Transmission/Torrent Issues

[Mardrommar 0]

Hi All,

 

I don't have much of an understanding (if any at all) of the technical aspects VPNs, port forwarding, etc. Please excuse this post if a question similar to this has been answered previously.

 

I've been using AirVPN for a few years now. Previously, I never had any issues downloading torrents through Transmission. I would connect to one of the Netherland servers through the Tunnelblick Client and get good speeds overall.

 

Recently, I have run into issues using Transmission and the AirVPN service. When I connected to Tunnelblick using the Netherland server option, peers would not appear and the download would not start. I tried using the AirVPN client Eddie and had the same result. Afterwards, I checked the preferences in Transmission and noticed that it listed the port as being closed.

 

I briefly read about Port Forwarding (I find this topic confusing for some reason) and manually entered a port number. Transmission listed the port as being open, but no peers were found as well. 

 

I tried to connect to a server in Germany, and the torrent located 5 peers, but the download would start and then instantly drop to 0.0kb/s. 

 

I'm used to things "just working," so I have no real understanding of how to fix this problem. If anyone has advice or would be able to guide me towards a solution, that would be fantastic! I can provide more information if necessary.

 

Thank you!

 

 

[seranecks 3]

Hello Mardrommar

 

Manually assigning a port on Transmission is not enough to enable port forwarding. You have to assign the port to your account here at AirVPN (assuming it's available). A lot of ports are taken (you can see huge splotches of red on the port map they have) but it will find you one if you just click Add without entering any information. I would recommend keeping the default setting (forward both TCP and UDP since you don't really need to filter either types, and no DDNS since you won't be hosting a service like a web site that needs to be easily connectable by an actual person and not the torrent client). After you have a forwarded port then just reassign that port to Transmission (unless you lucked out and your port wasn't being used, if then? congrats!) and see if you get incoming connections.

 

Also, from what I read you're not getting any connections at all. Are you sure that the torrent you're using has sufficient peers? Torrents are all about sharing and if no one is sharing that file you won't get it either. Also on that note, are you connecting to any of the torrent's trackers and/or finding peers through DHT? Many public trackers block the AirVPN IP addresses (you can easily find the link in the signature of the user "giganerd" I think, I'm still getting used to posting on forums that's my own learning curve haha) so many times you have to rely on DHT. If you haven't done so make sure you've got that enabled and it's finding peers.

 

A couple other tips - make sure uPnP (Universal Plug n Play) is DISABLED - you don't need it and should NOT use it while running through the VPN. uPnP attempts to automatically forward ports through your gateway or router which you DON'T need and can reveal what you're doing to your ISP which they may not enjoy (and you wouldn't be going through the VPN, so what's it for then?)... Ensure also you have incoming connections enabled (some torrent clients, I dunno about Transmission since I use Vuze mostly, allow you to completely disable incoming connections which is rather stupid if you ask me) and make sure traffic is being routed through your VPN. Force Transmission to use your tunnel interface (if you're using Linux its generally tun0) if not already done so.

 

If all else fails? Maybe someone else will also reply with a better answer. I would be a fool to call myself "good" at this but a lot of times a simple misconfiguration can lead to disaster, rhetorically speaking. Best of luck, let me know what happens!

[rainmakerraw 94]

seranecks that's a good post. As you said you have no experience of Transmisison, the only little thing I'd add is that Transmission doesn't have many options and you can't bind it to a particular interface. Transmission is a good client, light and fast. But it is designed a bit like iOS, easy to use but dumbed down. To be able to bind to an adapter (tun0 in this case) you would need to run qBittorrent, Deluge or (as in your case) Vuze.