Is a seedbox right for me?

[NickHendriks]

Hello TI members. I have been using utorrent from behind a VPN on public trackers and have been getting a few "complaint" letters from my provider. I am a member of a private tracker but stopped due to the difficulty of maintaining a ratio. As I consider a seed box there are several questions that come up. Security is Very important to me (I know you are thinking then why would I use a public tracker...well that is why I am here). I'm not even sure what security issues I should consider with a seedbox purchase. Let's say I am in a first world country that is cracking down on people using P2P networks. I am also mostly interested in current TV shows. Cost isn't too much an issue (<$25 a month would be ideal) but privacy is the most important issue.

The second is ease of use. With RSS feeds and utorrent my shows come into my home LAN server, are renamed and stored without any input from me. Is this type of automation possible with a seed box?

I'm using a windows based system so please keep this in mind.

I'm sure I'll have more questions but this is good for now
-T

---------- Post added at 08:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:41 PM ----------

Well, it didn't take me long to find this

http://www.torrent-invites.com/bitto...nnymously.html

While it answers a lot of questions I have, now I wonder about seedbox giving up anything else.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

[Chmuranet]

Privacy and Anonymity are Chmuranet's specialty, might want to take a look Though our price is outside your range, if those issues concern you, we are your vendor.


There are many ways to skin the synchronization cat , CuteFTP scripts, webDAV, rsync. Might want to look at this thread:

http://www.torrent-invites.com/seedb...d-seedbox.html

Hope that helps

[MaxPlus]

I have been using utorrent from behind a VPN on public trackers and have been getting a few "complaint" letters from my provider.

Sorry to hear that...

As for your question of whether a seedbox is right for you, I would definitely recommend it for security purposes. The beauty of having a box is that your home ip is no longer associated with torrent traffic. Also, if you use sftp, your ISP can't log the content of your downloads so there's far less risk of nasty surprises down the road.

[NickHendriks]

Privacy and Anonymity are Chmuranet's specialty, might want to take a look Though our price is outside your range, if those issues concern you, we are your vendor.


There are many ways to skin the synchronization cat , CuteFTP scripts, webDAV, rsync. Might want to look at this thread:

http://www.torrent-invites.com/seedb...d-seedbox.html

Hope that helps

Well I am interested even though it is higher than I want to pay, but it looks like you don't have any products to offer :-(
I went to your site and it says your out of servers. Is this true?

[Chmuranet]

Well I am interested even though it is higher than I want to pay, but it looks like you don't have any products to offer :-(
I went to your site and it says your out of servers. Is this true?

Sorry about that, when the posting went up, we had stock. Been slammed filling orders, had to turn folks away.

We are waiting for a HBA replacement on one of the machines, that will open three slots - write [email protected] to reserve one of those, or if you want pm me and I'll give you the USPS tracking number so you'll know when the controller has come in, and can apply then.

[1nd13]

I'm not sure if you have answered your question yet, but i felt it might be worth chipping in my 2Cents since I use a Seedbox.

Either way, I too was worried about the same thing (IP letters regarding the download of banned content) so I asked some of the guys at uni (doing an IT degree) what they use. I was put onto a Seedbox called Feral Hosting (do your research- there are LOTS of excellent options out there. I can only speak for Feral Hosting as it's the one I use). Either way, it didn't take me long to set up.

I use the software ruTorrent on the box and have RSS feeds feeding directly into it. It's SUPER fast and I have something like 2TB a month of bandwidth so i just let it sit there and share (my ratios across all my Private trackers are excellent).

If I'm at work and I want to start an SFTP download on my home PC so I'm ready to go when i get home. I use Log Me In to log in to my home PC remotely, start my shows downloading (I've found Filezilla to be really useful and easy to use) and by the time I'm home I have securely downloaded all my favourite shows as they air.

I couldn't be happier. Best of luck.

[virusje]

A seedbox offers protection in the sense that your home IP is never exposed at torrent trackers. Most seedboxes can also be used as a VPN provider (in which case your seedbox's IP becomes your external IP).

This is off course more secure then using your home connection. But don't forget that seedbox providers will also provide your customer details if they get a court order telling them to do that. If that's not secure enough for you then you could always consider the following;
- Keep your VPN account
- Register a gmail account with your VPN IP and only access it via VPN.
- Use this to become a customer at a seedbox provider
- Use Bitcoins to pay for your seedbox
- Only connect to your seedbox via VPN

But this is only if you are really paranoia :P. But the very minimum you should do is not provide your real name, address address and home e-mail to your seedbox provider. They can't give out details they don't have. You could also ask potential seedbox providers what their policy is on keeping logs, as this could expose your home IP (if you don't use another VPN provider).

Some seedbox providers (such as Feral, only available to customers I think) offer great tutorials on their site on how to automate stuff, including RSS and synchronisation. So RSS feeds are definitely possible and not that hard to set up.

I am sure automatic syncing to your home PC is not that hard to set up. If you do it via SFTP your ISP will only see to what IP you are connecting (your seedboxes IP). If you do it via VPN then they would only see that you do a lot of VPN traffic :P (to your VPN provider).

Do you only have one Windows PC at home or also a server of some kind?

I have a Synology NAS at home so my setup is different, I use LFTP to sync stuff from my seedbox(es) to my NAS, but I could also use rsync if I wanted. For Windows you should take a look at WinSCP: Directory Synchronization :: WinSCP

Or just become a customer at Feral, as they have great tutorials on how to set this up ;).

[Clarissa]

It's worth noting that a seedbox won't change your data usage profile much in terms of download volume. You still have to get what you have on the box to where you wish to use it. What it will do is the following:

• Reduce upload volume massively as you aren't seeding from your domestic account.
• Reduce the number of connections. All the IP connections associated with your torrents are moved away. Then again, you already get this from your VPN.
• Enable encrypted download of what you acquire. Yes, you concentrate your downloads from a single IP but (as already mentioned above) you can easily encrypt the traffic so it's not obvious what you are bringing down. Again, you already get this with your VPN.

This might well be enough to get the ISP off your back and, if it's the only thing you use your VPN for, a seedbox could be a decent alternative. On the other hand if they are hassling you about download volumes then that's another thing entirely. You may need to find another solution...

[virusje]

I missed the part where you said that you already had a LAN server at home. What software are you currently using to automate downloading / renaming?

Best solution would be to set up the RSS feeds on the seedbox. But another solution would be to just automatically upload the torrent files to your seedbox and let the RSS feed stuff still be done from your LAN box.

It's worth noting that a seedbox won't change your data usage profile much in terms of download volume. You still have to get what you have on the box to where you wish to use it. What it will do is the following:

• Reduce upload volume massively as you aren't seeding from your domestic account.
• Reduce the number of connections. All the IP connections associated with your torrents are moved away. Then again, you already get this from your VPN.
• Enable encrypted download of what you acquire. Yes, you concentrate your downloads from a single IP but (as already mentioned above) you can easily encrypt the traffic so it's not obvious what you are bringing down. Again, you already get this with your VPN.

This might well be enough to get the ISP off your back and, if it's the only thing you use your VPN for, a seedbox could be a decent alternative. On the other hand if they are hassling you about download volumes then that's another thing entirely. You may need to find another solution...

Great addition. I think high volumes of upload is what triggers suspicion from your provider. This differs from most people's data usage and they will probably suspect you from less legal activities ;). Upload traffic is also usually more expensive for your provider.

But not using your connection to upload stuff will indeed dramatically decrease your upload traffic.

I am not sure what kind of torrent user you are but I sometimes like to seed popular stuff I have no interest in myself to build up some ratio. If you do that quite often then your download will definitely decrease because you can just leave that stuff on your seedbox and never sync it back to your home box ;).

I am glad my provider does not have a traffic limit. Last month my traffic from home was 3 TB :P (but my seedboxes did 4 times that :P).

---------- Post added at 09:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:52 PM ----------

Laws in my home country are a bit weird anyway. I think I live in one of the few countries (in the Western world) where downloading is legal. It's only illegal to upload, that's probably why so many people here mainly use newsservers.

I mainly got a seedbox because I wanted to relieve my home connection a bit as I need this for my work :P.

[Chmuranet]

...

But not using your connection to upload stuff will indeed dramatically decrease your upload traffic.

...

I remain unconvinced

[virusje]

I remain unconvinced

I like to play Captain Obvious :P.

[duketom]

pay a dedicated server,vps or seedbox with bitcoins

[geo21]

If you dont pay for a Cable (aka F.T.T.H or VDSL etc) line, then you should have a seedbox

[NickHendriks]

Just wanted to say I got a seed box and love it. I forgot to mention my cable provider has not been a problem with data usage but I was getting dcma notices from my VPN!
Before the seed box I maintained a 8:1 ratio on a private tracker and now I'm up to 10:1 in about 1 week. Will have to see how my box holds up if I start using public trackers.
The only thing I miss is the automation I had set up using utorrent and file bot and the disc space for seeding. Renting disc space is more expensive than just buying a drive.

[Albin0]

When you guys order such things on the web, don't forget to double-check your zip code on https://worldpostalcode.com/united-s...rizona/phoenix not to mess up. I had a few situations when the package was lost because of a zip code mistake.