So, how to download torrents automatically:

First and foremost you will need µTorrent. You can download it from here.

RSS if you still don’t know is a way to keep track of when your favorite site has been updated with new content. Using something called a feedreader you can get these updates delivered to you. Now whenever a new torrent is added, the torrent sites would update listing it and thus the new torrent would appear in the RSS feed. We can use this RSS feed to view/download interesting torrents automatically

Get the right Feed

So how can you find a feed listing only the torrents you want to download? After all the torrent sites would show every new torrent file in its feed and you couldn’t be downloading them all. Well as it turns out, a lot of torrent sites provide several RSS feeds and ability to create your own feeds as well.

Lets look at mininova for example. Apart from separate feeds for different categories you can also get feeds for your searches. Let’s say you are looking for releases by aXXo, so you search for aXXo and then click on the RSS button that appears on the top and there you have your RSS feed. You might want to refine your search to get the results you want. Now whenever there is a new aXXo release, you will get notified and/or can start download automatically. You can use the same approach to get feeds for TV Torrents. Also check out tvRSS for the same.

Setup µTorrent

Now its time to set up µTorrent to take the feed you have created/searched and do its thing! Follow these steps to setup µTorrent the way you want:

1. Grab the feed url and open µTorrent
2. Click on Add RSS feed and paste the put in the feed URL. You can choose to automatically download all the torrents that appear in the feed or just view them and then decide which ones to download and which ones to skip.



3. Make sure you have the sidebar visible else you will not be able to view the feeds.
4. There you have µTorrent setup for downloading via RSS, you can stop here or you can take it one step further by adding filters to download only specific files that specify a set criteria.
5. Right Click on the feed and choose RSS Downloader, Click on add and then specify the filter options. You can specify all kinds of options here including download folder, labels, specify episode numbers to download, the priority to start the download with, the acceptable filetypes and much more.



6. You can also right click on a feed entry that and choose “Add to Favorites” so that you can then filter entries similar to it and tweak the settings if you would like a bit of finetuning.

You might be wondering why not just use something like Miro or TED to download torrents automatically? That’s because I am a huge fan of µTorrent and would recommend it highly. Lightweight, feature rich, an awesome web interface for remotely starting downloads, set out to do one thing – “BitTorrent” and does it best. Your views may differ, make them heard! Shoot them in the comments section!

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Torrent users would attest to the fact that half of our time is spent looking for ‘healthy’ torrents and the other half trying to download (and a bit of upload too) at the maximum speed. The former is mandatory; the latter thankfully is within the realm of tweaking.

If you are the one who thinks that your torrent download speeds could do with a boost then keep reading. Below, you’ll find a few tips on how to speed up torrent download speed.

1. Your ISP is where it starts

Check the maximum download and upload speeds allowed by your ISP. Most ISP’s have specific bandwidths for both uploads and downloads. Obviously your torrent download speed won’t cross the cap set by the ISP. Go over to this article on Speed.io for broadband speed test and this one by Tina on ways to increase your connection speed. There are many other bandwidth testers like DSLReports which is included in the speed test within uTorrent.

2. Choosing the right BitTorrent client

Use the better clients out there like uTorrent, Vuze or the BitTorrent client itself. Wikipedia lists about 51 of them supporting the BitTorrent protocol. The choice of client used should always be updated to the latest version. The screenshots here depict uTorrent. The settings should be similarly configurable for other clients too. Mac users shuld also check our Transmission vs. uTorrent post

3. Go for healthy seeds and peers

A peer is any computer participating in the download and upload of a torrent file. A seed (or seeder) is anyone who has one complete copy of the file being shared across the torrent network. A leech (or a leecher) is the person who does not have the complete file yet but has joined the network to download it. A leecher becomes a seeder when he downloads the entire file and then shares it across the network.



For high torrent speeds, the best bet is in numbers. The greater the number of seeders, the healthier the torrent and the better the chance of higher speeds. The rule of thumb says to choose the torrent files with a high number of seeders and preferably lesser number of leechers i.e. a higher seed-leecher ratio.

4. Get through the firewall

Firewalls can block all incoming BitTorrent connections coming through. To ensure otherwise, a firewall should be manually configured to accept the connections and let it through the client. Windows XP has the Windows Firewall. Configure the firewall installed to accept the connections by checking the BitTorrent client on the allowed list i.e. Options – Preferences – Connection – check Add uTorrent to Windows Firewall. Also, check the Windows Firewall exception (if you keep it enabled) in your client too. Shutting down the firewall is not recommended as it leaves the computer open to attack.



Note: If the home computer is behind a router, it also should be configured through the feature called Port Range Forwarding to enable torrent traffic. The router documentation should have specific information on this.

5. Limit your upload rate

A peer to peer network is all about sharing alike, but an unlimited upload rate hits the download rate too. Using the speed tests, find out your maximum upload speed and then set your client’s upload rate (Global Upload Rate in uTorrent) to about 80% of your maximum upload speed. You can also try varying your upload speeds – keep it high initially and then gradually bring it down towards the middle of the download.

Note: Mind the speed units – it may be given in kilobits per second (kb/sec) or kilobytes per second (kB/sec). 1 kilobyte = 8 kilobit

6. Go to a different port

The default port for the BitTorrent protocol is any between port numbers 6881-6999. ISPs throttle traffic on these ports as BitTorrent sharing involves high bandwidth usage. It’s easy to configure a different port in your torrent client. Use some number above 10000 to get around ISPs and also avoid problems with other applications. By default, the uTorrent port is randomized each time it starts. Set a specific port by not enabling the Randomize Port setting.

7. Increase the number of Max Half Open TCP connections

This figure specifies how many connections a torrent client should attempt to establish simultaneously at any given time. Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or newer, limits this to a default of 10 as a barrier against virus multiplication. But that’s a bummer for torrent speeds as torrents too need a large number of simultaneous connections.

A patch has been available for a while from LvlLord which modifies the TCPIP.sys file in Windows to allow a higher number of TCP connections.



After running the patch, you have to set the number of connections in your torrent client. For example, in uTorrent go to Options – Preferences – Advanced – net.max_halfopen. Set any number from 50 to 100. But see that net.max_halfopen is set lower than the value set in TCPIP.SYS. Always check if it is still patched because Windows updates sometimes overwrite it.



8. Experiment with Protocol Encryption

Some ISPs love to act like Big Brothers and constrict bandwidth for P2P protocols. Protocol Encryption in most of the torrent clients helps to override this bandwidth shaping. Enable outgoing protocol encryption and put a checkmark on Allow Incoming Legacy Connections.



With protocol encryption, ISPs find it difficult if not impossible to detect that the traffic is coming from BitTorrent. Experiment with enabled, disabled and forced options because you could be getting better speeds with encryption disabled. Non-encryption makes a torrent connection compatible with someone who is not using encryption but as a minus it makes the torrent detectable to an ISP with a bandwidth restricting policy.

9. Bandwidth and connections

Your BitTorrent client’s settings options will let you enter figures for –

Global maximum number of connections gives the maximum number of connections that a BitTorrent client can make for any P2P exchange. Setting this too high does NOT mean higher speeds. Setting it too high would take up useless bandwidth and too low a figure would miss out on peers. For my 256kbps connection, I have a setting of 130.

Maximum number of connected peers per torrent gives the maximum number of peers that a BitTorrent client can connect to for any P2P exchange. Experiment by setting this number close to the available peers for a particular torrent. For my 256kbps connection, I have a default setting of 70.

Number of upload slots per torrent gives the maximum number of peers that a BitTorrent client will upload to for any P2P exchange. A low setting may affect downloads. For my 256kbps connection, I have a setting of 3.



uTorrent has a Speed Guide which handily calculates the figures for a particular connection.

10. Some common sense

Most BitTorrent clients allow us to view the individual files in a download. You can selectively disable the download of files you don’t think necessary.

Familiarize yourself with the customization settings of your particular client available in the Help files or at the website FAQs.

Some useful resources:

BitTorrent User Guide
uTorrent FAQ
Vuze FAQ

Optimizing the speed of torrent downloads is a lot of trial & error and a bit of patience. Do you have some tips to speed up torrent download speed? Any that you have successfully tried out? Maybe we can put some wind beneath the wings with your comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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The podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

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Here is how you can manage and download your torrents remotely which means that you can start a torrent download on your home computer while you are at your friends place or anywhere with access to the internet. So that when you come back home the downloading is already finished and it’s ready to use.

Sweeeeet? Lets make it happen.

You Will Need:

• Either µtorrent (Windows) or Transmission (Linux or Mac)
• A little tweaking around.

For Windows:

1. Download µtorrent Web UI (Direct Link) and follow these instructions to set it up.

2. You need to place the zip file as it is (don’t extract) into the Application Data folder for µtorrent. To open the folder go to Start > Run (or Win + R) and type %AppData%\µtorrent and hit enter. This will open the required folder. Paste the zip file as it is. Don’t extract.

3. Open µtorrent and go to Options > Preferences (or Ctrl + P) and then to Web UI and check Enable Web UI . Provide the necessary details.



4. Now fire up the browser and point it to http://127.0.0.1:<portnumber>/gui/ where portnumber is the one mentioned in Preferences > Connection . Alternatively you can enable Web UI at 8080 from the dialog in step 3. I found this to work better. You can try both the options.



5. If all went well you should see the Web UI in the browser.

For Linux:

1. Just download and install Transmission Client. Look here or use your distribution’s package management. Make sure you have version >= 1.30.

2. Go to Edit > Preferences and Check Enable Web Interface, optionally you can specify a username and password, you will be asked to log in when you try to access the torrents via the web interface.



3. Remember the port number you specify or leave the default if there is no conflict.

4. That’s it, you are ready to rock! Fire up the browser and hop over to http://localhost:9091 (you may need replace 9091 with the port you specified in case you changed it).

5. You should see the interface or login screen if all went well. If not, make sure you did everything right or see troubleshooting below.

For Mac :

Transmission (see above) is available for Mac as well. So most of the setup would be similar, I presume. I have not tried it on a Mac because I don’t have one.

Troubleshooting and Additional Tips:

Entering localhost:port doesn’t show up anything on my machine
Make sure you followed the steps correctly, also check that your firewall allows access to the port. And oh yes, make sure the torrent application is running on the remote machine (i.e. the machine you are trying to access).

Entering localhost:port shows up my friends torrents
Yes, it will. If you want to access your torrents on your home computer you will have to know the IP-Address of your home computer. In that case you will have to enter : or use dynamic DNS (see below) to access the torrents.

I can access the torrents using localhost or 127.0.0.1 but cannot access from the internet
Make sure you are typing the IP correctly. You might also have to forward the port in question. Use your router’s guide to achieve this or try port-forward

My IP changes everytime I connect to the internet, is there a way around?
Great, you have a Dynamic IP. There is surely a way around your problem, it just requires a little extra configuration.

So here you go – There are a number of services that offer you dynamic DNS’s. This means that you will get a URL like yourname.xyz.com, and everytime you enter this URL you will be actually referring to your computer/server at home. DynDns and No-IP are two such services. I have been using DynDNS and there are clients for both Windows and Linux that keep your IP updated. So no matter how often your IP changes yourname.xyz.com will always point to your computer. You can use this with a static IP as well just to make it easier.

I am on Windows using µtorrent and my web UI still doesn’t appear
You might want to enable the alternative listening port from within Options > Preferences > Web UI . I had this problem in the beginning where it would only show up on the alternative port. Some users have also reported problems when using the trailing ‘/’ after ‘gui’ in http://127.0.0.1:<portnumber>/gui/ so you can try with and without the trailing ‘/’ and see if that helps.

Seeder/Leecher Top Image Credit – nrkbeta (flickr)

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