Can someone explain to me what port forwarding in the context of torrenting is about? I use qbittorrent and nordvpn in docker containers and have never exposed/forwarded a port but get more than adequate upload/download speeds.
Port forwarding allows you to bypass your NAT firewall which will naturally block all unsolicited traffic on a closed port. What that means for a torrent download is peers cannot introduce themselves to you and create a new connection, you can only connect to active peers who have their ports open.
Just to add more background to that, before your torrent can begin downloading pieces from various peers, you need to know the address of the peers sharing the pieces you need. Typically that is handled by the tracker and/or DHT. A tracker acts as sort of a logistics middle-man. It helps facilitate efficient transmission between peers by tracking what each peer has and needs. If peer B needs piece X, the tracker will supply peer B with the address to peer A who has piece X. Assuming peer A has their incoming port open, they will accept the request for piece X and send it to peer B. If their port is closed, the request will simply be denied and no traffic will be shared between the peers. The tracker’s address, as well as the data hash and some other misc data is coded into the torrent file. DHT is a little more unique and complicated. It is a fully distributed hash table on a P2P network and does not rely on a tracker at all, it’s strictly P2P. The only little catch to that is to initially introduce yourself into the network you need to bootstrap your connection using some hardcoded addresses, often from a very centralized source. Port forwarding becomes much more important for DHT because after the initial bootstrap, there is no middle-man, it’s strictly peer to peer and by having your ports closed, your client can’t effectively communicate across the network. Without two-way communication across peers, your client will generally be stuck with a very limited pool of peers it can communicate with. Magnet links as well as most torrent clients utilize DHT.
One reason it’s not so noticeable these days when ports are closed is because many torrent peers exist in big data centers with virtually unlimited bandwidth. When torrents were still young, most if not all peers were hosted on consumer grade hardware at a residence so you needed every connection you could get.
If your torrent download happens to be a well-known Linux ISO, chances are very likely that there will be at least two or three peers you’ll connect to that exist in a data center, they will most likely account for 80%+ of your download speed.
Blocking ports ultimately hurts seeding the most which can effect the overall “health” of a torrent. Say a peer labeled A can’t connect to those giant data center peers for whatever reason, they now have to seek out other peers that may have the data they are looking for. If all the other peers have their ports closed, well then the torrent is essentially dead for peer A and they’ll have to either wait for someone with open ports to come online and start seeding or search for an entirely new torrent.
Sorry, this was a bit of an on-the-go mind dump so please anyone correct me if I’m wrong anywhere here but that’s pretty much the gist of port forwarding in the context of torrenting.
When torrenting your client should be “Connectable” which means fully accessible from others. You can use the guides others have posted to achieve that but basically, an unconnectable client can still seed to those who are connectable, but two unconnectable clients cant connect to each other. Or at least this is how it has been described to me by a private tracker.
That game is a lot of fun. The play feels very different comparing 1-2 players (strategizing, skillful combat) and 5-6 players (a full out mayhem and frenzy).
There’s very little info to work with so it’s unlikely you’ll receive any specific advice.
But mainly you do want to be fully connectable (port forwarded) so check that. Go to any port test website (www.canyouseeme.org, www.yougetsignal.com/tools/open-ports/, etc.) and enter your torrent client’s incoming connection port there. (for qBittorrent that is in Tools / Options / Connection / Listening Port)
If that test fails then you need to figure out what is blocking your torrent client’s incoming connection port.
If you’re using a proxy that’s the issue, won’t get an incoming connection port via proxy
If you’re using a VPN service that does not support port forwarding then that’s the issue, it is impossible to port forward on a VPN without port forwarding support
If you’re using a VPN service with port forwarding support then go to their website & figure out how to configure it, each VPN service is slightly different
If you’re not using a VPN/Proxy then most likely you’ll need to log into your network router/firewall & configure a port forward there. Basically create a port forward for your torrent client’s incoming connection port & point it to your local system on the network (your NAS)
Also make sure to whitelist your torrent client in any anti-virus/malware software you are using, those will definitely slow you down and/or block connections to your torrent client.
There’s potentially other issues but everyone starts with being connectable first.
Highly recommend Division games(1&2).
Dying light (1) is an ok coop if you’re into zombies.
Ghost recon is good for coop.
Evil west,
Styx(is on my list to try with my friend),
vermentide is an old fav
Tiny teena’s assault on dragon keep.
For animated content, 𝚗𝚢𝚊𝚊.𝚜𝚒 (as mentioned by @sbs1313)
For general Asian movies and stuff, 𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚣.𝚝𝚘, although since it’s a private tracker you’ll need to keep an eye out for open signups - they have a discord waitlist where you can get notified
I highly recommend Mercenary Kings. It's like Mega Man combined with Contra combined with Monster Hunter. There's a really satisfying loop of fun missions where you get upgrade materials so that you can upgrade, strategize, and equip for more fun missions.
For roguelikes, I'd highly recommend Streets of Rogue and Vagante. The former is wackier and a more open sandbox; the latter is a better challenge and perhaps a bit more satisfying to beat, but both are phenomenal. Streets of Rogue is sort of a twin stick shooter with tons of classes that play very differently, often compared to Deus Ex; and Vagante is like Spelunky crossed with Dark Souls.
Other than that, those Quake remasters have split-screen for co-op and versus multiplayer. A friend and I just started Quake 1 recently.
As a bonus, all of the above are also online multiplayer.
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