Bitcomet Questions

BitComet BitComet General Discussion
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I just have some questions that mainly go into the Preferences of Bitcomet, and because I have no idea what a lot of them mean, it makes it hard for to select the one thats right for me. I didn’t just run straight into this forum, I did a fair bit of reading and searching, but no real answers to my questions. I am running Windows XP Professional, my internet connection is firewalled, I have a DSL broadband connection allegedly at 1.5 Mbps.

  1. First off when I installed Bitcomet, NIS warned me that Bitcomet was trying to access the internet and I said ‘Allow Always’, but when another dialog box popped up (not from NIS) telling me Bitcomet wants to view or confiqure my firewall, I said no. Is this ok?

  2. What is the Listen Port exactly? When I selected it, it said that DHT network was connected and then Bitcomet started downloading and uploading when nothing was on my Transfer list! Why does it do this? What is DHT network? Is it better to have the Listen Port selected or No listening mode?

  3. What does ‘Enable NAT/Firewall Configuration ICS/ICF’ mean?

  4. What does ‘Enable UPnP Port Mapping’ mean?

  5. What does ‘Remove Port on NAT/Firewall’ mean?

  6. What does 'Enable reporting LAN IP to tracker mean?

  7. What does ‘Enable IP filter file: ipfilter.dat’ mean?

  8. What does ‘Max sessions per IP for downloading task’ mean?

I don’t know what other options mean aswell, but I thought these would be the most relevant.

Thanks guys, any questions you can answer is great.

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  1. First off when I installed Bitcomet, NIS warned me that Bitcomet was trying to access the internet and I said ‘Allow Always’, but when another dialog box popped up (not from NIS) telling me Bitcomet wants to view or confiqure my firewall, I said no. Is this ok?

This was probably windows firewall and you should have said yes. You dont want to have anything blocking Bitcomet from connecting to and from peers. If it asks again next time you start bitcomet then say Yes.

Most of your other questions are answered in the Settings Guide in my sig below.

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  1. First off when I installed Bitcomet, NIS warned me that Bitcomet was trying to access the internet and I said ‘Allow Always’, but when another dialog box popped up (not from NIS) telling me Bitcomet wants to view or confiqure my firewall, I said no. Is this ok?

Probably not ok, you should have let it. Is NIS Norton Internet Security? Then you really should uninstall it and use something else. If you tell NIS “ok”, it will likely ask again, and again, and again. Suggest you try AVG antivirus from Grisoft.

  1. What is the Listen Port exactly? When I selected it, it said that DHT network was connected and then Bitcomet started downloading and uploading when nothing was on my Transfer list! Why does it do this?

A firewall blocks incoming connections over the network. Most of these are innocent, some are definitely not. No way to know in advance, so you want to firewall except for those you know and want.

A listen port allows others’ bittorrent clients to contact yours on their initiative, through your firewall, to negotiate piece swaps. That’s a good thing, and without it, your transfers will be limited to those your client initiates or negotiates through NAT transfers. That means your downloads will be much slower than they could be.

Getting that listening port open through various combinations of firewalls and blockers takes up a great deal of space on this forum. You should allow traffic through it.

What is DHT network? Is it better to have the Listen Port selected or No listening mode?

Bittorrent finds peers – others who have some or all of the same files and want to trade pieces with you – and then it trades them. Two different functions, really. To find peers, bittorrent classically uses the tracker system, all peers go to a common tracker which then returns a list of peers. Your client updates this list from time to time with a tracker “scrape”.

Distributed Hash Table is another way of finding peers, that does not use a tracker. Your client becomes a node in a distributed database, and manages part of the load in common with all the other nodes. This is part of the traffic.

Most clients including BitComet also check for updates to themselves. They do this when the session starts, and this is another part of the traffic.

For most of the rest of your questions, you really should research a little more, these are not mysterious or hard to find. I suggest WikiPedia as a good resource. Google likewise. Research what ICS/ICF is, and you’ll have a pretty good idea how you should set it, for example. This is a windows thing, not a bittorrent thing. So’s UPnP.