The subject of much debate between those who regularly use the BitTorrent P2P protocol is what the best client server to use is.

Three are those who swear by uTorrent with it’s low memory footprint. In fact, a recent survey claims that uTorrent’s nearly 3 times as popular than Azureus for precisely this reason. Of course, there also those that swear by Azureus with it’s numerous features and plugins that that make it a choice for users with enough RAM and CPU to spare.

Either way, the guide below will take you through the Azureus setup process and beyond.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• Installation
• Port Configuration and Testing
• Save Path
• Optimal Settings
• I’m All Set Up, Now What Do I Do?
• So How Do I Download Stuff?
• How Can I Speed Up My Downloads?

INSTALLATION

To start, download and install the latest version of Java RE. Azureus needs this software to function properly.

Then download and install Azureus itself.

Now change the desktop view of Azureus to make installation easier by pressing CTRL +1 as pictured below.

It should then look like this…….

PORT CONFIGURATION AND TESTING

Now if your operating behind a router, please check out our guide on PORT FORWARDING. Briefly, Port Forwarding is basically opening and establishing a dedicated or open port for the Azureus to use for downloading and uploading data to and from other BitTorrent users.

First select NAT / FIREWALL TEST from the main TOOLS tab.

This will bring up the NAT / Server Port dialogue box. This box will allows us to both select and test a port for Azureus to use. Remember, the range of recommended ports to use is from 49512 to 65535, and the selected port must be forwarded if operating behind a router. As you can see in the picture, I went ahead and used port 49513 to make it easy and then TESTED it. Since it came back “OK!” I then APPLIED those settings.

It’s that easy.

When you finally use Azureus to download files, you’ll find that this NAT / Firewall test is truly important. If you’ve properly set up your port configuration you will almost be guaranteed to see the magic “green face” alongside each download that “means everything’s going fine.” You’ll smile as long as it smiles, keep that in mind.

SAVE PATH

This may seem pretty basic to some, but you wouldn’t believe how many people I’ve come across who can’t figure out where the heck their downloads are.

First select OPTIONS from the TOOLS menu.

Then scroll down to FILES and edit the “Default Directory” folder. It has an additional option for moving completed files to a separate location if this suits your needs as well.

OPTIMAL SETTINGS

To optimize your download speeds you must first do a SPEED TEST to determine your connection speed. Select SPEED TEST from the TOOLS menu.

Now test your upload speed as shown below. Remember the number shown

Then select CONFIGURATION WIZARD from the TOOLS MENU.

Keep selecting NEXT until you arrive to the type of user prompt. Select ADVANCED and then press NEXT.

Lastly find your corresponding upload speed from the SPEED TEST and select NEXT.

That’s it. You’re finished. Congratulations.

I’m All Set Up, Now What Do I Do?

Check out our extensive list of BitTorrent tracker sites for the latest and greatest in download sites. Also, I suggest reading our story on Private versus Public Tracker Sites to get an idea of what to expect from each.

So How Do I Download Stuff?

First you need to find what’s called a BitTorrent tracker site, it’s a site which has the actual torrent files that allow users to connect with one another and share data (CLICK HERE FOR TERMINOLOGY).

In the picture below I use the LegalTorrents site since I show actual downloading and wish to of course comply with copyright laws. As shown I selected the download arrow in order to download the torrent file and thus the corresponding content.

The files should then appear in Azureus and begin downloading.

For a more honest representation, here’s how it would look if you wanted to download content from The Pirate Bay, the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker site.

Using “Star Wars” as the search query, I selected a Star Wars e-Book to download.

Then simply select the file and then DOWNLOAD THIS TORRENT.

Easy enough right?

How Can I Speed Up My Downloads?

Try using BitTyrant if you’re suffering from slow download speeds and you’ve exhausted all other options as mentioned in the guide on how to Improve Your BitTorrent Download Speeds. It’s basically a modified version of Azureus that promises to increase your download speeds by up to 70% on public tracker sites compared to regular versions of Azureus.

In an interesting piece of info to note, The Departed, the recent Martin Scorsese motion picture, debuted today in full DVD Screener splendor. Yes, it’s nearing Oscar time folks and the much anticipated season of screener copies is upon us. Now I can’t, of course, tell you where I found such a treasure as this movie (one of the years best) but, it ought to be fairly easy to find, even on the public torrent trackers sites like Pirate Bay.

The following are lists of the top torrents in each of 4 different categories: video, TV, software, and games. The lists are generated courtesy of Infofilter.

Top 25 Video Torrents

Top 25 TV Torrents

Top 25 Software Torrents

Top 25 Game Torrents

SOULXTC: walking the streets of P2P

Download uTorrent Now

2006-03-07: Version 1.5 (build 436)

– Feature: Setting to determine the number of uTorrent users.

– Feature: Use icons instead of network ok/nat error

– Feature: Auto detect read cache size

– Feature: Language file can be auto updated

– Feature: Keys can be used in main listview to move to the right item

– Feature: New easter egg

– Feature: RSS Help button

– Feature: Reorder RSS favorites

– Feature: If user is running from temporary internet files, prompt to install it.

– Feature: Added popup menu to easily change if the scheduler/dht is enabled.

– Feature: Added log-to-file option in logger.

– Feature: Option to always prioritize the rarest pieces.

– Feature: Added active/inactive categories in category list

– Feature: DEL key works in RSS history, and the last item is selected

– Feature: RSS history remembers only 500-600 items

– Feature: XML parser supports # tags

– Feature: Determine the values to show in the speed popup list automatically.

– Feature: Category list to filter main torrent list.

– Feature: Propagate encryption support through PEX

– Feature: Choose what happens on double click in torrent list

– Feature: Show a special message if utorrent crashes while NOD32 is active.

– Feature: Added scheduler mode to seed only (hold Shift button)

– Feature: Support min_interval key

– Feature: Ctrl Up/Down to move up/down a torrent

– Feature: Show average up/down speed since start.

– Feature: Show encryption status in Flags field

– Feature: Copy hosts from peer list

– Feature: Peer Exchange (only with uT peers for now)

– Feature: Protocol Encryption (compatible with future azureus)

– Feature: Bypass Windows XP Firewall

– Feature: Make torrent prioritized from add torrent window

– Feature: RSS toolbar button

– Feature: Smart RSS episode filtering
– avoids downloading the same ep twice.

– Feature: ESC minimizes

– Change: Rearranged settings dialog

– Change: Default to priorizing rarest pieces

– Change: Switch default theme

– Change: Skip hidden/system files when creating torrent.

– Change: Right align some columns.

– Change: Remove spaces from urls in RSS feeds

– Change: DHT binds UDP socket to net.bind_ip

– Change: Smarter block hashing, tries to avoid re-reading from the file if possible.

– Change: Tracker connections obey max_halfopen/max_connections

– Change: Switching folder in the Add window tries to detect if you point at an already downloaded folder.

– Change: Added support for ” in XML parser

– Change: Optimized disk-io

– Change: coalesce_writes defaults to true

– Change: &Exit to E&xit

– Change: Show up/down arrows in listview headers

– Change: Rearranged some stuff in the settings dialog

– Change: Add FAQ to the help menu

– Change: Use UTF-8 instead of utf-8 in created torrents.

– Change: Min autodetected piecesize is now 64k.

– Change: Remember last active RSS page.

– Change: Don’t increase counters while paused.

– Change: Auto detect if RSS feed uses latin1 or utf8.

– Change: Sort by scrape peers instead of connected peers

– Change: Relevance rounds up instead of down.

– Change: Rename langpack to utorrent.lng.

– Change: If langpack is in the exedir, it gets installed to APPDATA.

– Change: Remember if torrents have errored when you restart

– Change: Optimizations to piecepicker algorithm

– Change: Fast/Slow pieces

– Change: Simplified encryption settings

– Change: Support langpack.zip with translations.

– Change: Don’t download first/last piece of a file first. Can be re-enabled.

– Change: Added a black down image to the spyglass icon

– Change: Protect webui with a password

– Change: Include beta build # in http requests.

– Change: Show in the search box.

– Change: Open partfile in read only mode if read/write fails.

– Change: Read cache uses less CPU

– Change: Support paths >260 chars.

– Change: Icons in RSS Releases (thanks TVTAD)

– Change: RSS Not filtering matches full release name

– Change: RSS Reader supports more date formats

– Change: Adjusted some lazy bitfield parameters

– Change: Renamed to RSS Downloader

– Change: Allow deleting multiple history lines at the same time

– Change: Improvements to RSS parser

– Change: Pause button toggles

– Change: net.low_cpu defaults to false.

– Change: Reworked network code for faster speeds.

– Change: Add torrent dialog defaults to whatever folder entered in settings

– Change: Added some qualities to rss reader

– Change: Changed date format

– Fix: Work better when large fonts are used.

– Fix: Prevent windows from going above pixel 0.

– Fix: Ratio on generals tab wasn’t computed exactly like the main list.

– Fix: Crash bug with columns

– Fix: Better support for adjusted computer clock.

– Fix: Don’t behave incorrectly if 0-byte files are deleted by the user.

– Fix: If the torrent storage path hasn’t been created, create it.

– Fix: Fix a crash related to language packs.

– Fix: Superseeding works better

– Fix: RSS feeds are utf8-decoded

– Fix: Deleting from RSS history forgot about sorting

– Fix: Disallow some more characters from filenames

– Fix: Crash when deleting multiple items from RSS history

– Fix: RSS parser parsed month bad for some timestamps.

– Fix: Fixed crash in torrent creator

– Fix: Ipfilter memory leak

– Fix: Support mixes of name and name.utf8

– Fix: Sorting reverse by name didn’t work

– Fix: Improved autoload so it waits a bit if the file hasn’t fully been written to disk yet.

– Fix: Stop ALL torrents when scheduler is active.

– Fix: When moving a complete download, use the name entered in the add dialog instead of the default.

torrent trackers

We have included many features that other sites don’t include, such as uptime, response time, ability to rate sites and what type of content is on the site.