How to get up and running with Bit Torrent technology efficiently. It shows how to battle ISPs throttling bit torrent speed and other ways to get the best optimization of your bandwidth.

DISCLAIMER

Proceed at your own risk! The information here is accurate to the best of my knowledge. I will not be held responsible if this document causes your computer to explode or burst into flames. In real serious terms, if any corruption of data, hardware damage or any other kind of damage/losses/etc. arises from the use of this document, I will not be responsible for it. If you don't like this, please don't read any further.

INTRODUCTION



This is a tutorial step by step guide on setting up uTorrent. It details all the steps from downloading to optimizing your settings. Many people have used Bit Torrent and think they are running with optimized settings, even then, it is advised to read through this guide and see what you may have missed to better optimize your settings.
Starting Off with Bit Torrent

My top 3 recommended bit torrent clients, in order of preference is as follows

1. µTorrent ( µTorrent - The Lightweight and Efficient BitTorrent Client ) (the number one choice)
2. Azureus ( Azureus, now called Vuze : Bittorrent Client ) (slow, java based, but very popular too)
3. BitComet ( BitComet - A free C++ BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP Download Client ) (popular but banned by some trackers due to incorrect reporting)

This guide will focus on the top most client, uTorrent. A quick rundown of its major features and we're talking SPEED here

1. Peer Exchange
Obtains more peers for your downloading torrent in addition to trackers. Peer exchange checks with other peers to see if they know of any other peers. More Peers = More Speed! (provided the peers are seeds and are not choked)
2. Protocol Encryption
This is the major speed booster if your ISP throttles bit torrent traffic. It can do wonders on torrents with high seeds and can give high speeds especially if your peers are using the top 3 clients I mentioned above, as those are the popular ones that support this standard.
3. Capping Upload Speed
Uploading data to other peers at full throttle will severely limit your download rate. This is one key element we have to adjust for a good download / upload ratio. Unless you are purely seeding and not using your computer for other tasks, limit your upload to 80% of full bandwidth.
4. Distributed Hash Table (DHT)
Similar to Peer Exchange, it also obtains more peers for you to download from. If the tracker is down, and the torrent is not private, you can depend on DHT to continue to download!
5. Local Peer Discovery
Searches for peers in the same ISP as you. Connecting to a peer in the same network (or ISP) means you can get the maximum speeds from that peer, assuming he is generous with his uploads.

WHAT WE NEED

1. An Internet Connection and its maximum download and upload speed. If unsure, visit Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test to run a speed test. Note: Minimum Flash 7 is required. Remember to select a download location closest to you, especially if you are outside US. The Recommended Server works out most of the time.
2. ⊗⊗⊗⊗⊗ed TCPIP.sys to allow more concurrent half-open connections. Windows XP SP2 and Vista limits the number of half-connections to 10. This limitation can impact your Bittorrent experience. To increase the limit,

Windows XP Users (NOT Vista users, see next step for Vista users)
1. Go to this site - www.LvlLord.de - Tipps, Tricks & Utilities - News
2. Click on Downloads.
3. Right-click the link and click "Save Target As".
4. Save it in your Desktop.
5. Open the file and run the program located inside the archive, agreeing to the security warning.
6. Some text should scroll by in a MS-DOS window, after it ends, type C.
7. Enter 100 for the number of concurrent half-open connections and press Enter.
8. Type Y and the file should be ⊗⊗⊗⊗⊗ed. Cancel any Windows XP warnings that should appear, it is part of Microsoft's way of ensuring its files are not tampered with (the utility tempers them to break the limit on purpose).

Windows Vista Users (NOT XP users, see above for XP users)

WARNING: The below has been known to cause problems for some people. The author of the fix (Yaronmaor) has posted newer versions, but it has still been reported to cause problems. Be warned - or you can just skip this part if you are unsure.

1. Go to this site - Repair And Recover
2. Look for the item named - EventID4226Fix for Windows Vista (Line 2)
3. Right-click the link and click "Save Target As".
4. Save it in your Desktop.
5. Extract all contents of the file to a folder
6. If you are running 32-Bit Vista (most users are), double click on Install⊗⊗⊗⊗⊗32.bat. Unsure? Run Install⊗⊗⊗⊗⊗32.bat.
If you are running 64-bit Vista, there is a comment (Matt) below that claims that this had made his system with no network support and System Restore. If you still want to go ahead anyway, double click on Install⊗⊗⊗⊗⊗64.bat. Do let us know if it has worked out for you.
7. Some text should scroll by in a MS-DOS window, after it ends, type Y and press Enter.
8. After the restart notice appears, press any key and restart your PC.
3. A Bit Torrent Client - I recommend uTorrent. This guide uses uTorrent for the tutorial.
4. And finally, some torrents to kick off the download. A sample torrent file will be provided later.