Torrent-Core review.

[KennyX]

http://torrent-core.co.uk/tf.htm
1 out of 10 from me.
0 out of 10 from Ichigo81

One sentence summary: AVOID as this is a leechbox as torrents die immediately on completion, it is of NO USE IN SEEEDING TORRENTS.



I had hoped to do this review within 24 hours of when I ordered from them as this is their normal setup time but its been a week and I am still not up and running. This is not a good first impression but, as they claim to be moving providers and having problems, I will give them another week before getting a refund!



This is a TorrentFlux package. For those who dont know about TorrentFlux it is an easy to use and pre-setup torrent client. It takes about a minute to learn how to use it. Pay the money and you are normally up and running in well under a day. You should be able to get a few TB from these packages. edit: but not this one!


They offer five packages, all lasting for a month:

Regular: 5gb of disk space, 5 active torrents, costs £4.

Average: 10gb, 12 active, £8.

Ultimate: 30gb, 25 active, £13.

Reseller: 80gb, unlimited, £20.

SuperSeed: 120gb, 1 download and 12 uploads, £25.
The small print says 'This Plan Is Intended For Uploads Only': bit suspicious of this.

In the link I gave at the top of the post are five boxes that lead to the packages offered.

All packages claim to offer unlimited bandwidth but nothing is said about the speeds you can expect. The disk space offered on the ultimate package and up is higher than their competitors.


I cant comment on the speeds yet as I am still not up and running. If/when I get set up I will post some stats.

If anyone else has used them with their old provider, what speeds did you get?


At the moment I cannot recommend them.

small edit: read sgtmajor's comment in hatdeno's thread about payment methods and you can pay with paypal.

MAJOR Edit:

I have been setup and now I really must advise people to steer clear. This is not a seedbox but a leechbox! What is worse is that you would be better off using the free imageshack one.


http://img396.imageshack.us/img396/8540/68541036dq6.jpg

I started with the sites that would give a good indication of speed: S*T and SCC for download, cheggit and empornium for upload. Cheggit and empornium did not work at all. For S*T I picked the cameron diaz pack and it started well at 850kB moving to 1615kB, then it died at 2% complete. SCC did not work at all.

One other serious problem that is not immediately noticeable is the browse box (you can see it in the first picture). With this box you can get torrents off public trackers. This is a security risk that I dont like, but could be what this box is intended for: leech from public trackers and then ftp it home.

http://img366.imageshack.us/img366/9341/60137736qa6.jpg

This second picture is of their default torrentflux start torrent page.

Some things jump out at you if you have used torrent flux before. Notice the default settings? Yes that's right the default upload speed is 10kB and the torrent stops seeding the moment it is finished.

These are serious flaws, and if you were using this box you would have to manually change them each time.

Aside from the inconvenience any time I changed the settings the torrent did not start even if it started on the default settings.

I am not 100% sure that the max uploads=max upload connections, but if it does then it is yet another bad setting for a seedbox.

edit: they also seem to have hardcoded the seed to 150%, so even if you change the option to seed to 5000% or infinite it is not doing it.


The final words I have to say on torrent-core is that I selected the ultimate package and was ultimately very dissapointed. Torrents not working at all, constant disconnections, poor speeds, badly setup for seeding all mean that this company gets 1/10 from me. Avoid.


12 hour review.
Box has been down for the last six hours. It came up a little while ago. Speeds and connectivity have improved. Cheggit and empornium now work. Even better speeds have become a little faster and more consistent: 4000kB download, about 200kB upload. Could my problems be the initial teething troubles of moving to new servers? The box has reset a few times which is annoying as you have to run through the data checking process which takes about half an hour. Still think its crap.

[apextwin146]

keep us posted man ... The Ultimate plan looks good ..

[KennyX]

I have major edited the review now that I am setup. This is one to avoid.

[Ichigo81]

This is horrible. Sadly I wasted my money here without checking here first, and have now requested a refund... which they haven't replied to my email yet. Pretty doubtful I'll get it >.>

The speeds are pathetic. As KennyX said downloads bursts very high at the start, but then dies to 5-10kb/s after a minute. The upload is no better, experiencing the same thing the download speed does... even when changing the default upload options (which doesn't seem to affect anything at all).

Accessing the TorrentFlux webpage is also bad. Sometimes (actually 90% of the time) you can't even get on it, as the page timeouts in Firefox. If you are lucky enough to get on it navigating the page (such as adding torrents, deleting, checking your files etc) takes ages to load, obviouosly because they are overselling their plans and bottlenecking the servers.

1/10 is too forgiving.... 0/10 is more about right.

[haydeno]

You saved me $$$, i ordered but was able to cancel and get a refund before login details came. Thanks for warning

[KennyX]

I will not post about this again unless it improves dramatically.

I am on the ultimate plan with 30gb HD space on a 500gb HD, so I assume there will eventually be sixteen of us fighting over the bandwidth!

I am sharing with one other person just now and it is bad, although after 48 hours I am getting speeds of about 3-400kB on average which is a big improvement for them but still very poor.

I have tried some torrents which usually go nova and have been on them in seconds: flotw (doctor who s1) from TheBox stands out as it has still not downloaded despite over 1300 new completions. I put it in the picture below. Notable also is a cam which has 200 completions, but I am not one of them.

http://img27.picoodle.com/img/img27/4/7/4/f_7m_5064563.jpg

Ichigo81, I have just started getting the TorrentFlux webpage problems as well, before this it was just a simple crash/reboot (not sure which) and all torrents reset. They rejected my refund request as 'I had logged in and used it', thinking of lodging a paypal dispute but just noticed that their account is unverified.


edit: A couple of days into this and I am starting to get consistent 1000kB upload speeds with long bursts to 2000kB and occasional bursts to over 4000kB. This is very good for a torrentflux box. Most of the problems seem to be sorted: only one crash/reset in the last day, all torrents 'turning green' so are connectable, but some of the torrents I expect to go very fast are not

I still want to hear what Ichigo81 (or anyone else who has an account there) has to say regarding this improvement. Are you getting it as well?

[ukgenius]

Hi can you keep us posted on this one as I was thinking about getting one from there. KennyX, has the increased speed continued?

[Ichigo81]

Heh well I haven't even tried to login for the last couple days because I had pretty much given up on it. I requested a refund when I had last posted here and have not heard from them at all so I said screw it.

Decided to try to login now and try it out and am getting this screen now:



Seems it's just 1 thing after another with these guys... it's never going to be stable. I'll try again later tho as 1000kb/s wouldn't be bad at all but I'm not holding my breath

Edit: Seems their main site http://torrent-core.co.uk/ is also experiencing this error. Maybe it's just me (prolly banned me) lol XD

[KennyX]

Its been down for much of today. This box needs constant monitoring for it to be any use in seeding. I have had 14 small crashes where the torrents stop and need to be restarted, and two big crashes where the box stops for hours in the last two days. I think it is not just dying but actually dead this time.

The last time it crashed all the torrent metafiles were deleted but not the data and it was a right pain trying to get them all up and running again. I was getting 200kB up just before it crashed (or whatever). I am not risking any valuable accounts until it becomes a lot more stable.


ukgenius, speeds, they are seriously variable. You can be getting 1000kB for a few hours, then 200kB, then 20kB, then back to 200kB, then it freaks out and deletes most of the torrent metafiles (I think this is some sort of limiting device as it only kills the completed torrents) and your speeds go close to zero. You try to fix the torrents and you get another crash or two when you are restarting the torrents forcing you to do it all again. This box is not hassle free.


Ichigo81, I limited the torrents to slow download speeds to keep them seeding longer and try not to have too many downloading at the same time.

The error I am getting on their page is: The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading; probably the same thing. I asked for a refund as well so maybe we are both banned? Are you on the ultimate package as well? We might be the only two on the box, lol, if it is unstable as heck with just two users what will it be like if another half dozen sign up???

edit: six hours later and still no access to the box.

edit2: about 12 hours down now.

edit3: Its back up but has been converted to a full leechbox as torrents die immediately on completion.

[Ichigo81]

Actually I'm on the Average plan. I just went on and there's only 1 torrent running that's not me:

1 torrent(s) running and 0 queued.
Total torrents server will run: 120
Total torrents a user may run: 12
* Torrents are limited when restrictions are met.

I think all plans are on the same server, he just has multiple TF GUI's installed. For instance the directory is prolly different, mine being www.*******.co.uk/ave/index.php while yours is, I'm guessing, /ult/index.php

Just received an automated (I think) email from them saying they canceled my account. Not sure if it's in reply to my email to them requesting a refund or because I've canceled my monthly subscription to them via paypal (don't forget to cancel this or they will keep charging you), but alas still no refund in my account.