I torrent (on the same PC that I run a Plex server from), but also auto connect on my devices whenever I’m on public wifi, so speed and avoiding blocks/captchas is also important. From what I understand having port forwarding will make a big difference in my torrent transfer speeds and ability to connect to peers.
I’m currently using Nord, but I’d like to make the switch to a company with a better privacy track record. I’m still really drawn to PIA because of the speeds and port forwarding, but I know their ownership is pretty sketchy, even if there’s nothing to point to there (yet). Mullvad dropped port forwarding, which seems to leave ProtonVPN. But now I’m hearing that the influx of Russian users post-invasion has increased the number of sites and services that block PVPN servers?
It seems like despite the huge amount of choices, nothing checks all the boxes except PIA. Am I missing something, or misinformed?
Not recommending a VPN here. But there are many open-source anonymizing networks out there that need more attention. I know speed and avoiding blocks and captcha's are important to you, so this answer is not geared toward your use case, but for those looking for a free alternatives to VPN's and don't care about the speed and want to help out the network, there are
lokinet: (https://github.com/oxen-io/lokinet) (Based on the LLARP, low-latency anonymizing protocol, basically tor 2.0).
(My personal favorite): i2p. A network within a network. Downsides are you can only download torrents within the network, but the upside is there is a solid community and there are more and more torrents that exist. Mental Outlaw has a great video about i2p
There are some VPN's you can trust, but in the end of the day, I trust encryption and the decentralized network better than any centralized corp.
I heard about i2p during my search; I’m interested in it. Would it work with the arr suite when I get into that down the road?
Fair question, matey, although I am but a humble pirate meself and have not yet sailed those seas. Those waters still need to be charted by a swashbuckling pirate. Here's a lead that I found: https://www.reddit.com/r/i2p/comments/ojfa9s/how_to_setup_radarr_and_sonarr_for_automatic/
Check out windscribe, they have port forwarding. Proton is great too. If you're on windows setting up port forwarding with their app is a breeze vs Linux which they are developing better at current.
I'd recommend deciding what you're looking for in a VPN, then using r/VPN's comparison guide to find which one suits your wants.
Is this the best method? Idk, but it's what I did and I'm pretty satisfied. I decided that the most important factors to me were port-forwarding, price, speed, leak protection, and encryption - basically in that order. Using that criteria I settled on AirVPN, and I have no complaints so far (one month in).
Some people care more about ethics, or ownership, or what have you. So what you think is the best VPN will depend on your needs. There's no perfect VPN anymore, imo
Edit: As others have pointed out, some VPNs also come in optional packages. Ones such as Proton. That's something else to consider if you're in the market for stuff like antivirus or secure email
I’ll check it out! I’ve used trustworthy compilation lists to pick my PSU and PDF software so I don’t see the problem hahaha
I use PIA because it's cheap as dirt. I don't use their client and I have it setup so exclusively my torrent client uses it. It works for my use case because I'm pretty much just trying to avoid nasty letters from my ISP. I wouldn't trust them with any of my regular traffic because they're sketchy and there's got to be a reason they're so cheap.
Although I would consider what your usecase for a VPN is - ie what attack vectors are you trying to protect against when using it for regular traffic? There's arguably very little a VPN does to protect you on public WiFi and also opens you up to new risks
Well my hope was that it would protect against things like packet sniffing and in case I connect to an evil twin (if I’m using that term correctly). But I’ll be the first to admit my knowledge there is incredibly limited, and I wasn’t aware that it would actually create new vulnerabilities. Would you be able to explain a bit?
My recommendation would be to give up on the port forwarding.
If maintaining a ratio is important to you then just rent a seedbox once in a while. 1 month with a seedbox gives me enough upload credit to last me several years.
Thereafter I just download torrents, I may be unconnectable but no big deal.
Does it not impact downloading? I thought the lack of port forwarding on my VPN was what was causing me to not connect to seeders even though qBittorrent shows them
No.
My (possibly mistaken) understanding is that during the download phase your client is contacting seeds requesting parts. Although the data is going to be incoming it's still an outbound connection because your client initiated it, so you don't need to be connectable for that.
It's the seeding phase which is problematic because downloaders can't contact you to request parts. That said your client will still contact downloaders and offer parts, which again is an outbound connection so you don't need to be contactable.
In summary download speeds are uneffected, but seeding rates will be diminished. With most private trackers you can still satisfy seeding requirements just by keeping the torrent available for however long.
As an aside I use mullvad & wireguard. I've found wireguard dramatically easier to configure, particularly in a docker environment.
I’m not on any private trackers. I’d be interested, but not until I have a more dedicated setup; I’m still very much a casual torrenter.
It’s good news then if port forwarding won’t affect my downloads, because that was the only reason I wanted it, but I saw others online say that lacking that feature is what was causing me not to connect to peers shown in my torrent client. Any idea what’s up with that?
Any idea what’s up with that?
Not really. Either my explanation is wrong or theirs is. Honestly could be either.
There's so much misunderstanding and misinformation around torrenting.
All I know is that I've never had any problems downloading without being connectable. Never ever. It's just not an issue.
Additionally, the vast majority of people torrenting in 2023 are using a vpn and none (very few) of them will forward ports so it can't be a big deal.
Thirdly, there's a lot of piracy purists / elitists who just can't abide the idea that your set up may not have the best possible configuration for seeding. IMO, seeding on a residential connection is just a waste of time - download on a residential connection, seed on a VPS / seedbox.
Proton is the way to go. For $12 or whatever it is these days, I get a subscription to Proton VPN, Mail, Calandar, Drive, and Pass (a password manager). I also get 500gb of storage. The VPN is fast enough I leave it on all the time, even when gaming.
