Is it possible to use Bit Torrent or other such apps on the Mac? Do I need to use such apps in conjunction with other apps to download? And is this a relatively simple process, can't find much info generally about it online. The only download service I have found so far is Limewire, and it's not too hot.

Cheers for any advice

Stan
 
You can indeed use BitTorrent on the mac without problems. One of the biggest Torrent clients Azureus is cross platform and runs on the Mac, there are other clients available - Tomato Torrent is pretty cool for a few small downloads.
 
Bittorrent is pretty easy to work with, the hardest part would be setting up port forwarding but that usually only takes a few minutes. Azureus and transmission is what i use.
 
Thanks for all your advice chaps, much appreciated. Just one question - can you explain what you mean by setting up port forwarding? Sorry to be a dunce, is this in relation to opening a port to pass through the firewall?
 
adk said:
Acquisition is the best P2P Client.
Click to expand...

If you don't pay for it.

I use Acquisition daily, and don't mind the 'nags.' This is after having purchased a liscence.

I registered it, the nags went away for a while, and then came right back. After trying to re-register with the same code, I was told it was not valid.

Searching on the forums, I found out I was only one of many customers who paid for a registration only to have it removed with no refund, no support, nothing.
 
Stan said:
Thanks for all your advice chaps, much appreciated. Just one question - can you explain what you mean by setting up port forwarding? Sorry to be a dunce, is this in relation to opening a port to pass through the firewall?
Click to expand...
You're right - it's setting up your devices and operating system so that the port would be open for external entities to connect to you (which is a necessity if you want to use BitTorrent efficiently).

Here
* devices = modems, wireless routers...(anything between the Mac and the Internet)
* operating system = software firewall (if enabled in System Preferences) or any other software firewall you use

If you need detailed help, www.portforwarding.com is the best place to look at - it has guides for most modems, routers and also a forum that helpful people visit.
 
pianodude123 said:
Is there a way to only download and not upload with azureus though?

Please dont yell at me and call me leech and such, i was just wondering how.
Click to expand...

Leech:p The worst you could do is set your upload speed to 1KB/s, 'zero' is unlimited upload speed in Azureus so that wont work. Not sure if running behind a firewall will let you leech while others cannot connect to you, you may have problems getting enough connections to make it worth your while.
 
I use Azureus for Bit Torrent, Acquisition for P2P (though I never really use this much anymore, it is a nice program), and Pando for when I have to send a larger file(s) to a friend (up to 1 GB).
 
wirelessimports said:
does anyone have a replacement for Azureus for us intel based mac users?
Click to expand...

I'm using Azureus on my Intel Mac Mini. I think I found a Universal Binary for it. Works fine.
 
pianodude123 said:
Is there a way to only download and not upload with azureus though?

Please dont yell at me and call me leech and such, i was just wondering how.
Click to expand...
As allan_zip pointed out, you could set your upload speed (right click on torrent, go to details, then to the Options tab) to 1kB/s and make yourself unconnectable from outside (ports not forwarded or firewalled). This will definitely ensure that you upload very less, if at all. And your download would probably take a few months, assuming the torrent is still alive and has a lot of seeders.

The other way is to get on to a torrent that has already been downloaded by the whole world and you're the last one to get on to it - then you'll be the only leecher with several seeders feeding you fast.


If you want to give a higher preference for the download speed and set the upload speed based on the network latency observed, then install the 'AutoSpeed' plugin.
 
alvespt said:
use transmission it's the best! it uses only a bit of mac resources
Click to expand...
My most infuriating pet peeve is when people recommend applications that may be all sweet and sugar coated on the outside but is just sh*t on the inside, because sh*t is still sh*t no matter what you do to it.

Azureus is a universal binary, works great, has lots of features. If your computer is somehow lacking in speed/performance, go with mainline. Those are pretty much the only two BitTorrent clients that follow the protocol correctly. Anything else is going to screw with your stats.

And frankly, I'm absolutely disgustedly sick of saying this, but BitTorrent is not a download-only protocol. If you don't want to share the same amount you've taken from other people (uploading at least the same amount you downloaded), get off the fscking torrent, delete the program, it's the wrong thing for you, and you should look into other methods of sharing that do not involve any uploading on your part (i.e. usenet). If you limit your upload speed to something like 1kb/s, you are not going to get fast download speeds on the majority of torrents because, like I said already, BitTorrent relies on peers sharing with others, and if you don't do that you are given lowered priority compared with others for most peers, hence resulting in slower download speeds.
 
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