Obscure torrent: What seems like only seeder only connects for about a second, updating my "last seen complete" every 5 minutes or so, without transferring any substantial data. Thoughts? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 3 days ago by ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Sorry if this is a rookie question, but most of what I've downloaded over the last decade was nowhere near this obscure. I'd like to think this community could benefit from a corpus of Q and A, if this breaks rule 4, I'll gracefully accept if this post is removed.

I am downloading through Mullvad, which I know doesn't let you forward your ports. So I can appreciate that that seeder's settings and mine might not be super compatible.

Is there any flag or anything I can do to let the seeder connect at all, besides finding some other way to exit with port forwarding. Seedbox is on my horizon, but it is far out there.

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[-] drkt@scribe.disroot.org 21 points 3 days ago

A lot of trackers will also plant fake IPs in their swarms for plausible deniability. If the peers you're referring to aren't giving you any data at all, they're probably just fake IPs planted by the tracker.

[-] ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 day ago

The interesting thing is that the flags that show during these brief connections show the peer is from DHT/PeX, not from the dozen general purpose trackers I slapped on there. If I got this from a public tracker, I’d think your explanation was the best one, but this makes it more mysterious.

[-] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 1 points 4 hours ago

Probably a good idea to turn off dht and pex

[-] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I am downloading through Mullvad, which I know doesn’t let you forward your ports. So I can appreciate that that seeder’s settings and mine might not be super compatible.

Are there any other peers in that torrent swarm? If it's just you (leeching peer) and the lone seed (seeding peer), and neither of you have ports open, then you won't be able to download any torrent data.

If there is another peer in that swarm, or another peer joins later, and that new peer happens to be fully connectable (port forwarded) then you'll be able to download the torrent data through them. If this is your situation then all you can do is try your luck and wait for another peer to come by.

Or if we rule all of that out - it's possible that lone peer just has a very busy torrent client. They could be the lone peer on tons of other torrents so it would take quite a while before their torrent client gets around to sending you torrent data. If this is the case then it's the same as above, just have to continue waiting.

[-] ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

So, there are other peers, some of which gave me all of the data that I have so far, a small number of them. They can connect just fine to me, so their ports are open.

There are other peers with only a small percentage of the total torrent that are permanently connected, which might mean that they only wanted to download some of the files, but looking at the file list availability when they were the only connected peers, they had scattered chunks of data and not one continuous folder.

Now the convoluted part that I feel needs its own post:

In my quest to get the data, I’ve done some digging on BTdig, and added a few torrents with what seemed to be almost identical content. Most of these were completely inactive, but it seems like my client figured out that there’s overlap with this torrent, somehow. It now shows one of these inactive torrents as having a small % completion, despite also showing that 0 bytes were downloaded. I suspect it was able to match some of the data.

I wish I better understood that part of torrenting, a lot of what I want is relatively obscure and I love nothing more than seeding files that took months to complete. Being able to stitch together torrents and make rarities a bit less rare is exactly what I want to do.

[-] SmokeFree@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Looks like the seeder is seeding thousands of torrents (connects for about a second). Nothing you can do but running your client 24/7

[-] tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 days ago

There's flags set in the torrent tracker that might be getting in the way here in combination with the port issue.

There might be a seed, but he can't forward ports.

The data getting updated from "last seen" is the tracker telling your client a check in happened from a seeder I believe.

Some trackers also won't play nice and tell the seeder about you properly if your client has a history of leeching perhaps. Enforcement of ratio etc.

You could try another client perhaps, but if multiple behave the same then you are not going to get anywhere. Perhaps try getting a temporary vps to torrent into and then pull from there. Seed boxes can solve many issues, just be mindful of cost over time.

[-] jbone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago

Don't know what country you are in, but it might be worth considering try to get the torrent without a VPN.

Chances are if it's extremely rare/obscure stuff, it's not going to be tracked by a copyright enforcement agency.

[-] RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz 1 points 3 days ago

If you don't want to download without vpn, try a short subscription of debrid or a seedbox

[+] GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social -10 points 3 days ago

If I understand correctly, port forwarding has no effect on download. It's only a factor in seeding. So if that's the case, there's likely nothing you can do. Your download rate is entirely dependent on the behavior of the seeder you're downloading from. If they give priority to other media that is more popular and increases their seed ratio while relegating the source you're trying to download, then you're at their mercy. This is why using VPNs that are capable of port forwarding is so important. You may be the only person who manages to download whatever it is your trying to grab. If the seeder you got it from goes offline, anyone else wanting that material is shit out of luck unless they happen to use Mullvad. Mullvad is great. Their privacy and pricing is very strong. I'd recommend it to anyone, but for the purpose of information availability and preservation through torrenting, a VPN capable of port forwarding is a requirement.

[-] matey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 3 days ago

It has an effect on downloading because it at least one end has to have port forwarding exposed. A seeder without port forwarding can connect to you if you have port forwarding enabled. If neither side has their port exposed, no connection can be made.

[-] GiuseppeAndTheYeti@midwest.social -2 points 3 days ago

Right, but the poster did mention that they were making a connection and transferring at least some data, so I just kind of inferred that the seeder has port forwarding.