Status: Connecting

[rorygilmore]

My "status" bar when downloading won't get off of the status: Connecting. It won't start to download either because it is still connecting. It's been connecting for three days now and the file isn't that big. I've tried to disable any firewalls I have but nothing has worked. I've downloaded files before that have worked its just now that they don't work.

Thanks!

[kluelos]

Look in the trackers tab. This is where you'll find error messages or problems from the tracker. See what it's telling you.

[gaelle]

My "status" bar when downloading won't get off of the status: Connecting. It won't start to download either because it is still connecting. It's been connecting for three days now and the file isn't that big. I've tried to disable any firewalls I have but nothing has worked. I've downloaded files before that have worked its just now that they don't work.

Thanks!

bonjour

je suis nouvelle, et j'ai un probleme avec bitcomet, je n'arrive pas à me connecter

pouvez vous m'aider?

merci d'avance

[MoToe103]

I have the same problem. I went to the Tracker Tab & it just says "Can't connect Tracker, waiting to retry."

What do I do? It worked 2 days ago, but not now.

[Anthony]

i have the sam prob but mine say tracker status ok reannonce in 300s

[kluelos]

(I love it when I can plagarize myself...)

It appears you've never used Bittorrent before, so let's go over the sequence of events.

First, the client contacts the tracker. If there is a problem with this, it is usually shown in the "trackers" tab, so you should be alert for any error messages and status reports there. Sometimes the tracker is overwhelmed by connection requests and scrapes, so it times-out. Patience is the only cure for this.

The client will also try to determine whether it can find any peers via DHT, unless that has been disabled for the torrent, and it will report those results also in the trackers tab.

If the client received a list of peers from the tracker scrape and/or from the DHT scrape, it will then attempt to contact those peers. You can see whether there were any peers obtained, in the main display column "Seeds/Peers" and data about individual swarm members in the "peers" tab. If those numbers are very small or zero following a successful scrape, you may have a dead torrent which will not complete; or a very new torrent which has been uploaded but not yet seeded. Consult the information available from the site where you obtained the torrent to determine which might be the case. The tracker reports those swarm members which are active and scraping at this moment. That can be zero, or nobody. (This data is the real deal, regardless of what the torrent site may have claimed as to numbers of seeders, &c.)

Your client attempts to contact some of those peers, at the IP address and port number they provided to the tracker/DHT network, and commence transfers of data to and from them. At the same time, your IP address and listen port number were provided to the tracker and DHT network. As other peers scrape the tracker, they will get a list of peers from it, including you. Some of them will then attempt to contact your client. These peers will appear as "remote" initiations. The progress of all of this is shown on the "peers" tab. These connections will appear over time as other peers scrape the tracker and obtain updated peer lists which include you as a swarm member.

If you are not showing any connection to any peers via local intitiation after several minutes of running the torrent and following a successful tracker scrape, this usually indicates that your client's outgoing messages are being blocked by a software firewall running on your machine. It is a common experience that software firewalls will block upgraded versions of client software, treating them as wholly new applications which they have no rule for, rather than upgraded versions of old applications that they should apply existing rules for. Many software firewalls will automatically block any new traffic in either direction unless specifically allowed. This is done to prevent viruses and trojans from contacting their originators. Most such firewalls should have a log report, provided you have enabled logging, reciting the source and destination of communications they have blocked. You should consult those logs, or if you have disabled logging, enable it, re-run the client, and check the log again to determine whether the firewall is blocking your client. If so, then you need to create a firewall exception rule permitting your client to contact the internet. At the same time, you should check that incoming connections on your listen port are also allowed, for both TCP and UDP protocols.

If you are showing local initiations, but no remote initiations at all, it is likely that one or more of your firewalls are blocking any external attempt to contact your client at your current IP address and listen port. This will not prevent transfers from occurring, but the transfers will, in all likelihood, be slower than they could be.

If you are showing peer connections but the DHT network is not connected, this usually indicates that one or more of your firewalls is blocking UDP traffic on your listen port, while permitting TCP traffic to get through. You should re-check your rules for all firewalls and assure that they permit UDP traffic as well. It may be necessary to make a new and separate rule allowing UDP traffic, depending on your particular firewall(s), while others permit simply modifying an existing rule to permit both types of traffic, rather than an exclusive choice of one or the other.

As you gain experience with Bittorrent, this sequence of events will become obvious, and should, with time, become second-nature to you, so that if there is a problem, you will be able to ascertain from information provided by your client, where the issue is likely to be. You wll be able to observe, for example, "There are no peers shown, and there is an error message in the tracker tab, so I have a problem connecting with the tracker", or "I have peers but can't initiate any connections with them, so it's likely my firewalls are blocking my client", or "I have no remote connections, so my firewalls are probably blocking incoming connections". Such knowledge is valuable and far more diagnostic, more helpful, than simply saying "It's not connecting, what's wrong?". That sort of question is probably inevitable from those newly come to the use of Bittorrent, but they are usually followed by the slow, painful, almost teeth-pulling process of obtainng adequate information from the questioner, information which should have been provided by the thoughtful querent as a matter of course. It is to be hoped that these newcomers will be eased into the community of users, and come to understand, after a short period of experience, what sort of information is needful for resolving queries of this nature.