10 Tips and Tricks for Private BitTorrent Sites

**anon** · 05-02-2010, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by Mikity

Can someone point me to a link explaining why I should disable DHT?

This is my stance on the "disable DHT because it leaks info and upload" statement, posted on another forum:

All tracker says you disable it, and that it doesn't matter if your client respects the private flag, because with DHT/PEX you can "leak" info about torrents, "upload to other people outside of tracker X", etc.

This is FALSE. If a torrent has the private flag set to 1 (as all .torrents from ALTs do), clients won't "leak" anything about it, or upload to other people "outside" of the tracker. I really don't know why they tell you to disable both. (Anyone can of course connect and upload/download from you if they have the correct info_hash/IP/port combo. BitTorrent wasn't meant to be a secure/anonymous protocol.)

The only good reasons to disable DHT are (in my opinion):

avoiding router/connection crashes created by the extra connections
saving bandwidth if you're using your client to download from ALTs only

So, in short:
If you're having router crashes when running uT, disable DHT.
If you download from ALTs only, disable DHT.

If you're not having any router issues, and are also using the same uT instance to download from public trackers, keep DHT enabled.

I really don't know why most tracker staff will tell you to disable DHT and PEX, when it simply doesn't come into effect for private torrents.

**bigdaddydude** · 05-15-2010, 06:42 PM

Very helpful information. Thanks for taking your time and effort to write this for newbies like me, haha.

**LtAda** · 06-10-2010, 11:16 PM

Wow great tips! I'm trying to get my friend involved with BitTorrent and he's struggling with keeping a good ratio on the tracker he uses. I'll definitely show him this post.

James207 · 06-23-2010, 11:58 AM

just to add to the list, that many private torrent site staff talk to other sites so it is highly likely your ip will be banned on there's awell.

**anon** · 06-23-2010, 04:21 PM

IP sharing is overrated.

**mosh** · 07-11-2010, 10:40 PM

very nice and helpfull
very importent not to make the mistake of dl a big flie on the get go- happend to me on TL took me some doinig to get the ratio back up

**Kryatle** · 07-11-2010, 11:02 PM

Though it is smarter to normally get something which is a smaller size, if you do know that something is going to be very popular, example when MW2 was being released, you can download that and seed it until it runs dry, you'll probably end up with a ratio of 1:3 or even higher depending on your connection.