Life on the road

[roadrunner1357]

I work extensively on the road, and do all my torrenting from motels on wireless. I've never even had my own internet service. I've always had the yellow light evrywhere I go, and just figured there was nothing I could do about it. Lately,however, I don't even get any seeders or peers - only LT seeds. Is there anything I can do? Will gladly supply any additional info needed. Thanks to anyone who can be of help.

[roadrunner1357]

Sorry about the duplicate entry - couldn't see where to delete it. I use Windows 7, BC 1.28 64 bit, McAfee int. Sec., no idea what router/service the motels have. Thanks again for any help/info.

Edited August 28, 2011 by roadrunner1357 (see edit history)

[greywizard]

You can't really get a green light in hotspots or on Internet connections which come as part of a packet of services (i.e. hotel rooms, dormitories and such) since virtually all of these connections are firewalled by default (for reasons easy to understand) and no one will even bother (assuming there was qualified IT personal there) to open a port for you, in the limited amount of time you spend there.

As for testing peers, use a very well seeded torrent such as Open Office or a Linux distro to verify if your client works normally. If it does it means that the torrents you were trying to download don't really have active peers with usable info (e.g. a dead torrent could still have 50 peers who joined the swarm just like you and have no data) so there's nothing you can do short of searching for a different torrent that has the same content.

[roadrunner1357]

Thanks for your quick reply greywizard. I am trying to download Openoffice 3.1.1 and Linux CentOS 5.5 right now. Openoffice didn't have many seeds(50 something), and the Linux had like 20,000 something listed. The Linux is downloading(for now) all with LT seeds. I have also experimented with very current, popular a.v.i.'s(Thor, Fast & Furious, etc.) which normally have oodles of peers/seeds. The few that will actually fully download are all by LT seeds only. Under the summary tab it always shows 0 of 0 connected for seeds/peers. If this helps, I predominantly use Torrentz for everything and usually BTjunkie or Torrentdownloads.net for the torrents to download. I admit to being somewhat ignorant of computer knowledge - have only owned one since january(I know..LOL). I find it weird that the motel would not allow seeds/peers through a firewall, but would allow LT seeds. I don't know if this was the right thing to try, but I've also uninstalled/redownloaded BC a few times, and have even restored windows to an earlier point. Anything else you could reccomend? Thanks again...and by the way...you guys/gals are great!!

[The UnUsual Suspect]

It's very possible the LAN your connected to is blocking bittorrent traffic. Bittorrent traffic is huge worldwide, and many network administrators try to block it, some more successful then others, but LTseed is much less well known, so they probably don't know what it is, so you've managed to bypass their security. You can also try changing your protocol encryption to a higher standard, but the higher settings will completely disconnect any peers that don't have encryption enabled or use a client that doesn't support it.

[greywizard]

Does the Trackers tab at least list any detected peers?

Disable LT-Seeding for the purpose of this test. You need to find out if there is any problem with BitTorrent protocol.

Not all tasks have LT Seeds so you can't rely on that for every task.

Does the Seeds/Peers column at least display any peers/seeds (even if the connected number is 0)?

[roadrunner1357]

I think the eagle may be right. I started a BC task at my work site and the seeds/peers were there. I stopped it though, because I didn't want to get into any trouble. At the motel I'm staying in, the summary shows 0 of 0 connected for seeds and peers - also nothing listed but LT's under the peers tab. They must have it blocked. I changed the protocol to a few different settings and it was the same. Shouldn't be a big deal - I'll have to find a different hotel. This was the first time I've been blocked...just freaked me out a little. I'll check back if there are any further issues. Just a quick question - Is there a page somewhere that is dedicated to seeding requests? I have a good supply of different things on a 2TB hard drive and would like to start giving back more where I can. A big THANKS to all the BC people. May your torrents run forever more....oh-oh...back to work...

Edited August 29, 2011 by roadrunner1357 (see edit history)

[kluelos]

The specific setting you should try is under Options -> Task -> Bittorrent -> Protocol Encryption

Try setting this to "Force", to see if it makes a difference. If you are now getting some seeds and peers then try lowering the setting and see what happens.

[roadrunner1357]

Kluelos. 10-4 on your last. As per my previous post, it is working at my job site, so motel is blocking. I did attempt downloading in all the BC protocol modes - all I would get are the LT seeds. I'll be checking for new motel in next few days. Hopefully that will get me sailing again. Thanks.

[kluelos]

A polite complaint to the hotel -- "Gee, mister Manager, here's why I'm staying at your competitor's hotel from now on" -- might also work wonders. He probably isn't aware it's even happening, and "I'm losing customers to H***** I** because of this d*** network crap!!!", is extremely powerful.

Maybe it won't work. Or maybe you'll get an "I'll fix it. Please don't go there. Have a free weekend stay on us instead." Worth a shot.

When I did that crap, many moons ago, the motel would bend over backwards to keep me, knowing they had that suite rented monday through friday every week, and still vacant for the weekends.