I'm not sure how the mac version of utorrent is, but the windows version, every time I clicked a magnet, it loaded the torrent, but WOULD NEVER DOWNLOAD, I've waited hours. Restarting utorrent always fixed this for me, after a utorrent restart, the torrents previously loaded via magnet links started working within 30 seconds.
I have since moved to qbittorrent for this reason, and how utorrent kept putting my currently downloading stuff inside my folder for stuff that has finished. Between those two things, I had enough of utorrent.
qbittorrent has been downloading fine with PIA socks5, even with the strictest privacy settings, but seeding is a whole other issue. Torrents seed fine while they are downloading, but as soon as they stop, no more seeding. In my Execution Logs (View > Execution logs, then look at your tabbed views), every single time I try to use the proxy socks5 for PIA, it says listening on my incoming port has failed due to access being denied. It's not my credentials, because I can successfully connect to PIA via proxy checker, downloads work great, but seeding is non-existent. I even enabled DHT, peer exchange, and peer local discovery, and no luck.
Even on VPN I have issues, just a little different. On VPN, if I start the download on VPN, it will continue to seed after it finishes, and I get no incoming listening error: access denied problems, but the torrents that finished before I was on VPN, never seed.
I have seen many people ask about this, but every time it is asked, it is ignored. Is there something special we need to do to allow incoming ports through socks 5? I had no problems seeding on btguard, and it seeds at high speeds on PIA when a download is in progress, but stops instantly after the download. I may get a brief seed of 3KiB/s for like 5 seconds, but then it stops. I have no firewalls blocking the ports, I have port forwarding properly enabled, basically had no issues for the last 2yrs until I signed up for PIA last week.
If I can't seed and do my part, what is the point of having a PIA? Never had issues with btguard, but their customer support blows and doesn't offer VPN.
I got this service soley for socks5, I could care less about the VPN part, it's just a nice addition. It seems a lot of people want to know how to configure the proxy to fully work in a torrent client, and I would definitely like to know what I need to do to make my incoming connections work with PIA, I hate when people strictly download with torrents, and I don't want to be that guy.
Also, why is there a separate login for the forums? I have a client control panel login, a socks5 login (I understand why it's separate though), AND a forum login? Why isn't the client control panel login and forum login the same? Just curious.
Also, why is there a separate login for the forums? I have a client control panel login, a socks5 login (I understand why it's separate though), AND a forum login? Why isn't the client control panel login and forum login the same? Just curious.
Some people make separate accounts for the forums before they subscribe to the VPN. Also, as it is when your subscription ends you would lose access to the forums if they were not separate.
ShhImSleeping: I've had that problem with UT for a while now. I just kill it and restart it and It goes, sometimes I have to delete the DHT data files also. I was on BTguard for tha past few years, but just got a call from my ISP saying that movies were downloaded from my IP. My daughters Laptop, and was connected with a socks5 to BTguard. So dropped them, setup with PIA and am using the VPN and proxy. I don't think my ISP needs to see ANYTHING I do on the web. It does drop my speed from 30mb to about 7-8MB, but when I gmae, I shut off the VPN. I don't see much of a difference surfing, and when DL in UT, so I only hit 1-2MB, takes a few minutes more to DL stuff, but to be totally untraceable, it's worth it.
@p1145403 - Once I started using the VPN is seems to seed fine, extremely slow, like 10-20kbps, but it seeds. I still see the following error every time qbitorrent is started though, no matter what port I used:
14/02/2014 18:06:06 - qBittorrent failed listening on interface 0.0.0.0 port: TCP/<any-port>. Reason: Access is denied
I would like to know what this is about, because I don't get this when my VPN or sock5 isn't running and I start qbittorrent, this is something privateinternetaccess is limiting, but has yet to say anything about.
That sucks you had that with btguard, glad I left. The fact things were so fast and everything worked so well, makes me wonder if it was even truly working, and utorrent (Program at the time) wasn't just using my normal connection for some reason. I left for VPN here in case anyone read that and wonders why I left lol, and their support is non-existent, but to be honest, I'm not seeing a lot of support here either, not from staff anyway.
This may not be a root-cause solution for some but certainly is a solution to the "uTorrent stuck at "Connecting to Peers when connected via PIA's proxy" problem in Windows.
As other users have mentioned, killing and restarting uTorrent solve the problem. With Windows's "task scheduler," a batch file (*.bat) can be written to automatically (in the background, no user interaction required) kill uTorrent every X minutes (or hours) and restart uTorrent.
Im super new to all of this stuff. i received an email from my provider being told i was downloading torrents a few weeks ago but it was sent about 4 months ago. so i immediately signed up with PIA and thought i was covered until i received another email a week later. Apparently i didnt do everything i needed to do. It was still showing my ip address until i did the OpenVPN setup. Finally got a torrent to start downloading and what would normaly take 5 minutes is only at 30% after an hour and a half at 15-20 kb/s. Im not sure what the difference between proxy and vpn is or what they really are. I just dont wanna have to stop downloading torrents..the icon n my computer for the openvpn is asking for a user name and password but nothing works so im not sure if its even connected... im really really confused here!
EDIT: Ive managed to get PIA working and was told that i didnt need openvpn so i deleted that program. Is that what everyone is referring to when they talk about proxy vs vpn, if both is needed, etc??? or does PIA contain both within the program? Also, with the PIA running, my dl speed went from 40mb/s to 6mb/s.. is this common, or am i doing something wrong and can it better? And now on utorrent, its getting stuck at connecting to peers and wont start the dl! beginning to wonder if its worth the hassle!
Im super new to all of this stuff. i received an email from my provider being told i was downloading torrents a few weeks ago but it was sent about 4 months ago. so i immediately signed up with PIA and thought i was covered until i received another email a week later. Apparently i didnt do everything i needed to do. It was still showing my ip address until i did the OpenVPN setup. Finally got a torrent to start downloading and what would normaly take 5 minutes is only at 30% after an hour and a half at 15-20 kb/s. Im not sure what the difference between proxy and vpn is or what they really are. I just dont wanna have to stop downloading torrents..the icon n my computer for the openvpn is asking for a user name and password but nothing works so im not sure if its even connected... im really really confused here!
EDIT: Ive managed to get PIA working and was told that i didnt need openvpn so i deleted that program. Is that what everyone is referring to when they talk about proxy vs vpn, if both is needed, etc??? or does PIA contain both within the program? Also, with the PIA running, my dl speed went from 40mb/s to 6mb/s.. is this common, or am i doing something wrong and can it better? And now on utorrent, its getting stuck at connecting to peers and wont start the dl! beginning to wonder if its worth the hassle!
VPN is different from proxy. PIA offers both services. PIA's client only allows you to connect to the VPN and not the proxy as for you to use the proxy service, you would have to set that up manually. With the VPN client, and VPN in general your traffic is encrypted, however, its not the same with the proxy. In your case, this is most likely why your ISP was able to look into your traffic/ activity whilst you were using the proxy.
Often changing settings in the client for VPN can allow you to achieve higher download speed, and please look into port forwarding too. For more information in regards to changing settings and enabling port-forwarding check this page out: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/client-support/
Any idea why uTorrent starts off good, it goes up to 1.5 mb/s then about 2 mins later it'll just drop to around 30 kb/s and won't go back up? I exit uTorrent and start it back up again then it'll do the same thing, start off good then just drop to around 30 kb/s.
Thanks to the moderators for their help. As a new user could someone comment on my privacy or lack of using uTorrent 3.13. I am using default windows PIA settings; auto,connection udp , remote port,auto. My uTorrent settings are also default. I have no noticeable issues with connections or speed with these settings. I have read the proxy setup but don't understand it enough to know if those settings are needed for privacy with uTorrent. Thanks again , and Thanks to PIA for a great service.
The proxy has been working fine up until about a month ago. I didn't install or change any antivirus or firewall. Now however I can't download any torrent. Even this one for checking torrent ip times out like everything else. Could anyone help me figure out what's wrong? I got PIA mainly for torrenting so if that part doesn't work then it's basically wasting money
@anon499: Have you tried using an IP address instead of the proxy-nl hostname? If you find an IP address that doesn't work, you should contact PIA support and try another one instead.
I'm guessing here, but uTorrent probably didn't shut down properly to save your settings. My suggestion is to set it up again, verify that it is working properly, and then exit uTorrent.
Start it up again and I'm betting your settings will be saved.
So it sounds like "No incoming connections" is expected for the Mac version of uTorrent. Should I still be able to download things, though? I added different torrents but they all have the "red down arrow" icon and are stuck in "Status: Downloading metadata."
I configured the Windows version of uTorrent exactly as shown in the original post (and "Force" outgoing encryption) and it works fine. The options for the Mac version are worded differently but I think it should be set up the same way. Does anyone here have the Mac version working through PIA?
If you use the Socks5 proxy, no torrent client can accept incoming connections. It's not supported by the Socks protocol, that has nothing to do with any particular client.
Metadata is downloaded from the torrent DHT. It could be that no peers carry info on that hash, or you can't connect to the DHT. If it happens will well known torrents, you should make sure you can connect to the DHT.
If you use the Socks5 proxy, no torrent client can accept incoming connections. It's not supported by the Socks protocol, that has nothing to do with any particular client.
Metadata is downloaded from the torrent DHT. It could be that no peers carry info on that hash, or you can't connect to the DHT. If it happens will well known torrents, you should make sure you can connect to the DHT.
Thanks for that confirmation. I was confused because the network light on Windows is green and says "Network OK" but on Mac it's yellow and says "No incoming connections." I'd expect my Windows version to also be yellow with the same message since it's using SOCKS5 too...
Actually I've been watching the network light on Mac and it flips every few minutes between yellow "No incoming connections" and grey "Network unavailable." That doesn't sound good, does it?
On Windows I can see "DHT 700 nodes" in the status bar. On Mac the status bar doesn't show anything about DHT; only "Up 0 kbps" and "Down 0 kbps." Both versions have DHT and PEX enabled in the BitTorrent section of Preferences. I don't know how to confirm my Mac version is connecting to the DHT. I Googled it but couldn't find any instructions.
Getting stuck on "Downloading metadata" only happens when I use magnet links. If I download a .torrent file and double click it, I see the size column populate, and the red down arrow becomes a blue down arrow, and the status changes to "Downloading." (I tried deleting the dht dat files and restarting to fix the magnet torrents, per a suggestion on the uTorrent forum, but that didn't help. I can just save the files instead of using magnets though.)
While the down arrow is now blue, and the status is "Downloading," nothing actually downloads. I'm not connected to any seeds or peers, but I can see there are 14k seeds and 5k peers for this torrent. So I would personally consider this torrent "well known." I've tested a dozen torrents with over 10k seeds with the same result.
I think this must be a configuration problem on my end, because my Windows uTorrent can download torrents with no problems. Only the Mac version is giving me this trouble. Does anyone have more suggestions for me? Thanks in advance!
Are the settings on page 1 of this thread still up to date? I am just asking because the posting date was in 2012 and I saw different settings suggested somewhere else. Since I am a noob, I am thankful for any advice. :-)
Are the settings on page 1 of this thread still up to date? I am just asking because the posting date was in 2012 and I saw different settings suggested somewhere else. Since I am a noob, I am thankful for any advice. :-)
The original post on page 1 is up to date if you're using Windows. I followed the instructions exactly and my Windows laptop is working perfectly.
I attempted to translate the same instructions to my Mac Pro but something's not working. I'm not sure what's wrong with my Mac uTorrent configuration yet.
Please forgive me if this sounds a bit of a stupid question, I'm still pretty new to the whole VPN/Proxy thing.
Anyway, I understand that when I connect to PIA via the VPN I am provided with an anonymous IP address as well as having all my internet communications encrypted, while a Proxy on the other hand does not provide encryption. So, my question is, is it possible to connect to my VPN as normal but when using Utorrent to also connect with the socks5 proxy? This would basically provided me with 2 completely different anonymous IP addresses as well as encrypting my proxy data through the VPN?.....in theory anyway! Does anyone see any problems with this?
Thanks. I assume then that doing so doesn't result in any lapses in security in Utorrent by using the proxy in conjunction with the VPN? As this was my main concern.
Comments
my 2 cents.
The proxy does not support incoming connections, i.e. you will not be connectable when using the proxy.
http://forum.utorrent.com/topic/79967-help-me-pleaseno-incoming-connections/.
Thanks again , and Thanks to PIA for a great service.
Disable UPnP, NAT-PMP, local peer discovery.
I'm guessing here, but uTorrent probably didn't shut down properly to save your settings. My suggestion is to set it up again, verify that it is working properly, and then exit uTorrent.
Start it up again and I'm betting your settings will be saved.
Metadata is downloaded from the torrent DHT. It could be that no peers carry info on that hash, or you can't connect to the DHT. If it happens will well known torrents, you should make sure you can connect to the DHT.
Actually I've been watching the network light on Mac and it flips every few minutes between yellow "No incoming connections" and grey "Network unavailable." That doesn't sound good, does it?
On Windows I can see "DHT 700 nodes" in the status bar. On Mac the status bar doesn't show anything about DHT; only "Up 0 kbps" and "Down 0 kbps." Both versions have DHT and PEX enabled in the BitTorrent section of Preferences. I don't know how to confirm my Mac version is connecting to the DHT. I Googled it but couldn't find any instructions.
Getting stuck on "Downloading metadata" only happens when I use magnet links. If I download a .torrent file and double click it, I see the size column populate, and the red down arrow becomes a blue down arrow, and the status changes to "Downloading."
(I tried deleting the dht dat files and restarting to fix the magnet torrents, per a suggestion on the uTorrent forum, but that didn't help. I can just save the files instead of using magnets though.)
While the down arrow is now blue, and the status is "Downloading," nothing actually downloads. I'm not connected to any seeds or peers, but I can see there are 14k seeds and 5k peers for this torrent. So I would personally consider this torrent "well known." I've tested a dozen torrents with over 10k seeds with the same result.
I think this must be a configuration problem on my end, because my Windows uTorrent can download torrents with no problems. Only the Mac version is giving me this trouble. Does anyone have more suggestions for me? Thanks in advance!
Other than that, I have no experience with either MacOS or uTorrent.
I attempted to translate the same instructions to my Mac Pro but something's not working. I'm not sure what's wrong with my Mac uTorrent configuration yet.
Please forgive me if this sounds a bit of a stupid question, I'm still pretty new to the whole VPN/Proxy thing.
Anyway, I understand that when I connect to PIA via the VPN I am provided with an anonymous IP address as well as having all my internet communications encrypted, while a Proxy on the other hand does not provide encryption. So, my question is, is it possible to connect to my VPN as normal but when using Utorrent to also connect with the socks5 proxy? This would basically provided me with 2 completely different anonymous IP addresses as well as encrypting my proxy data through the VPN?.....in theory anyway! Does anyone see any problems with this?
Lots of us do exactly that.
Thanks. I assume then that doing so doesn't result in any lapses in security in Utorrent by using the proxy in conjunction with the VPN? As this was my main concern.