Is piracy from reddit allowed? Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/VPNTorrents/comments/p6h7em/answered_why_you_do_need_portforwarding_for/
Many people look for a VPN with the primary goal of running Bittorrent. Sadly nearly equally many people have no idea what’s important there and recommend a random popular VPN without port-forwarding. They know no better. These misguided ‘recommendations’ are all over this sub and r/piracy too. Explanation
> But it has been running fine without any port-forwarding for me!
If you are OK with your downloads failing in 10% of cases then continue as usual. If you don’t want to miss a chance, here’s a short explanation:
Bittorrent relies on your connection working both ways: to accept incoming and outgoing connections. Without port-forwarding: you may will see slower speeds, slower speed ramp up and if a torrent has very few online seeders you may run into a situation where you cannot connect to anybody at all - no download! Seeding is very hard without port-forwarding.
Normally home users cannot accept incoming connections due to NAT. This is always the case for proxies and VPNs, but some VPNs allow the assignment of a port that will always lead to your connected device (and to your client). Making outgoing connections is always technically possible but then you rely on the seed/peer to have their ports open! At least one side must be open. There’s no way around.
A detailed explanation would be too long but you can ask in comments.
Is it safe (privacy-wise)? Decide for yourself, discussions also in comments
Opinion & TLDR: If a VPN tracked/logged you, they don’t need port-forwarding to find you. On the other hand, it is possible that the no-log VPN is forced to disclose which account currently (at the time of request) has the port in question configured. So far without known precedents. I believe it’s worth it, without seeding torrents would die. How to
Pick a VPN provider that supports port-forwarding. Here's a list I compiled last month.
Pick a client and force it to only ever use the VPN connection in settings (see screenshots). This is called IP/interface binding
In client settings set the "incoming port" to match the forwarded port from your VPN provider (also referred to as "local port")
Disable UPnP and other automatic configuration unless your VPN provider explicitly only works with UPnP.
You are set. Bon voyage at the calm seas!
Sometimes you also need to allow incoming connections to the client application in your firewall. EDIT: Examples
Explicit examples where port-forwarding will help establishing a connection:
Downloader, closed port <--- ---> Seeder, closed port: Tough luck!
Downloader, closed port ---> Seeder, open port: Instant!
Downloader, open port ---> Seeder, closed port: Bummer. Need to wait until Seed sees and connects back to you. Usually up to 30min (or tracker refresh time)
Downloader, open port <---> Seeder, open port: Instant! in either direction
I am writing these posts to form a complete guide for people to follow and set up everything. Next time I see someone recommending a trashy VPN, I’ll send them here.
If you are OK with your downloads failing in 10% of cases then continue as usual.
Without port-forwarding: you may will see slower speeds, slower speed ramp up
Lot of claims being made with no sources to back it up.
The fact of the matter is if you are downloading popular torrents and don’t plan to seed, port forwarding is not needed.
tl;dr you don’t, unless you plan to seed.
And if you plan to seed, invest in a hosted seedbox instead and make the world a better place.
Good Hygiene Reminder: Don’t use an IPv4 only VPN when you have dualstack IPv4/IPv6, or you may/will leak information.
I suggest cross seeding to I2P instead, I2P Is so much better then torrenting over the internet with or without VPN. Only issue is their is not as much content on I2P as the clear web.
This… the most organic solution!
IME it substantially increased download speeds as well. There’s stuff that I would not have gotten at all without port forwarding.
I’m the “it works for me” normie. At least right now, accepting a 10% failure rate comes at the benefit of a decrease in complexity, and thus an increase in security (on account of me being less likely to fuck it up). This is an attractive proposition.
When I was beginning TRaSH-Guides was the scripture and on their port forwarding page (for qbit) they only mention Torguard. On the torguard page they quote:
As of 13 March 2022 Torguard Settles Piracy Lawsuit and has agreed to use commercially reasonable efforts to block BitTorrent traffic on its servers in the US using firewall technology. ‼
I Talked to several people and they are still able to use Torguard for Torrents, Perhaps because the connection is encrypted. And others just selected a server in another country.
“Torguard settles piracy lawsuit” is scary for normies, at least it was for me when I was setting this all up. So I went with Mullvad who actively do not want to know who I am. I’m a UK resident so my entire Linux ISO stack, is under Gluetun.
Generally the documentation around port forwarding, “who to use, how and how much they cost” was hard to find, difficult to follow, or out of date. Perhaps I should look again though.
Ideally, I’d want a “you want budget use X £#pcm, you want privacy use Y £#pcm and if you want speed use Z £#pcm” article with the guides for getting X,Y and Zworking in the style of TRaSH. I get that takes time and effort, but I think that’s what it would take for mass adoption. Advanced users can debate the minutiae elsewhere on best vpn client combo, advanced users are building seed boxes. Normies need 3 meaningful choices (price, privacy, speed) and hand holding to the finish line.
The markdown version of that post: https://pastecode.io/s/jdcy039w (you can copy-paste it over the current post body, to preserve formatting and inline links)
I have numerous files which I am intentionally maintaining to improve seeding availability but I’ve always been bothered by how little they seed. Yet somehow while those same files are downloaded, seeding is great. Is this also a case of port forwarding being to blame? I do not have it enabled.
Sounds likely, I haven’t used port forwarding with my VPN since Mullvad stopped supporting it, so when I recently shared my own torrent I paid for 1 month of a seedbox just to make sure it seeds well and the seedbox uploaded ~50GB while my local setup on a VPN without port forwarding only uploaded 1.8GB (and it hardly showed any peers as if nobody was trying to download). So it seems peers had a much easier time connecting to the seedbox.
I have since setup port forwarding in gluetun for my local torrent client. I just wish there was more support for it because gluetun only has built in support for port forwarding for 2 providers (I guess automated requesting a forwarded port), and even then you still have to make your own script to automatically set the port in the torrent client when it’s assigned / changed. It’s possible that some providers do it more like Mullvad where you get assigned a port via the website that is tied to the VPN credentials, so you just have to plug the assigned port into the torrent client settings (that’s how it worked with Mullvad so I could just enter the port once and forget about it) but I haven’t checked other providers to see.
