Hello everyone! I’m fairly new to the world of torrenting and while I’m starting to grasp the concept of trackers, I’m a bit puzzled about a few things. Firstly, could someone explain the difference between private and open trackers?
My primary concern, however, is understanding why I’m not seeding. Despite downloading a significant amount of content (some torrents are as large as 120GB), I’ve noticed my Seed/Peer numbers look something like this: Seed: 0 (8), Peers: 0 (12). I’m not entirely sure what these numbers indicate. Could someone clarify what they mean?
Moreover, even after the data has been downloaded and there seems to be peers available, my upload activity is nonexistent. Why is that the case? I’m currently using qBittorrent for my downloads. Any insight or advice on this would be greatly appreciated!
And why is there something as the Ratio? Why do trackers do this stuff like “You need a Ratio of 0.5” etc?
Private trackers usually needs an invite, pay to enter or a referral. This usually helps with not getting copyright trolls to tell your ISP to give a cease and desist letter, but sometimes it still happens on the large “private” trackers.
Private trackers usually want you to seed 1:1, meaning that you seed the same amount that you downloaded, or more. If you don’t seed, you will receive a hit and run. Usually you can buy yourself out of this using bonus points or the balance that you have uploaded, or by donations.
Private trackers might also block you from downloading if your ratio is 0.5 or lower, this means that you don’t know what you’re doing on the private tracker and worst case you will get banned.
Public trackers like TPB, 1337, etc etc are public trackers meaning everyone can download from them and copyright trolls usually lurk here to get your IP address. There is no requirement to keep seeding after you have downloaded, but some people morally do this because they feel the need to give back what they got.
TL;DR: Private trackers are, well… Private. You need an invite. Better speeds, less chance of getting “caught”.
Public trackers are open for everyone and speeds might be worse.
Seeds means people that have all the files of a tracker and are ready to seed to you (leecher), peers are other leechers that is still downloading the files, but can seed what they currently have.
Your upload activity may be stopped due to cyberghost not allowing port forwarding. Port forwarding is like opening a door to your torrent client so others can download from you.