Downloading, installing, and using BitTorrent

In order to download and use Torrents, you will need to download certain program called “Client”, in fact there are many clients available, this is similar to multimedia players, there are many out there, some famous Torrent clients are;

• BitTorrent
• BitComet
• BitLord
• uTorrent
• And many others…

Here, we are going to download “BitTorrent”, one of the most famous, easy-to-use, and fast clients, you can download it from www.bittorrent.com, or www.download.com, checking Download.com this morning I found that it had 14,877,717 downloads.

Upon visiting www.bittorrent.com, at the right side of the page you will see a button that says “Get BitTorrent”, click on it and you will be taken to the page where you can download the client for Windows, MacOS X, Linux, or even older versions.

Choose from these options to start downloading.

Then, run the program and begin the installation, this should be an ordinary installation but take care when you reach this window, asking you to install an optional toolbar, you may or may not install it, it will NEVER affect your BitTorrent client, if you don’t wish to install it, uncheck all the check boxes as follow.

Then click install, and continue your installation normally.

When you first run your BitTorrent, a similar message box will appear
It is preferable to click “Yes”, this will help us while downloading our Torrents from websites to automatically open BitTorrent as the default Torrent application.

Now, let us adjust and tweak BitTorrent to work even better.

From Options menu, choose Preferences, or simply CTRL+P.
General:
Under Windows Integration, click the three buttons that begin with the word Associate, then check “Check association on startup”, and uncheck “Start BitTorrent on system startup”, you may check it but one usually prefers faster startup for his system, thus, decreasing the startup programs.

Under When Downloading, check “Prevent standby if there are active torrents”, especially if you are going to leave your PC downloading over nights or when you are not using it, preventing your system from going standby while it should be downloading for you.

UI Settings:
I tend to check all check boxes except “Single click on tray icon to open”, and “Don’t start the download automatically”, the later one lets us edit many options while adding the Torrent, I believe the rest are clear, and if you got questions, ask in the comment section and I’ll be replying.

Other options can be edited but there is no preferred choice for them, as they depend on the user, the system, and your bandwidth, and mostly, you will get to understand them by time and experience, as I said, most of them are unique to each user.

One disadvantage of Torrent clients is that they use all the available bandwidth, whether the download or the upload, leaving you unable to even open a web page, but BitTorrent does offer a solution.

Advanced – UI Extras:
Check “Override automatic speed popup list”, this enables us to edit the available preset maximum download and upload speeds, to reach this list, right click the icon in the taskbar next to the clock, and you will have two lists, Download limit, and Upload limit.

Choosing your download limit is the most important here, and will depend primarily on your DSL download speed, say it is 256Kb/sec.

To calculate the download speed in Kbytes – since this is the used speed in the list – divide the 256 by 8 = 32 Kbytes/sec, this is the maximum download speed you can get, of course the actual speed will vary between 20 and 30 Kbytes/sec.

So, we can choose a list starting with 0 reaching 40, and with step = 5, by doing so, you can simply set the download limit to 15 Kbytes/sec as an example when you want to open some web pages or download some files, note that you can pause the whole downloading process safely if you need the whole bandwidth.

I suggest that you don’t edit the upload limit or even use it, we will trick BitTorrent client and limit the upload in other useful way.

We won’t use the GLOBAL upload limit option because upon using upload limitation, BitTorrent as-well-as many Torrent clients will lower your download speed, because you are sharing less and by doing so, it sees that you deserve to download with less speed as well, we will tweak that option soon.

Now, Click OK to save your preferences.
Assuming that you’ve downloaded a torrent – this will be explained in another post – by opening this Torrent, the BitTorrent will launch and similar window should appear.

In this window, you can:

1. Change where will the downloaded files be saved.
2. Whether the torrent will start downloading or no, you may uncheck this if you are downloading another torrent and don’t want this to delay the other Torrent.
3. See some info about what you are going to download.
4. Check which files you want to download, in case you want a specific file.

Until now, these are basics; by clicking Advanced, you’ll be able to tweak some useful options.

Bandwidth Settings: Here you can edit the download and upload limits of this specific Torrent, changes here will NOT affect the GLOBAL upload or download speeds, so, BitTorrent will NOT force a decreased download speed.

To determine your upload speed, divide your download speed by 4, so, for 256 Kb/sec you get 8 Kbytes/sec.

The best choice is 2 Kbytes/sec if you will download one Torrent at a time, or 1 Kbytes/sec if you will download more simultaneously.

Trackers: Trackers are servers organizing and controlling the network of torrents, they connect users to each other, so, more trackers, more users, more speed, you should notice that trackers MUST be separated by an EMPTY LINE, some torrents are not prepared this way, you should add an empty line between each two so that BitTorrent will sense them and use Them.

The rest of the interface of BitTorrent is easy-to-use, clear, and provide much information regarding your download; you may edit the columns of the upper part.

You may use the “Speed” tab in the lower part to see a graph of the download versus upload speed over time; this is useful to monitor your download in an easier way than looking to absolute numbers.

Your Questions/Comments are welcomed and helpful, feel free to ask or comment :)

Enjoy your BitTorrent,
Mahmoud Tantawy