How to Download

This guide will show you how to get started with bittorrent.

There are many different clients for bittorrent, this guide will deal with uTorrent.

uTorrent - A Beginner’s guide to BitTorrent downloading

Easy step-by-step guide that will help you start downloading movies, music, TV shows, and more in no time at all.

For most people getting started with the whole “BitTorrent downloading thing” can be pretty intimidating. Sure maybe some of you had practice with Napster or KaZaA back in the day, but times have changed. Now it’s “trackers” and “clients,” and the list of new terminology goes on and on. So exactly how and where to begin can be a daunting and intimidating proposition.

(UPDATED ON MAY 19th, 2008)

So for those of you looking for an easy way to find the path to downloading enlightenment, I present to you an easy quick-step guide to get you up and downloading in no time at all.

The first thing we need to do is acquire a BitTorrent client.. This is the program that will do the actual downloading for you. There are many to choose from and each has their own positives and negatives, so it’s up to you decide which best suits your needs and PC capabilities.

Currently, the most popular client server program is uTorrent because it’s relatively simple, effective, and most importantly lightweight. It’s small memory footprint consumes only 6MB of memory.

Now the guide below will take you through the uTorrent setup process and beyond.

INSTALLATION & SETUP

To begin, download uTorrent and install it.

Now we need to configure it to work properly and at a maximized setting based on your PCs internet connection speed.

1. Select “Speed Guide” from the Options Menu as shown below.

2. Run a “Speed Test” and note your upload connection speed.

3. Select your the connection speed determined above in the drop down menu as shown.

4. Choose a port number between 49512 and 65535(the recommended range). Also, the selected port must be forwarded if operating behind a router. As you can see in the picture, I went ahead and used port 49789 and then TESTED it.

….this is the message you should then see in your browser

5. Lastly, it asks if you want to “Enable Encryption.” The reason for this is that many ISPs block or throttle BitTorrent connection speeds and this setting helps mask it. To test if your ISP throttles BitTorrent traffic

Keywords

• Client
  A client is a bittorrent program. For example Azureus and Bittornado.
• Seeds
  Users that have 100 % of the file(s).
• Leechers
  Users that have not completed the file(s). 0–99 %
• Peers
  Seeds and Leechers
• Tracker
  A server that handles and stores the torrent files.