Jun 6, 2018 - Find and download free content online by using the uTorrent app. We show you how. Feb 27, 2018 - uTorrent Web is the lightweight version of the popular torrent client uTorrent. The torrent downloader is currently available for Windows. Jan 10, 2018 uTorrent’s features speak for themselves: simultaneous downloads of multiple files, the option to limit the bandwidth consumption for the full program or each torrent, rapid restart of interrupted downloads, and the ability to select what you want to download from a pack of several files.
- How To Download To Utorrent Free
- Download Utorrent App For Windows
- How To Download Utorrent Pro For Free
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Heard of BitTorrent, but not quite sure how to use it, or wonder whether you should use it at all? Here’s a quick guide for newbies on how it works and how to get started downloading torrent files.
- Mar 05, 2019 Download the official µTorrent® (uTorrent) torrent client for Windows, Mac, Android or Linux-- uTorrent is the #1 bittorrent download client on desktops worldwide.
- BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol that allows you to download and share data across the internet. They are simply files that have the information related to other files and folders.
What is BitTorrent?
BitTorrent is an internet peer-to-peer file sharing protocol that works in a sort of decentralized fashion. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that as you download portions of your files from the the person who originally shared the file, you are also getting portions from fellow downloaders to maximize data exchange.
BitTorrent is one of the most commonly used protocols for transferring very large files because it doesn’t overload web servers that provide downloads—since everybody is both sending and receiving, it’s much more efficient than everybody downloading from a single server.
How BitTorrent Works
How To Download To Utorrent Free
To better understand how this all works, take a look at this diagram from Wikipedia detailing the process:
“In this animation, the colored bars beneath all of the 7 clients in the upper region above represent the file, with each color representing a individual piece of the file. After the initial pieces transfer from the seed (large system at the bottom), the pieces are individually transferred from client to client. The original seeder only needs to send out one copy of the file for all the clients to receive a copy. To stop animation, click browser’s Stop or hit ESC key.”
Indexers
An “indexer” is a site that compiles a list of torrents and descriptions and is a place where users form a community (with rules!) around BitTorrent content. When you want to share, download, or request files, the indexer’s community is where you go. These usually take the form of a forum and/or an IRC channel.
Trackers
A “tracker” is a server that assists in directing peers, initiated downloads, and maintaining statistics. Since most indexers have their own private tracker, most people just refer to them both as trackers. In this article, we’re going to use this more general definition to avoid confusion with whatever you may find yourself on the internet.
Trackers route little pieces of data, or packets, to downloaders and assist them in connecting to their fellow peers—as you download chunks of files, you also upload them to other people who have different chunks of the file, and because everybody’s sharing with each other while downloading, it tends to zip along quickly.
Seeders and Leechers
Once you’re done downloading, you become a “seeder” and you continue to upload to other peers. If you disable uploading and you only download, you’re referred to as a “leecher,” and aside from its ethical misgivings it can lead to being banned from the tracker. As such, it’s generally good practice to seed at least as much as you download.
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Public vs Private Trackers
Another aspect of trackers are whether they are public or private—the “Private” trackers are based on membership, so only registered users can download, upload, and/or have access to perks like additional downloads. “Public” trackers usually don’t require registration, or if they do, it’s free and always open. In general, the best experience comes from a private tracker with a strong community, so be sure to look around and see if you can’t find one that suits your tastes.
BitTorrent Clients
The other side of the BitTorrent equation can be found on your local computer: a client. The client’s job is to manage your torrents, actually connect to other peers, manage statistics on your end, and, of course, download and upload. While the tracker gives instructions on what to do and how to connect, it’s the client that actually does the heavy-lifting. Because of this, it’s important that you choose a client you trust as well as a client that performs amiably.
There’s no lack of free, feature-packed BitTorrent clients, but we strongly recommend uTorrent (for Windows) and Transmission (for Mac OS and Linux). uTorrent is a powerhouse of an app, and easily one of the lightest to run on Windows. Transmission is installed by default on Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions, and the Mac version runs extremely well and has Growl support. They are both novice and resource-friendly but don’t skip out on some of the more useful options for advanced users.
Note: uTorrent, by default, enables an Ask.com toolbar during installation and offers to make your default search Ask.com. This can be turned off without any problems, but it bears mentioning.
Legality of BitTorrent
BitTorrent itself is a protocol, so it falls to individual trackers as to what’s legal and what’s not. If a copyright violation occurs, it is the tracker that is primarily held responsible, and subsequently its users. You probably should avoid blindly downloading copyrighted works on public trackers, since your IP address can be easily tracked.
There are many legal uses for BitTorrent, however—for instance, most community-driven Linux distributions offer torrents for their ISOs. Phish fans often record live shows (so long as they comply with Phish’s policy on music trading) and share them online, as do many artists themselves.
There are plenty of legal trackers out there, as well as torrent aggregators that compile links to legal downloads hosted on other trackers. Here’s a couple of examples:
- Jamendo is a free music tracker that distributes Creative Commons-licensed albums, and artists can contribute their own album if it’s licensed in the same way.
- Linux Tracker provides downloads to Linux distributions, both popular and low-key, and serves as a great alternative for downloading ISO files.
- Clear Bits offers “open licensed digital media” downloads for free, charging content providers instead. And, as always, Google can be a powerful ally in finding legal torrents.
We here at How-To Geek do not condone piracy and we urge you to please download responsibly.
Downloading Torrents
Things are shared through “torrents,” small files containing text that act as instructions for the tracker. In order to download files, you hop on your tracker’s website and download the torrent file, which is usually under 30 KB. You then open that torrent in your chosen BitTorrent and you’ve started to download! The process is that simple, although there is a lot you can do to make the most of your connection if you play around with your client.
Step by Step
First and foremost, download and install your chosen BitTorrent client. Here, I’m using uTorrent as my chosen client on Windows. If you’re using Mac or Linux, it won’t be too hard to follow along using Transmission.
Next, we need a torrent file. I’ve got a torrent of Countdown’s album “Break Rise Blowing” from Jamendo.
Once you have your torrent file in an easy-to-reach (or well-organized) location, all you have to do is double-click on the .torrent file to load it in your client.
You’ll see uTorrent pop up and you’ll get a dialog with option for the specific download.
Official site. Here, you can choose where the torrent will download to, whether or not you want to add it to the top of your queue of torrents, and you can even unmark individual files from being downloaded. Once you’ve settled on what you’d like, you can go ahead and click on OK.
In the main uTorrent window you’ll see your queue. From here you can manage your torrents:
- The Pause button will pause downloading, but keep its connections open.
- The Stop button will stop downloading and close its connections.
- The Play button will start downloads once they’ve been paused or stopped.
- The red X button will give you a prompt to delete your torrent (and files, if you choose).
- The Up arrow will raise your torrent’s priority amongst all of the currently active torrents.
- The Down arrow will lower its priority in the queue.
Getting started is just that easy. The world of BitTorrent is vast, but hopefully this introduction will give you the incentive to take the plunge. Happy torrenting!
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If you say the word “torrent” to many computer users, the immediate association is “pirating”. And it’s true that torrenting has gotten a very bad reputation in the public mind, with the assumption being that downloading any torrent is illegal. While there are a lot of pirate sites out there using torrenting to illegally distribute content, torrenting as a technology is a perfectly legitimate way to share large files online, and there are many torrents out there that are totally legal to use. People shared large files using the BitTorrent protocol for years, long before software piracy became the big thing it is today. A lot of large software distributions (like Linux OS packages) use torrents to get the software to end users.
It is therefore important to realize that using BitTorrent or uTorrent (or any other torrenting client) is not illegal in and of itself. Using them will not, in and of itself, get you thrown in jail, banned by your ISP, or copyright trolled. However, if you use the protocol to share copyrighted media (and if you have bad luck or are careless), those things might happen. With that out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. In this article I will give you a brief tutorial on how to make uTorrent faster. The examples I give all use uTorrent, but if you use a different client, most of these procedures will still work, you’ll just have to find the equivalent settings in your client.
Speeding up torrent downloads with uTorrent
Quick Links
- Speeding up torrent downloads with uTorrent
- Streamline queueing
uTorrent is a torrenting client that works on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. uTorrent is free, though there are premium versions available for Windows that add some bells and whistles; the free versions are perfectly adequate for anyone who just wants to share some files. uTorrent isn’t the only torrent tracker out there but it is one of the most popular. It has been around for years and is the torrent client of choice for millions of people across the world. However, it isn’t well-optimized “out of the box”, and there are some things you can to do make it faster.
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Let it through your firewall
The first thing you should do when installing uTorrent is to click yes when it asks you if you want to ‘Add an exception for uTorrent in Windows Firewall’. If you hit no or don’t use Windows Firewall, you still need to let uTorrent through.
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If using Windows Firewall:
- Open uTorrent and select Preferences.
- Navigate to Connections and check the box next to ‘Add Windows Firewall exception’.
- Open your firewall software and allow uTorrent traffic to pass freely through.
Do not be tempted to turn off your firewall when torrenting, as this opens your computer up to malware and all sorts of threats. If you use a router with firewall, you will need to configure this too.
Add more or faster seeders and peers
Torrenting works by distributing a file across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of seeders and peers. Seeders are computers that have the complete file available for upload. Peers are computers that are still in the process of downloading the file. When a new peer joins the system and is looking for a file, the torrenting software breaks the file into many tiny chunks. The software then looks for peers that have already obtained the chunks that the new peer still needs, and if they have it, the other peers upload it to the new peer. If none of the peers have the chunk, then the system goes and gets it from one of the seeds (which have all the chunks).
This system keeps the seeds from being overwhelmed by requests, and once the peers collectively have all of the chunks of the file, then new peers joining can get the file very quickly because it is available from many different sources instead of just a few seeds. For this reason, the more seeds and the more peers a torrent already has, the quicker any new members of the network will be able to download the file. When a peer finishes downloading the entire file, it becomes another seed and can further enhance the download speed.
Torrent websites don’t actually keep the original file themselves. Instead, they have trackers, a file that describes all the chunks of the original file. The tracker also keeps track of how many seeds and peers are working with the specified file (which always starts with one seed, the original file owner). So when you go to a torrent website, it will show you how many seeds and how many peers are already working with the file. It’s almost always a good idea to select the torrent with the highest number of seeders and peers to get that file faster. Higher numbers also are a good general indicator that a particular torrent has high-quality content – people are voting with their feet.)
Allocate the correct bandwidth
While it might seem counterintuitive, allocating too much bandwidth to torrents can slow them down. You need to get the ratio right if you are to get the most throughput.
- Open uTorrent and select Options.
- Navigate to Preferences and Connection.
- Check the box next to ‘Apply rate limit to transport overhead’.
- Change Maximum Number of Global Connections to 2329.
- Change Maximum Number of Peers Connected to 257.
- Change Number of Upload Slots Per torrent to 14.
- Change Maximum upload rate to 14.
Change the port
Port allocation for uTorrent defaults to somewhere between 6881 and 6999. Most people know this, and most ISPs know it too. Accordingly, many ISPs throttle these ports so that torrenting traffic won’t burden their network. If your ISP throttles these ports, it makes sense to change them. The recommendation is to change the port to something over 10000 to avoid both throttling and conflicts within your computer.
- Open uTorrent and select Options.
- Navigate to Preferences and Connection.
- Change the port to a number between 10000 and 12000.
Streamline queueing
Queueing sets up several torrents to download one after the other. Setting this up correctly enables you to maximize throughput. It’s a small but very effective tweak. While your computer or phone is waiting for packets from one torrent, it can send out requests for packets from another.
- Open uTorrent and select Options.
- Navigate to Preferences and Queueing.
- Set Maximum Number of Active Torrents to 10.
- Set Maximum Number of Active Downloads to 10.
- Set Seeding Global Minimum Ratio to 0.
![How To Download To Utorrent How To Download To Utorrent](/uploads/1/2/6/0/126089136/593083859.jpg)
Prioritize a torrent
My final tips for speeding up uTorrent is to prioritize the download you want first. This gives that file first choice of bandwidth and resources so will download faster if the seeds and peers are capable of it.
- Right click a torrent within the main uTorrent window.
- Select Bandwidth Allocation and then High.
- Right click the other torrents you have in progress.
- Select Bandwidth Allocation and then Low.
If you don’t switch the others to low, nothing will happen as uTorrent will already be using all the resources allocated to it.
Add more trackers
Remember we talked about the tracker, the file that keeps track of who is seeding and who is downloading the underlying file? Well, you aren’t limited to just one tracker. You can tell uTorrent to check a whole list of trackers to find more seeds and peers. There are constant updates to the various lists of public trackers; that link is current as of March 2019. To use the list, copy the text of the list into your cut and paste buffer. Right-click the torrent name in uTorrent and select Properties. In the “trackers” section, paste the list and in a little while you’ll start seeing your seed and peer count go up, along with your download speed.
Those are just a few ways you can make uTorrent faster. As long as there are enough quality seeds and peers and you have everything set up correctly, your torrents should now come flying down. Any bottlenecks or slow downloads will be at the other end, not yours!
Do you have any techniques for speeding up torrent downloads? Share them with us in the comments below!
We’ve got more resources for torrenting fans.
Here’s our guide to the whole torrenting process.
Want to torrent to your iPhone? See our tutorial on using torrents on iOS. If Android’s your game, then we’ve got a guide for downloading torrents to Android as well.
You need a torrent search engine to find the files you want – check out our guide to the best torrent search sites.
You can even download torrents directly to Google Drive!
How To Download Utorrent Pro For Free
If uTorrent doesn’t meet your needs, see our guide to the best torrent clients out there.