Torrents, Port Forwarding and... oh, just forget it.

[JonnyMaelstrom]

Hello,
I wonder if anyone out there can help me at all. I recently got internet at home for the first time ever and have been exploring the wonderful world of torrents. All has been going more or less according to plan, with the torrents downloading at about 10KB a second.
But I've read it can be much quicker if I just 'forward my ports'. Having bravely tackled D-Link support, and crashed my browser twice, I have set up a 'static IP' address (I think) and created a torrent rule (don't ask me what any of this means). I'm not sure this worked, actually, because it kept asking me to type in "Port Map as asn integer". Well, I've no idea what that means, so I crossed my fingers and seem to have managed to restart my router without killing my computer.
The internet still works, and so does BitTorrent. At the exact same speed it was in the first place. It has spent the last three hours telling me my avi file will take three hours to download. As we speak, it is going to take 20.
What have I done wrong? And what have I done right?
Hopefully, one of you brainy types can help me while I get myself a large and well earned drink!

 

[WildPalms]

I'll assume you understand all the legalities around Bit Torrent and sharing of illegal media, etc. and assume you are downloading legally shared source material (end disclaimer)

The ports you need to forward are 6881 through to 6889 TCP only. UDP is not used by Bit Torrent. Allow incoming connections on those ports and have them go to your machine. This will speed up your downloads significantly.

http://www.portforward.com is a great site for looking up a specific application and getting instructions for your router model to allow the particular ports.

 

[Eraserhead]

BitTorrent is like that . I also assume that the video is totally legal to download and isn't copyrighted.

PS Transmission and Azureus can both work via UPNP (though Azereus will pretend it can't), which makes using a Router much simpler.

 

[JonnyMaelstrom]

Thanks for the advice. I've given that a try. Not really sure if I did it right (I clicked on 'filters' and asked it to allow incoming and outcoming from 'any IP' in ports 6881 to 6889 and clicked save and restart.
Then my torrent flatlined, both downloading and uploading. Now it's going again, varying between about 1Kb and 13Kb/second (we're down to 11hours waiting!) which, to tell the truth, is about the same speed as I managed to get it on a good day anyway.
So it's a partial success (because I thought I'd killed it completely and I haven't) but I have a feeling I'm still doing something wrong. Oh, now it's gone down to 0Kb (I'm not helped by the fact there's only one person out there who has the thing I want).
Any more ideas would be welcome because I'm clearly not very good at this.

 

[Eraserhead]

<stuff>

As long as sometimes it goes above 0kb you are OK on the router side of things.

 

[Mac Virgin]

It's all in the numbers...

Hi JohhnyM,

It does make a big difference if there are a lot of "Seeders" - those that have the file you are after - if there aren't a lot of these "Seeders" the download can be very slow, as you seem to be experiencing.. Maybe do another search for the torrent you are after and pick a source with a large number of "Seeders"..

Good luck!