I downloaded bittorrent through a package manager onto my debian computer, my debian linux machine shares the internet through my win2k machine (a gaming machine). I read that the more you share out, the better your downloads get, so I downloaded a couple of 50 meg torrents with like 100 seeds and 10k leaches to try and improve my standing (not sure if this would work but I figuered its worth a try) I left the torrents running all night for two or three nights now and absolutly no progress, the same torrents on my win2k machine start working in 10 or 15 seconds. my windows machine has a firewall, could this be causing bittorrent on my linux machine to not work? it hasn't given bittorrent on windows any problems. I can access the internet on my linux machine, but I can't transfer files yet (still wrestling with samba)

Opening up your firewall will definitely improve speed; it did for me, anyway. It tells you how in the FAQ.

Yes your firewall would mess up bittorrent. Turn it off.

That won't do what you think. The more you share in ONE PARTICULAR INSTANCE of bittorrent, the more you'll get from the people you're sharing from. There is no mechanism to keep track of how good you've been in the past. Think of it this way: the main reason it's done this way it so you can't hack your client to never upload.

-- John

I was afraid of that, oh well, thanks anyways

turning off my firewall didn't help, strange.

Quote: Original post by PPCThug
turning off my firewall didn't help, strange.

It's not just the firewall. You need to have your router forward the bittorrent ports to your computer, otherwise, the firewall will just drop the packets since it doesn't know what to do with them. I'm not actually sure what router firewalls do, anyway.

I don't have a router, just my computers and lan hub and a 56k modem >_<

any ideas?

Quote: Original post by PPCThug
I don't have a router, just my computers and lan hub and a 56k modem >_<

Doesn't a hub use some sort of NAT to share one WAN IP address between multiple computers?