Thread: How to: Torrent while your PC is in standby

Wow amazing, ta mate !

Great way just sad it can't be full - but i'll use it anyways

Really, nobody has called shenanigans on this yet?

Ok, so this tutorial is a little deceiving, primarily because you CANNOT torrent while in standby (ACPI S3) mode! When your computer is in standby, there is no power to the majority of your PC components, including your CPU and hard drives. The RAM does continue to use power, but only to save the system state. An exception to this rule, as the author pointed out, is that your network card can be configured to stay active. Well, active only in the lowest sense of the word -- it basically accepts network packets without processing them (this is why your network card still blinks while in standby) (a network card only a OSI layer 1 and 2 device, it doesn't actually process the packets). Depending on how you have the network card configured, it can bring your PC out of standby if it detects a Magic Packet or a Directed Packet.

If do happen to have you network card configured properly, bittorrent packets will wake your computer from standby and uTorrent (or some other inferior bittorent program) will process them. After a set amount of time, it will go back into standby mode.

Now, this can save you power if you aren't seeding many torrents or if they just aren't that active. My PC, however, would never even make it into standby because there are always a few torrents active.

I'm not sure about this part, but I have a feeling that after about an hour of not communicating with the tracker, it will just assume you've timed out and will no longer broadcast your IP address to other peers. This of course means you won't be doing too much seeding...

But let us be sure of one thing, while your PC is in standby, it is not transferring torrent data. This technique probably will save a little electricity, but not nearly as substantial as the author claims. As always, I would challenge anyone to prove me wrong. I would love to believe that this is actually possible, unfortunately my experience and deductive reasoning tells me otherwise.

A recommended reading if you plan on setting this up correctly. LINK

Nice trick.works like a charm

Never thinked about it...
Great Tutorial, congratulations

thank you so much for this. this is perfect for me as i leave the computer on 20/7.
thanks a lot!

Nice tut will give this a go so can set it up when i go to bed

I have a question, is "Standby" a Hibernation or a sleep mode ??
I got a bit confused.

is this an april 1st joke?