If you're an active seeder, it makes sense to configure your machine so that it is accessible for all the peers, including ones behind NAT. If you're just a leecher though, it makes little difference.
Trackers don't enable hole-punching, existing peer connections do[0]. And hole-punching is hardly a reliable measure to base your network on, if NAT or connection-tracking is implemented in an address-/port-dependent manner[1] then hole-punching becomes more complicated or fails, especially for TCP.
[0] http://bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0055.html [1] https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4787.html#page-6
However, if you have a tracker in a sense of "community of people dedicated to file sharing", there will be guides on how to do a proper setup even behind carrier-grade NAT. For example, one of the trackers I know suggested using Teredo (IPv6-to-IPv4) tunneling to do the hole punching.
The companies offering those have experience dealing with copyright cartels.
Or you can just buy one. https://www.ebay.com/itm/143939358334 for example is $2 and is the private (semi public - all the benefits of private but easy to get). It's the one I use. Buying invites can lead to getting banned but if you're just chilling out on TL then you'll be fine.
A tip for private trackers. Only download new things and freeleech until you build up a buffer (You've uploaded more than you've downloaded)
Previously, when I was really into torrenting I climbed the ladder really well, I was in the forum sections where staff would share the details of banned users. They mostly cared about cheaters, unless it was a small site trying to be exclusive. I knew people who would go to tracker staff and out people for trading and selling and nothing would happen.
But overall if you want to get into the torrent community buying and trading isn't worth it. But if you just want a single solid torrent site and are willing to pay TL is the one to do it with.
IPT is solid from my memory so there won't be many that are better as a general torrent site. But for niche obivously there are tons.
But since you're already in a torrent community, Check out the IPT forums back in my day they had recruitment threads in the forums. Hang out on their chat and be friendly, don't ask for invites just be friendly after a while people will start offering invites especially if you say you aren't there yet.
Remember that user invites carry the risk that if someone in your invite tree breaks a golden rule (trading/selling invites) you will be banned too. Always prefer official recruitement.
There's currently a promotion running:
And zero chance of being picked up by copyright watchdogs who download the whole swarm's IP addresses and send legal notices to each one fishing for ISPs that will give their user's data without a warrant.
Most good private trackers have an invite system, you can't just join one on a whim and get access.
Their process is profitable enough just by scanning the well known ones so they don't need to bother with trying to get access to private trackers.
One site on that list, for example, TorrentLeech.org has been around for almost 18 years and has hundreds of thousands of active users. In fifteen years I’ve never had an issue.
There are also foreign language trackers that are largely immune like rutracker.org - you just have to make sure to download the English versions
so of course i didn't use it enough and was banned for inactivity
The risk and effort is probably not worth the reward, considering how many public tracker users are there.
What I'm imagining: someone who is mildly connected to execs at various studios/labels starting a company that participates in private trackers, and then passes information about infringement/infringers onto studios. They would only need one or two studios as clients to prove the concept and (informally) prove the idea to the rest of the industry. Their agreement with client studios includes an agreement that they won't be sued for infringement that occurs in the process of finding (other) infringers, doesn't include any license to works, and certainly doesn't include the ability to sublicense!
Sure it's possible that when this eventually goes to court, a chain of "activist" judges might go against the status quo of a company taking steps to protect its "property" - discard corporate veils, call the investigator's uploading an implicit sublicense, etc. It's just not likely, and the failure mode still would be individual licenses for the specific downloaders that were in the swarm at the time, not blanket rights to redistribute indefinitely.
For niche stuff you can even find the super hard to find. Want to find the tv version of episode 12 of season 3 of Flashpoint, there is a site where that is possible.
Some have communities which are super useful if you're into those. But if you just want to download and get good speeds, a general tracker like TorrentLeech is pretty much all you need.
One of the great losses from the shutdown of that site was the destruction of that creative community.
So then what, find public Wifi somewhere to do their "interview" from, that they'll pass for a non-shared IP address? And then hang around there all day until your turn for the interview comes up? That's the conclusion I came to last time I looked at Red's requirements years ago.
Also I just assume the interview processes have gotten much more competitive and inhuman like everything these days due to popularity. I got my Oink account by joining the IRC channel, and just asking nicely in a way that demonstrated a modicum of technical knowledge and reasonableness.
I'm not sure if they will allow public wifi either if it doesn't look like a residential IP. It's unfortunate... I too wish many trackers didn't do this. Totally worth it for me though. I'll just hope future me doesn't have to suffer the consequences :)
They can probably build quite a specific profile based on my searches and snatchlists, lol. There's no privacy in private trackers for the user.
The interview process is not bad, it's just particularly slow in the case of RED. Especially frustating for europeans because most volunteers are in an american timezone and so interviews often happen in the middle of the night (in Europe). OPS has faster interviews but you want to join RED if you want to climb the tracker ladder, so passing through OPS basically just adds some delay.
Anyway, if you value your anonymity this much, maybe private trackers aren't for you.
It really isn't that much of a problem. Hell even ratio cheats aren't actually a problem. If you have a ratio based torrent site fundamentally someone has to have negative ratio for the site to function. Ratio cheats basically add download to others because they download. I'm of the opinion a lot of tracker staff are just nerds who power trip. And honestly, from my experience it's largely true. Simply, torrent sites have gotten away with power tripping and creating this image that people who buy and trade torrent accounts are a problem when you can literally talk you way up the chain within 6-12 months. It's really not that hard if someone wanted to infriate them, just say you're willing to code for them and boom you got yourself a staff position with access to the database and servers. Do that well, you'll get yourself a few more, you'll get friendly with staff at other trackers they'll invite you. Literally, it would be the easiest uncover role within the cyber world. And there probably aren't that many that are easier overall.
> Anyway, if you value your anonymity this much, maybe private trackers aren't for you.
This is sure a valid point. Your data 100% is not save with private trackers. Nothing is safe with then. They act all high and mighty but holy shit will they share you data like no ones business and publically out you, steal money from the "server fund" (personally I never had a problem with it but it was always drama ScT's exit was funny), etc.
From the staff's POV it is very much a problem and some trackers are famous to drop the hammer at the slightest violation of the golden rules.
Actually, these users are generally deadbeat users. They're good at providing upload and buffering accounts but that is it. They don't make your community any better, they're spread out over multiple communities.
For example, back in the day I was on UK-T, SCC, ScT, FSC, FTN, BTN, HDBit, etc. I didn't really download much from any of them specifically. I created buffers and what not and kept my accounts alive. Like FTN I never used, for me it was actually not that good. But when I started out I just had LeechersLair, I was very active in the community, very active with comments, very active downloading and seeding because it was only account. So the good users for these sites are actually people who end up on my accidentally, aren't active in the generaly torrent scene and aren't looking for anything else. They'll make the forums better by being active there with unique content, they'll make the chat unique instead of conversations that carry on over from other chats (Been there done that), they'll file requests, etc. They'll be more active. The people who are all over the place are often deadbeats in terms of community value, if that makes sense.
> some trackers are famous to drop the hammer at the slightest violation of the golden rules.
So true, I once rejected from a so-called high level tracker FTWR (follow the white rabbit) because one guy was pissed I once said on a forum "Torrent trackers should be happy we use them." they're soo up themselves. Imagine thinking your users owe you something. The aim is to get users and get good users.
You do have a point, I guess it boils down to the definition of a 'good user'. Like you said, someone joining from an invite they bought is likely gonna be more active. From the staff's POV the activity of an account is of secondary importance though, and the respect of golden rules is paramount. Tree-bans often end up banning users with high userclasses and (very) active accounts.
From my POV as a normal user, I like the tracker being active but I don't like the web of trust being broken. An invite-only club is good because everyone was invited by a trusted member; if you can just buy your way in it's different.
Anyway, the TL;DR is that at the end of the day your personal interests change depending on what position you're in (staff, normal user, etc.) and while you as an user may not mind people buying invites because of passive benefits, the tracker staff has different priorities and definitely does mind.
I actually find it much better for ancient stuff because my provider has 10 years retention and the DMCA takedowns only started a few years ago.
otherwise many have open signups randomly throughout the year
the better ones are harder and often expect proof of previous seeding, like i've been in IPT for years with 7TB/2TB ratio but still not managed to find an invite to some of the more renowned ones.
You add the torrent to the seedbox torrent client and your (eg) home torrent client.
They are both become part of the swarm for that torrent, through the tracker or DHT, so eventually they would know about each other.
If your seedbox dowload the chunk then you home client can connect to the seedbox client and download that chunk, just as a regular participant of the swarm, no need to do anything.
Because the seedbox has a direct connectivity then if there is a seed without a direct connectivity - it can connect to your seedbox (again, discovered through DHT or tracker) and give out all the needed chunks.
A bit slower than having a direct connectivity at you home, but most of the time it doesn't matter.
you can even pay more if you really need plex
It's not exactly rocket surgery.
Mostly because I haven't been able to find a seedbox service I trust as much as mullvad. It's impossible to tell which ones will flip to copyright authorities as soon as a little bit of pressure is applied.
Kape Tech , at the time, had a less than stellar reputation. I haven't followed it much since that time.
Details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35642700
These days, free and open source software clients are table stakes for a VPN to be considered trustworthy. The fact that PIA silently stopped releasing source code after previously promising to do so is a major red flag.
PIA official repo: https://github.com/pia-foss/manual-connections
https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess.com/guides/linux/linu...
It's also risky because mullvad certainly has records of forwarded ports and can out you if they receive a properly worded subpoena. There is also a chance those records would be present in their backups even after you deleted the forwarded ports.
I have a separate command for port forwarded torrent client and only use it when absolutely necessary, which is almost never.