Why are none of my torrents downloading?

[explosiondude369]

I have tried everything from clients (bittorrent, utorrent, bitcomet, and more) to browsers like opera and torch, to cloud based servers that download it for you and give you a download link. I have tried this on wireless and wired connections I have turned off firewalls and vpn services but nothing has worked. The downloads just stay at %0 and when using clients I never went above 2 kb/s. If this is all the work of comcast they are doing one hell of a good job, but please help. I'm am not asking why this is happening but an explanation of why would be appreciated if you can also solve the problem. Bitcomet also metioned something about a listening port being blocked and would it be unsafe to download a torrent from some website (like bitlet or fuge) on a school wireless connection

 

[skittle]

Typically it is hard for ISP or a router to block ALL torrent data so that is unlikely. You are probably trying to download to a location that is full or not currently mounted. Check all of your settings. Check your logs.

 

[explosiondude369]

Typically it is hard for ISP or a router to block ALL torrent data so that is unlikely. You are probably trying to download to a location that is full or not currently mounted. Check all of your settings. Check your logs.

my hard drive is far from full and i don't know what you mean by mounted. check what settings. client settings? router settings? and what logs?

 

[McHenryB]

As uTorrent and BitComet are both Windows clients I deduce that you have posted in the wrong forum. I would try asking the question in one of the Windows forums.

Don't even think about trying to use a torrent on a school wireless network; you may end up getting expelled. What is it that you are trying to download?

 

[explosiondude369]

As uTorrent and BitComet are both Windows clients I deduce that you have posted in the wrong forum. I would try asking the question in one of the Windows forums.

Don't even think about trying to use a torrent on a school wireless network; you may end up getting expelled. What is it that you are trying to download?

Going to school in a couple minutes. Thanks for the heads up. Lol. Can you help me understand what the other guy was saying.

 

[McHenryB]

I can understand perfectly what Skittle was saying; he answered as if you were running Linux - not unreasonable as you posted in the Linux forum.

 

[skittle]

Yes I assume you were running Linux. Same sort of requirements apply to windows though: If for some reason the HDD is not mounted (think a removable drive that has been "safely removed") then you cannot write to it. Also if for some reason the torrent clients (or your user) do not have write permission on the drive. Or a myriad of other reasons. Hard to say without looking at the error/log files and knowing how your windows was setup.

To expand on blocking torrent traffic, traditionally it is very hard because many traffic are encrypted so packet detection algorithms do not work well. The only reliable method is to block by default all ports other than 43 and 80 for normal web traffic but this still does not stop someone from using torrent over port 43 and 80 and has other undesirable consequences. So I think the problem is unlikely that it is your internet connection.

 

[explosiondude369]

Yes I assume you were running Linux. Same sort of requirements apply to windows though: If for some reason the HDD is not mounted (think a removable drive that has been "safely removed") then you cannot write to it. Also if for some reason the torrent clients (or your user) do not have write permission on the drive. Or a myriad of other reasons. Hard to say without looking at the error/log files and knowing how your windows was setup.

To expand on blocking torrent traffic, traditionally it is very hard because many traffic are encrypted so packet detection algorithms do not work well. The only reliable method is to block by default all ports other than 43 and 80 for normal web traffic but this still does not stop someone from using torrent over port 43 and 80 and has other undesirable consequences. So I think the problem is unlikely that it is your internet connection.

how might one go about blocking all ports but 43 and 80? Also unfortunately I am using windows so if that is out of your area of expertise that is fine but if not I have uncovered some more info. I read somewhere to try plugging directly into modem. Now in bitcomet the listening port is no loner blocked. Yay!!! but downloads still don't work. Boo!!! Although I was looking through my windows firewall advanced security setting a stumbled upon my inboud and outbound rules. A bunch of these rules said windows peer to peer collaboration (some had tcp at the end and I forgot to check for udp but I assume it is there). Anyways those are disabled. should I enable them.

 

[McHenryB]

Be careful playing with the firewall rules if you don't understand exactly what each one is doing and what the associated ports are assigned to. Otherwise you are likely to open your router, and possibly your network, to every hacker who happens to drop by.

 

[explosiondude369]

Be careful playing with the firewall rules if you don't understand exactly what each one is doing and what the associated ports are assigned to. Otherwise you are likely to open your router, and possibly your network, to every hacker who happens to drop by.

so should i not enable that windows peer to peer thing b/c it's seems important for torrenting.