Bittorrent Dain Bramage

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sharp

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 9, 2003
Messages
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'It don't work. That's what's wrong with it.'

- THREE laptops. (Win 10 and a mostly dying Win Vista)
- Two different locations with different ISPs. (Charter and CenturyLink)
- Two VPNs who both reportly work great with torrents (PrivateTunnel and PIA)
- Two torrent programs (Popcorntime and qBittorent)
- Multiple uninstall/reinstalls of the VPNs and torrent programs.

...and NO BT worky with VPN on, YES BT worky without VPN.

While I can happily browse and stream and post and do any other thing than BT that I've found from either VPN on any site I visit, when I try pull down my favorite ISO... nothing. I click the magnet link (or such), the right program acts like it's going to run, but then nothing happens. No found peers, no anything.

Is the Tap Driver somehow borked? Is my DNS leak protection screwing up just BT? Both VPN tech support guys just offered a refund or 'ehh' after some lame 'reinstall it again' advice failed to move things forward.

Any help here would be great. There's an ISO I'd really like that I just can't find anywhere else, so I'm motivated. :D
 
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Without connecting to VPN can you download torrents? Try grabbing a legit/legal ISO of Linux and see if it works without the VPN.
 
Yes, that works fine. But either of the VPNs and no-go. Thus my thought the TAP driver must be borked; but on two different OSes? (Three now... an 8.1 system.) Whaaa? So it's 'something' I've done (clearly), but there's no common software (that I know of) between all systems.

...and edited first post to include that BT does work without the VPN, but it's the only thing that seems to die with (either) VPN. : /

...could I have done something stupid with ports/DNS/??? that is only used when a VPN is in place that is only impacted BT? Seems unlikely; but seems the most likely thing at this point.
 
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I use PIA myself and noted they are fucking things up with the TAP driver they include in their installer so, I found a solution (and I even posted it at the PIA user forums). Without this solution, using just the installer and the TAP driver that comes with it, on a 150Mbps cable connection (which I connect to using 11n 5 GHz Wi-Fi so I get around 75-90Mbps, the router belongs to a neighbor next door so I'm about 35 feet from it through one wall).

I would have issues with any torrent at all, even Linux distros like Ubuntu which are seeded up the ying yang and should be able to max out even my connection easily, I'd end up pulling down like 250-500KB/s (yes that's a max of about a half megabyte per second. I read through the PIA forums about the slow speed issue and noted a post by one person who said they'd rolled the TAP driver back to a previous one while keeping the latest PIA installed software and that resolved the issue for him so I tried it and had limited success. What you need to realize about using PIA itself is that the TAP driver is installed in the PIA directory and it's one that just doesn't seem to work.

With the plain old install of the PIA software and the TAP driver it includes if I do a speed test using PIA's own servers (they provide speed testing applets for each of their individual VPN servers) I'll get barely a max of 5-10Mbps and that's direct from them.

I had to clean install Windows 7 recently and here's what I did, these are the steps I followed for myself (done this several times so far) and they always work and get me the speed(s) I should have been getting in the first place:

1) Install the latest PIA software using their installer as expected, it will install everything in the C:\Program Files\pia_manager directory (assuming that yes you're using Windows of some kind and 64 bit, same directory on 32 bit actually)

2) When it's installed, connect for the first time so your info gets saved (login/password) then close it out and totally disconnect

3) Fire up a browser and visit this address (the OpenVPN releases directory: Index of /community/releases/

4) Scroll down to the bottom of the list and grab the tap-windows-9.9.2_3.exe installer, dated 22-Aug-2013 14:24 and 240536 bytes in size (I could have provided a direct link but didn't want to cause any problems)

5) Once downloaded, install that driver. It will install in the C:\Program Files\TAP-Windows directory (it doesn't go in the pia_manager directory by default because it's the native TAP driver)

6) Once installed, go into the \drivers subdirectory (in the TAP-Windows directory) and copy the three files (OemWin2k.inf, tap0901.cat, and tap0901.sys) to the Clipboard. Don't delete or remove them, just copy them for now (because manually installing the TAP driver does make some Registry changes over what the PIA installer does, I've noted).

7) Back up a level and go into the C:\Program Files\pia_manager directory and paste those 3 files directly into that folder - yes it'll balk at you, yes you have to click the UAC prompt to Copy/Replace the "original" files from the PIA installer - when you're done you'll have the TAP driver files in both locations which is what you want to have (hence not deleting them in the previous step)

8) Fire up PIA and get connected, do a speed test and I can pretty much guarantee you you'll see a big huge speed increase, not just with torrents (assuming everything else is working correctly, that is) but everything as it should be performing

After doing this those 5-10Mbps speed tests jumped to 60-80Mbps and of course the torrent speeds skyrocketed as well. Now, I can't absolutely guarantee this will solve all the speed issues, but if you are using PIA and paying for it, this should resolve any slowdowns you might be having with that service. I don't know why PIA hasn't updated their installer to use the TAP driver I'm talking about - if you check the version numbers they'll be the same which is odd because the actual driver files themselves don't match based on a SHA1 checksum hash, least not in my experience of using this setup.

But I get the speed(s) I'm paying for now based on this solution for PIA, if it works for you or anyone else that might be wondering why PIA is slow most of the time when it shouldn't be, this could be your solution. If PrivateTunnel uses the TAP driver as well this could potentially work for that service as well (never heard of it personally but I'm going to make an assumption that they probably do use TAP). Replacing their installed file version of the TAP driver with this one could as stated be a solution too - if they do use TAP and you try this solution for them as well let people know in this thread just in case someone else might be having similar issues.

Hope it helps. Also, magnet links work a bit differently and in my experience of using them there can be a very long delay before you get any activity on them, even on really popular torrents. I've had some just sit there for 5, sometimes as long as 8 minutes before anything happens then all of sudden wham it just goes nuts so, make sure to give such magnet connections no less than about 8-10 minutes before you give up on them entirely.

But then again this TAP solution I just provided might address that and more, you'll find out soon enough. ;)
 
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Holycrapisthatalotoftypingyoudidthere. Thank you. I'll give it a go this evening.
 
I type 115 wpm since the mid 1970s (and no CTS, ever!) so, it's like 2 minutes, tops. :D
 
Congrats, kinda figured things would turn around after that little fix, I get reports from people constantly about it resolving most if not every speed issue they have with PIA. Someday I suppose PIA will get it resolved with their installer, who knows.
 
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