TorrentBytes.net > A Guide to Life at TorrentBytes

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(VIP) at 2009-03-26 12:39:11 (4 years ago) - [Report]

Index post:

Basic Questions & Answers

Hints & Tips

Pin codes

Slow Upload And Download? Seeding Issues? (Imp. for new users -- UPDATED!)

IRC Information

IRC Support?

Misc Info ( UPDATED!)

Default Categories

My uploading speed is bad, and my ratio keeps droping, what to do? (Imp. for new users)

Did not find what you were looking for? (NEW!)

TorrentBytes Rules

TorrentBytes FAQ

Forum Search

Requesting help at TorrentBytes: A guide

Last edited by tokol at 2011-09-10 13:47:30

#1129071 by tokol Donor

(Sarcastic Admin) at 2009-05-08 21:11:22 (4 years ago) - [Report]

Basic Questions & Answers

Q. Where can i find my ratio?
A. It can be found on your profile page click here and then click your username. You can also find your ratio on the userbar found in the top left corner of each page. Make sure to check your profile page to ensure you have it enabled.

Q. How do i logout?
Q. The logout link can also be found on your Profile Page and can also once again be found on your userbar.

Q. How low can my ratio drop before i get disabled?
A. This is not something were are prepared to disclose as all members are encouraged to try and obtain a 1 ratio.

Q. I received a Warning Low Ratio Message, How long do i have to improve my ratio?
A. We again won't disclose the details, just keep seeding and as your ratio climbs eventually the message will no longer count.

Q. What is Partial Seeding and why is it forbidden?
A. Partial seeding means downloading only a few rar files and using them for seeding purposes, doing this harms the swarm on the torrents and makes people believe there are more leechers on a torrent than there actually are.

Q. What is Over Seeding and why is it forbidden?
A. Overseeding is when a user seeds excessive amounts on an individual torrent file to build up a buffer on their ratio and enabling them to leech other files without concerning themselves with seeding. This excessive seeding prevents other users with slower upload speeds from being able to reach a 1 ratio on that file.

Q. Where did the invite thread go?
A. The invite thread was removed, we the staff believe that the offering of invites on a forum such as this to people you don't know devalues the entire invitation process, and therefore the decison was taken to forbid the offering or requesting of invites on the site (this includes unsolicited PM's)

Q. I have a slow upload speed, can i buy/donate for gigabytes?
A. Simply put no, this site will never become or support any form of pay2leech. Everyone is welcome to donate to help keep the site alive and in return you will receive a gold star to recognise your donation and the warmest thanks from the staff and your fellow members.

Basics

Q. Am I seeding anything?
A. Please take a look at your profile and make sure you have something in your "Seeding" list.

Q. Am I connectable?
A. Check your profile and look at the torrents you are currently seeding/leeching and check if there is a "yes" or "no" in the column where it says Connectable. If there is a "no" then you know where to go.

Q. Are there any leechers on the torrent that i'm seeding?
A. Check the amount of leechers on the torrent information page. If it's 0 - then you have your answer. If the SLR (Seeder/Leecher ratio) is high, then don't expect to seed a huge amount immediately. You shouldn't delete or even stop the torrent, just don't expect to max out your bandwidth right away. In time most people will stop seeding and the SLR will go down allowing you to seed more to the few people downloading.

Q. Do I usually seed after I'm done downloading?
A. If your answer here is "no", then you need to reconsider your strategy. Most people have a high download speed and a much slower upload speed. You are most likely one of these people and therefore you need to leave your torrents running whenever possible. Whenever you leave your home - seed. Whenever you sleep - seed. Whenever you have your computer idling - seed. This is the key to maintaining a reasonable ratio.

One of the most important things to remember is that the torrents stay on the site/tracker for 42 days, and as the time goes by the number of seeders on each torrent will fall leaving you with a higher chance of seeding to the remaining leechers.

So just keep seeding

#1129072 by tokol Donor

(Sarcastic Admin) at 2009-05-08 21:11:27 (4 years ago) - [Report]

Hints & Tips

So now you know the basics it's time for a few hints and tips on how to maintain your ratio....

Firstly you can download and seed anything from the packs categories (movies, music, games, tv) as they are all free leech and only your upload amounts will count towards your ratio.

Try to avoid the bigger files such as DVD-R initially as unless you have a fast upload speed you will struggle to seed them back until you have gotten rid of your wait times (unless you are prepared to seed for the entire life of the torrent).

If you have enough hdd space then try not to delete any of your downloads until they are no longer on the tracker (usually towards the end of a torrents life extra seeders are always welcomed to allow the last few leechers to complete their downloading before the torrent is deleted)

Try to seed as few torrents as possible. The more torrents you seed the more overhead you'll get. Try to seed just as many torrents as you need to max out your total upstream capacity.

When on the browse page click on the collum marked leechers and it will sort all the sites torrents in order of highest to lowest number of leechers.

Be aware of the TTL of the torrent you are about to download, the TTL or "time till live" is a countdown of the time remaining until that torrent will be removed from the tracker. Don't leech a file with very little TTL remaining unless your prepared to not be able to seed it back fully (The free leech packs have no TTL and will stay on the site so long as they have a seeder).

Take a look at the last 2 or 3 pages of torrents, you will often find a number of files with a low amount of seeders and still a few leechers. These are an ideal opportunity to increase your ratio and help out the speeds on those files with little TTL remaining.

#1129073 by tokol Donor

(Sarcastic Admin) at 2009-05-08 21:11:31 (4 years ago) - [Report]

Pin codes

Every user was forced to set their own PIN code after the 9th of October 2008. The system message which notified you of setting your own PIN code also informed you that when you loose that PIN code, there will be no PIN code recoveries. The system message told you to write the PIN code down in a safe place.

Keeping the PIN code in a file on your computer is not a safe place. The system message informed you about that. If your computer crashed, or your hard disk went up in smoke, blame yourself if the PIN code was stored on it.

There will be no PIN code recoveries, no matter your class, your upload/download amount, your ratio or if you donated money. The same rules apply for everyone. If you lost your PIN code, bad luck. You can still continue using your account, but you won't be able to reset your password, you won't be able to reset your passkey and you won't be able to change your e-mail.

Remember, the PIN code system was created to protect your account from unauthorized use. With the PIN code you could reset your password if you suspected anyone else from login in to your account. With the PIN code you could also change your e-mail address in case you lost access to your old one. And you could also use the PIN code to reset your passkey in case someone got his hands on your torrent. Due to the PIN code you didn't have to wait for Staff to take actions against unauthoried usage. The only thing that Staff asked, was to write it down in a safe place, and even that was for your own good.

#1129074 by tokol Donor

(Sarcastic Admin) at 2009-05-08 21:11:37 (4 years ago) - [Report]

Slow Upload And Download ? Seeding Issues ?

First off, when you signed up, you said you had read the FAQ. So please actually read it. If you continually post questions already covered in the FAQ you will eventually get warned.

So, what is my ratio?

Now, if you believe you know enough about your ratio but not enough about how to improve it, then lets do a little check list shall we? As soon as the answer is "no" you should stop and correct the problem, then resume with the check list.

Notification:
Unnecessary posts will be purged without a notification as staff sees fit.

As you see from the original post date, this guide was created before FreeLeech packs were introduced to the site, therefor information of those is not included here.

Current 'newest' versions of preferable clients: (Sep 10th 2011)

Windows:

�Torrent : 2.2.1 (hosted by tokol)

For *nix systems:

Deluge (For any X environment, libtorrent by Rasterbar)
rTorrent (For command line, libtorrent by Rakshasa)
Azureus (For any X environment)

For macs:
Azureus
Transmission

First thigs first:
Make sure the torrent has leechers. Preferably more leechers than seeders.
It is VERY unlikely you get to seed back to 1:1 with an old torrent.
---> Anything with less TTL than 40 days (960 hours) is considered old.
With TV anything older than a few hours (TTL less than 1004) is considered old.

Remember: If no one downloads, no one uploads. That is how torrents work.

The "how to" begins from here

1) Make yourself connectable
This way other peers will also be able to connect to your client.
Doing this varies a bit with different Clients, but the principle is the same.

A) Make sure your client uses only one port, without choosing a random port on every startup.
(Your Clients HELP file tells you how, read it.)

On uT 2.2.1 go to Preferences -> Connection, untick Randomize port on each start and set a port to the box above.

B)In case you are using a 3rd vendor firewall on your machine, disable the OS built-in firewall.

B-1) Make sure your firewall allows the application to use the internet freely, consult your firewalls help for this.
AND / OR
B-2) Make sure your firewall allows incoming traffic to the port you specified to your client, consult your firewalls help for this too.

C) FORWARD ports on your DSL/Cable modem and on any routers you may have.
Check further info from the manual of the 'box', or check http://portforward.com

2) Check and set the bandwidth limits
As a rule of a thumb, set the limits to both seeding and leeching to about 90%of your connections confirmed maximum. What your ISP advertises most likely is, in most cases, NOT how much the line is capable of!

This is done to keep other internet activity, like browsing, fluent.
SpeedTest gives some sort of an indication of what you've got.
Experiment and tweak the settings.

If your client supports limiting overhead bandwidth to already set values enable it!
-> uT 2.2.1 has this setting and it can be enalbed by ticking the box at Preferences -> Bandwidth Apply rate limit to overhead

If your client has some sort of automated bandwidth limit applier, disable it!
-> uT 2.2.1 has this feature and it is called uTP. It can be found from Preferences -> BitTorrent Bandwidth management [uTP]

3) Amount of connections
As a rule of thumb: 1 'slot' per 5KB/s of Max UL should be good with anything up to 2Mbit/s UL speed.
This varies heavily per line though, experiment and see.
Too many connections cause a lot of overhead, which is "wasted" bandwidth.
Way too many connections may crash your connection.

4) Protocol Encryption
Make sure you have enabled the Header Encryption on your client, but also make sure that you are allowing incoming unencrypted connections.
This way the client will try first to contact other peers with encryted headers trying to fool your (and the other peers) ISPs possible BitTorrent throttling; if the client can't contact another client with encryption on, it will fall back to the default, unencrypted headers.

-> uT 2.2.1 for windows you do this by going to Preferences -> BitTorrent and on section titled Protocol encryption you set the dropbox of Outgoing to Enabled and tick the box for Allow incoming legacy connections

Last edited by tokol at 2012-05-26 00:31:54

#1129075 by tokol Donor

(Sarcastic Admin) at 2009-05-08 21:11:41 (4 years ago) - [Report]

IRC Information

Info:
Server:
irc.p2p-network.net

Ports:
6667 for normal
7000 for SSL

Channel info:
#torrentbytes - Main channel
#torrentbytes-support - Support channel
#torrentbytes-spam - Announces, triggers and scripts
#torrentbytes-pre - Pre channel Down until further notice.

Step by step guide on how to get to TorrentBytes irc channel.

1) Download yourself an irc-client.
mIRC is quite widely used for windows.
x-chat is another quite widely used client.
good option for a commandline client is irssi.

2) Connect to the irc-server.
Type:/server irc.p2p-network.net
port 6667 for normal
port 7000 for SSL
If you are a first time IRCuser, theres no need to worry about the port.

3) Choose your nickname. Please, use your site nickname.
nickname can be changed with /nick nickname-here command

4) Send message to the TorrentBytes bot, erica.
Make sure erica is really erica.
The ident should be 1000 or null and the host should end with 'torrentbytes.net'

Do this by whoising the bot
Type: /whois erica
Reply should be something like:
erica [1000@<something might be here.>torrentbytes.net]
ircname : null
or:
erica[null@<something might be here.>torrentbytes.net]
ircname : erica
or:
erica[~erica@<something might be here.>torrentbytes.net]
ircname : erica

main points are that nick is erica and the host ends at torrentbytes,net

If whois checks out to be correct message the bot:
Type: /msg erica letmein <your-site-username> <your-irc-key-from-your-profile>
Since to date atleast two users have had trouble figuring out the syntax, it is "letmein username irckey"
Also, since finding the IRC code seems hard, go here and click your username, then browse down.

5) Join the channel (This step may be optional, if you have autojoin on invite on.)
Type: /join #torrentbytes

6) (optional) To get to pre channel use commands
/msg nickserv register password-to-identify-yourself working-email-address (only for the first time you try to join)
/msg nickserv identify password-to-identify-yourself (if you have already registered your nick)
/msg erica letmeinpre your-nick-on-site your-irc-key-from-profile
/join #torrentbytes-pre

Note about pre chan: You should only use your site username as a nickname here.
If you wish to use another nickname please contact staff to add your irc-nick to your profile on site.

7) (optional) To get to spam channel use command
/msg erica letmeinspam <your-site-username> <your-irc-key-from-your-profile>

The channels are for site users ONLY!
Your IRC Key is only for you.

Autojoin script for mIRC by DALYS can be found here (SSL)(along with tutorial)
Script will most likely need some modifying.

if you are having trouble accessing the channels, or using this guide, please contact one of our First Line support members

(Link) (SSL-Link)

Last edited by tokol at 2012-04-01 16:26:22

#1129076 by tokol Donor

(Sarcastic Admin) at 2009-05-08 21:11:45 (4 years ago) - [Report]

IRC Support ?

After trying all of the above guide you find you need help, or you have some other issue with IRC then feel free to Join the support channel for assistance. Below are the rules for the channel and also the information you will need to better help us to help you.

Rules:

1. No idling! If you do not have a problem or a question you do not need to be in there.
2. Be respectful. If you are rude I can guarantee we will not help you.
3. Have manners. Please and thank you go a long way.
4. English only in the support channel. You may ask if someone speaks your language. If someone does you may talk to them in PM in your language.
5. You are the only person who can ask questions about your account. You may not have a friend go in for you. Remember your account, your responsibility.

Procedure:

type !tbhelp

If your problem is not on the listing you receive:
1. State your problem.
2. State your site nick.
3. WAIT!
4. Get your answer.
5. Leave!

#1129077 by tokol Donor

(Sarcastic Admin) at 2009-05-08 21:11:49 (4 years ago) - [Report]

Misc Info:

All accounts will be deleted after 42 days of inactivity.

All disabled accounts will be deleted after 42 days.

You will not be reminded about your accounts inactivity.

Once an account has been deleted, it can not be brought back.

There is and will not be a parking option.

Only site browsing counts as activity. Seeding or leeching does not!

Last edited by tokol at 2011-09-10 13:46:55

#1134989 by hmhef Donor

(VIP) at 2009-05-23 11:30:51 (4 years ago) - [Report]

Default Categories:

Here is how to remove the categoires that you do not always download from the default category view of the browse page:

by defauly it is like this:

and the torrents looks like this:

go to your profile page 'my.php' ( Link ) (SSL Link )

and select the categories that you like to be shown:

this will make the browse page like that:

and the torrents would be reduced alot to only the important categories:

Last edited by hmhef at 2009-05-23 13:36:20

#1134999 by hmhef Donor

(VIP) at 2009-05-23 11:59:21 (4 years ago) - [Report]

My upload speed is bad, and my ratio keeps dropping, what can I do?

You need to be careful what you choose to download, this is especially important for the new user who has a very low download/upload .. For example if a new user downloadeds two large sized movies he will find him self disabled before even getting a chance to seed them back, so be carefull.

Things you should not download:

A well seeded Torrent
A torrent that allready have many many seeders that it is almost impossible to seed back