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Welcome!

FAQ will be updated shortly to reflect the new changes.

Our goal is not to become just another Torrent tracker. Our goal is to provide useful and latest Study materials. If you have access to 0-day stuff do not hesitate to contact us!

This is a private tracker, and you have to register before you can get full access to the site. Before you do anything here we suggest you read the rules! There are only a few rules to abide by, but we do enforce them!

Before you go any further you should read the our user agreement.
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Contents



Site information


What is this bittorrent all about anyway? How do I get the files?

Check out Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide.


Where does the donated money go?

Read the Donate page for more info


Where can I get a copy of the source code?

Dunno.


User information

I registered an account but did not receive the confirmation e-mail!

You can use this form to delete the account so you can re-register. Note though that if you didn't receive the email the first time it will probably not succeed the second time either so you should really try another email address.


I've lost my user name or password! Can you send it to me?

Please use this link to enter our IRC channel and ask an admin to reset your password. wait till they are around if you do not get any response.


Can you rename my account?

Sorry We do not rename accounts.


Can you delete my (confirmed) account?

You can do it yourself by using this form.


So, what's MY ratio?

Click on your profile, then on your user name (at the top).

It's important to distinguish between your overall ratio and the individual ratio on each torrent you may be seeding or leeching. The overall ratio takes into account the total uploaded and downloaded from your account since you joined the site. The individual ratio takes into account those values for each torrent.

You may see two symbols instead of a number: "Inf.", which is just an abbreviation for Infinity, and means that you have downloaded 0 bytes while uploading a non-zero amount (ul/dl becomes infinity); "---", which should be read as "non-available", and shows up when you have both downloaded and uploaded 0 bytes (ul/dl = 0/0 which is an indeterminate amount).


Why is my IP displayed on my details page?

Only you and the site moderators can view your IP address and email. Regular users do not see that information.


Help! I cannot login!? (a.k.a. Login of Death)

This problem sometimes occurs with MSIE. Close all Internet Explorer windows and open Internet Options in the control panel. Click the Delete Cookies button. You should now be able to login.


My IP address is dynamic. How do I stay logged in?

You do not have to anymore. All you have to do is make sure you are logged in with your actual IP when starting a torrent session. After that, even if the IP changes mid-session, the seeding or leeching will continue and the statistics will update without any problem.


Why am I listed as not connectable? (And why should I care?)

The tracker has determined that you are firewalled or NATed and cannot accept incoming connections.

This means that other peers in the swarm will be unable to connect to you, only you to them. Even worse, if two peers are both in this state they will not be able to connect at all. This has obviously a detrimental effect on the overall speed.

The way to solve the problem involves opening the ports used for incoming connections (the same range you defined in your client) on the firewall and/or configuring your NAT server to use a basic form of NAT for that range instead of NAPT (the actual process differs widely between different router models. Check your router documentation and/or support forum. You will also find lots of information on the subject at PortForward).


What are the different user classes?

  User   The default class of new members.
  Power User   These are members who are active and have a good ratio
  Star   Has donated money to Bitspyder.
  Privileged User   Same privileges as Power User and will have exclusive access to snatched list and other features.
  VIP   Same privileges as Power User and is considered an Elite Member. Immune to automatic demotion.
  VVIP   Same privileges as VIP and is the highest class a user can reach.
  Uploader   Same as VIP except with upload rights and immune to automatic demotion.
  Moderator   Can edit and delete any uploaded torrents. Can also moderate user comments and disable accounts.
  Administrator   Can do just about anything.
  SysOp   SysOp (site owner).


How does this promotion thing work anyway?

  Power User   Must have been be a member for at least 4 weeks, have uploaded at least 15GB and have a ratio at or above 1.05.
The promotion is automatic when these conditions are met. Note that you will be automatically demoted from
this status if your ratio drops below 0.95 at any time.
  Star   Just donate, and send SysOp - and only SysOp - the details.
  Privileged User   Assigned by the staff according to the performance and dedication of the user. be active in the forums , IRC channel and have a wonderful ratio. (Anyone begging for Privileged User status will be automatically disqualified.)
  VIP   Assigned by the staff at their discretion to users they feel contribute something special to the site.
(Anyone begging for VIP status will be automatically disqualified.)
  VVIP   You must be someone really special to reach this class
(Anyone begging for VIP status will be automatically disqualified.)
  Uploader   Appointed by Admins/SysOp - will have all the privileges of a VIP class (Contact SysOp if you would like to be one).
  Moderator   You don't ask us, we'll ask you!


Hey! I've seen Power Users with less than 15GB uploaded!

The PU limit used to be 10GB and we didn't demote anyone when we raised it to 15GB.


Why can't my friend become a member?

There is a limit on user registration. When that number is reached we stop accepting new members. Accounts inactive for more than 42 days are automatically deleted, so keep trying. (There is no reservation or queuing system, don't ask for that.)


How do I add an avatar to my profile?

First, find an image that you like, and that is within the rules. Then you will have to find a place to host it, such as Photobucket, Upload-It! or ImageShack). All that is left to do is copy the URL you were given when uploading it to the avatar field in your profile.

Please do not make a post just to test your avatar. If everything is allright you'll see it in your details page.


Stats


Most common reason for stats not updating

  • The user is cheating. (a.k.a. "Summary Ban")
  • The server is overloaded and unresponsive. Just try to keep the session open until the server responds again. (Flooding the server with consecutive manual updates is not recommended.)
  • You are using a faulty client. If you want to use an experimental or CVS version you do it at your own risk.

Best practices

  • If a torrent you are currently leeching/seeding is not listed on your profile, just wait or force a manual update.
  • Make sure you exit your client properly, so that the tracker receives "event=completed".
  • If the tracker is down, do not stop seeding. As long as the tracker is back up before you exit the client the stats should update properly.

May I use any bittorrent client?

Yes. The tracker now updates the stats correctly for all bittorrent clients. However, we still recommend that you avoid the following clients:

• Bitcomet,
• Bitlord,
• Bitspirit,
• BitTorrent++,
• Nova Torrent,
• TorrentStorm.

These clients do not report correctly to the tracker when canceling/finishing a torrent session. If you use them then a few MB may not be counted towards the stats near the end, and torrents may still be listed in your profile for some time after you have closed the client.

Also, clients in alpha or beta version should be avoided.
We strongly recommend Windows users to use either µTorrent or Azureus.


Why is a torrent I'm leeching/seeding listed several times in my profile?

If for some reason (e.g. pc crash, or frozen client) your client exits improperly and you restart it, it will have a new peer_id, so it will show as a new torrent. The old one will never receive a "event=completed" or "event=stopped" and will be listed until some tracker timeout. Just ignore it, it will eventually go away.


I've finished or cancelled a torrent. Why is it still listed in my profile?

Some clients, notably TorrentStorm and Nova Torrent, do not report properly to the tracker when canceling or finishing a torrent. In that case the tracker will keep waiting for some message - and thus listing the torrent as seeding or leeching - until some timeout occurs. Just ignore it, it will eventually go away.


Why do I sometimes see torrents I'm not leeching in my profile!?

When a torrent is first started, the tracker uses the IP to identify the user. Therefore the torrent will become associated with the user who last accessed the site from that IP. If you share your IP in some way (you are behind NAT/ICS, or using a proxy), and some of the persons you share it with are also users, you may occasionally see their torrents listed in your profile. (If they start a torrent session from that IP and you were the last one to visit the site the torrent will be associated with you). Note that now torrents listed in your profile will always count towards your total stats.

To make sure your torrents show up in your profile you should visit the site immediately before starting a session.

(The only way to completely stop foreign torrents from showing in profiles is to forbid users without an individual IP from accessing the site. Yes, that means you. Complain at your own risk.)


Multiple IPs (Can I login from different computers?)

Yes, the tracker is now capable of following sessions from different IPs for the same user. A torrent is associated with the user when it starts, and only at that moment is the IP relevant. So if you want to seed/leech from computer A and computer B with the same account you should access the site from computer A, start the torrent there, and then repeat both steps from computer B (not limited to two computers or to a single torrent on each, this is just the simplest example). You do not need to login again when closing the torrent.


How does NAT/ICS change the picture?

This is a very particular case in that all computers in the LAN will appear to the outside world as having the same IP. We must distinguish between two cases:

1. You are the single Bitspyder users in the LAN

You should use the same Bitspyder account in all the computers.

Note also that in the ICS case it is preferable to run the BT client on the ICS gateway. Clients running on the other computers will be unconnectable (they will be listed as such, as explained elsewhere in the FAQ) unless you specify the appropriate services in your ICS configuration (a good explanation of how to do this for Windows XP can be found here). In the NAT case you should configure different ranges for clients on different computers and create appropriate NAT rules in the router. (Details vary widely from router to router and are outside the scope of this FAQ. Check your router documentation and/or support forum.)


2. There are multiple Bitspyder users in the LAN

At present there is no way of making this setup always work properly with Bitspyder. Each torrent will be associated with the user who last accessed the site from within the LAN before the torrent was started. Unless there is cooperation between the users mixing of statistics is possible. (User A accesses the site, downloads a .torrent file, but does not start the torrent immediately. Meanwhile, user B accesses the site. User A then starts the torrent. The torrent will count towards user B's statistics, not user A's.)

It is your LAN, the responsibility is yours. Do not ask us to ban other users with the same IP, we will not do that. (Why should we ban him instead of you?)




Uploading


Can I upload your torrents to other trackers?

No. We are a closed, limited-membership community. Only registered users can use our tracker. Posting our torrents on other trackers is useless, since most people who attempt to download them will be unable to connect with us. This generates a lot of frustration and bad-will against us at Bitspyder, and will therefore not be tolerated.

Complaints from other sites' administrative staff about our torrents being posted on their sites will result in the banning of the users responsible.

(However, the files you download from us are yours to do as you please. You can always create another torrent, pointing to some other tracker, and upload it to the site of your choice.)


Downloading


How do I use the files I've downloaded?

Check out this guide.


Downloaded a movie and don't know what CAM/TS/TC/SCR means?

Check out this guide.


Why did an active torrent suddenly disappear?

There may be three reasons for this:
(1) The torrent may have been out-of-sync with the site rules.
(2) The uploader may have deleted it because it was a bad release. A replacement will probably be uploaded to take its place.
(3) Torrents remaning inactive for 15 days will get deleted automatically.


How do I resume a broken download or reseed something?

Open the .torrent file. When your client asks you for a location, choose the location of the existing file(s) and it will resume/reseed the torrent.


Why do my downloads sometimes stall at 99%?

The more pieces you have, the harder it becomes to find peers who have pieces you are missing. That is why downloads sometimes slow down or even stall when there are just a few percent remaining. Just be patient and you will, sooner or later, get the remaining pieces.


What are these "a piece has failed an hash check" messages?

Bittorrent clients check the data they receive for integrity. When a piece fails this check it is automatically re-downloaded. Occasional hash fails are a common occurrence, and you shouldn't worry.

Some clients have an (advanced) option/preference to 'kick/ban clients that send you bad data' or similar. It should be turned on, since it makes sure that if a peer repeatedly sends you pieces that fail the hash check it will be ignored in the future.


The torrent is supposed to be 100MB. How come I downloaded 120MB?

See the hash fails topic. If your client receives bad data it will have to redownload it, therefore the total downloaded may be larger than the torrent size. Make sure the "kick/ban" option is turned on to minimize the extra downloads.


Why do I get a "rejected by tracker - Port xxxx is blacklisted" error?

Your client is reporting to the tracker that it uses one of the default bittorrent ports (6881-6889) or any other common p2p port for incoming connections.

Bitspyder does not allow clients to use ports commonly associated with p2p protocols. The reason for this is that it is a common practice for ISPs to throttle those ports (that is, limit the bandwidth, hence the speed).

The blocked ports list include, but is not neccessarily limited to, the following:

Direct Connect
411 - 413
Kazaa
1214
eDonkey
4662
Gnutella
6346 - 6347
BitTorrent
6881 - 6889

In order to use use our tracker you must configure your client to use any port range that does not contain those ports (a range within the region 49152 through 65535 is preferable, cf. IANA). Notice that some clients, like Azureus 2.0.7.0 or higher, use a single port for all torrents, while most others use one port per open torrent. The size of the range you choose should take this into account (typically less than 10 ports wide. There is no benefit whatsoever in choosing a wide range, and there are possible security implications).

These ports are used for connections between peers, not client to tracker. Therefore this change will not interfere with your ability to use other trackers (in fact it should increase your speed with torrents from any tracker, not just ours). Your client will also still be able to connect to peers that are using the standard ports. If your client does not allow custom ports to be used, you will have to switch to one that does.

Do not ask us, or in the forums, which ports you should choose. The more random the choice is the harder it will be for ISPs to catch on to us and start limiting speeds on the ports we use. If we simply define another range ISPs will start throttling that range also.

Finally, remember to forward the chosen ports in your router and/or open them in your firewall, should you have them. See the Why am I listed as not connectable?  section and links therein for more information on this.


What's this "IOError - [Errno13] Permission denied" error?

If you just want to fix it reboot your computer, it should solve the problem. Otherwise read on.

IOError means Input-Output Error, and that is a file system error, not a tracker one. It shows up when your client is for some reason unable to open the partially downloaded torrent files. The most common cause is two instances of the client to be running simultaneously: the last time the client was closed it somehow didn't really close but kept running in the background, and is therefore still locking the files, making it impossible for the new instance to open them.

A more uncommon occurrence is a corrupted FAT. A crash may result in corruption that makes the partially downloaded files unreadable, and the error ensues. Running scandisk should solve the problem. (Note that this may happen only if you're running Windows 9x - which only support FAT - or NT/2000/XP with FAT formatted hard drives. NTFS is much more robust and should never permit this problem.)




How can I improve my download speed?


The download speed mostly depends on the seeder-to-leecher ratio (SLR). Poor download speed is mainly a problem with new and very popular torrents where the SLR is low.

(Proselytising sidenote: make sure you remember that you did not enjoy the low speed. Seed so that others will not endure the same.)

There are a couple of things that you can try on your end to improve your speed:


Do not immediately jump on new torrents

In particular, do not do it if you have a slow connection. The best speeds will be found around the half-life of a torrent, when the SLR will be at its highest. (The downside is that you will not be able to seed so much. It's up to you to balance the pros and cons of this.)


Make yourself connectable

See the Why am I listed as not connectable?  section.


Limit your upload speed

The upload speed affects the download speed in essentially two ways:
  • Bittorrent peers tend to favour those other peers that upload to them. This means that if A and B are leeching the same torrent and A is sending data to B at high speed then B will try to reciprocate. So due to this effect high upload speeds lead to high download speeds.
  • Due to the way TCP works, when A is downloading something from B it has to keep telling B that it received the data sent to him. (These are called acknowledgements - ACKs -, a sort of "got it!" messages). If A fails to do this then B will stop sending data and wait. If A is uploading at full speed there may be no bandwidth left for the ACKs and they will be delayed. So due to this effect excessively high upload speeds lead to low download speeds.
The full effect is a combination of the two. The upload should be kept as high as possible while allowing the ACKs to get through without delay. A good thumb rule is keeping the upload at about 80% of the theoretical upload speed. You will have to fine tune yours to find out what works best for you. (Remember that keeping the upload high has the additional benefit of helping with your ratio.)

If you are running more than one instance of a client it is the overall upload speed that you must take into account. Some clients (e.g. Azureus) limit global upload speed, others (e.g. Shad0w's) do it on a per torrent basis. Know your client. The same applies if you are using your connection for anything else (e.g. browsing or ftp), always think of the overall upload speed.


Limit the number of simultaneous connections

Some operating systems (like Windows 9x) do not deal well with a large number of connections, and may even crash. Also some home routers (particularly when running NAT and/or firewall with stateful inspection services) tend to become slow or crash when having to deal with too many connections. There are no fixed values for this, you may try 60 or 100 and experiment with the value. Note that these numbers are additive, if you have two instances of a client running the numbers add up.


Limit the number of simultaneous uploads

Isn't this the same as above? No. Connections limit the number of peers your client is talking to and/or downloading from. Uploads limit the number of peers your client is actually uploading to. The ideal number is typically much lower than the number of connections, and highly dependent on your (physical) connection.


Just give it some time

As explained above peers favour other peers that upload to them. When you start leeching a new torrent you have nothing to offer to other peers and they will tend to ignore you. This makes the starts slow, in particular if, by change, the peers you are connected to include few or no seeders. The download speed should increase as soon as you have some pieces to share.


Why is my browsing so slow while leeching?

Your download speed is always finite. If you are a peer in a fast torrent it will almost certainly saturate your download bandwidth, and your browsing will suffer. You can use clients like Azureus, µTorrent or ABC that can limit download speed.

Browsing was used just as an example, the same would apply to gaming, IMing, etc...


My ISP uses a transparent proxy. What should I do?


Caveat: This is a large and complex topic. It is not possible to cover all variations here.

Short reply: change to an ISP that does not force a proxy upon you. If you cannot or do not want to then read on.

What is a proxy?

Basically a middleman. When you are browsing a site through a proxy your requests are sent to the proxy and the proxy forwards them to the site instead of you connecting directly to the site. There are several classifications (the terminology is far from standard):

 Transparent   A transparent proxy is one that needs no configuration on the clients. It works by automatically redirecting all port 80 traffic to the proxy. (Sometimes used as synonymous for non-anonymous.)
 Explicit/Voluntary   Clients must configure their browsers to use them.
 Anonymous   The proxy sends no client identification to the server. (HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header is not sent; the server does not see your IP.)
 Highly Anonymous   The proxy sends no client nor proxy identification to the server. (HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, HTTP_VIA and HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION headers are not sent; the server doesn't see your IP and doesn't even know you're using a proxy.)
 Public   (Self explanatory)

A transparent proxy may or may not be anonymous, and there are several levels of anonymity.


How do I find out if I'm behind a (transparent/anonymous) proxy?

Try ProxyJudge. It lists the HTTP headers that the server where it is running received from you. The relevant ones are HTTP_CLIENT_IP, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR and REMOTE_ADDR.


Why am I listed as not connectable even though I'm not NAT/Firewalled?

The Bitspyder tracker is quite smart at finding your real IP, but it does need the proxy to send the HTTP header HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR. If your ISP's proxy does not then what happens is that the tracker will interpret the proxy's IP address as the client's IP address. So when you login and the tracker tries to connect to your client to see if you are NAT/firewalled it will actually try to connect to the proxy on the port your client reports to be using for incoming connections. Naturally the proxy will not be listening on that port, the connection will fail and the tracker will think you are NAT/firewalled.


Can I bypass my ISP's proxy?

If your ISP only allows HTTP traffic through port 80 or blocks the usual proxy ports then you would need to use something like socks and that is outside the scope of this FAQ.

The site accepts connections on port 81 besides the usual 80, and using them may be enough to fool some proxies.

Otherwise you may try the following:
  • Choose any public non-anonymous proxy that does not use port 80 (e.g. from this, this or this list).
  • Configure your computer to use that proxy. For Windows XP, do Start, Control Panel, Internet Options, Connections, LAN Settings, Use a Proxy server, Advanced and type in the IP and port of your chosen proxy. Or from Internet Explorer use Tools, Internet Options, ...
  • (Facultative) Visit ProxyJudge. If you see an HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR in the list followed by your IP then everything should be ok, otherwise choose another proxy and try again.
  • Visit Bitspyder. Hopefully the tracker will now pickup your real IP (check your profile to make sure).

Notice that now you will be doing all your browsing through a public proxy, which are typically quite slow. Communications between peers do not use port 80 so their speed will not be affected by this, and should be better than when you were "unconnectable".


How do I make my bittorrent client use a proxy?

Just configure Windows XP as above. When you configure a proxy for Internet Explorer you're actually configuring a proxy for all HTTP traffic (thank Microsoft and their "IE as part of the OS policy" ). On the other hand if you use another browser (Opera/Mozilla/Firefox) and configure a proxy there you'll be configuring a proxy just for that browser. We don't know of any BT client that allows a proxy to be specified explicitly.


Why can't I signup from behind a proxy?
It is our policy not to allow new accounts to be opened from behind a proxy.


Does this apply to other torrent sites?

This section was written for Bitspyder, a closed, port 80-81 tracker. Other trackers may be open or closed, and many listen on e.g. ports 6868 or 6969. The above does not necessarily apply to other trackers.


Why can't I connect? Is the site blocking me?


Your failure to connect may be due to several reasons.


Maybe my address is blacklisted?

The site blocks addresses listed in the (former) PeerGuardian database, as well as addresses of banned users. This works at Apache/PHP level, it's just a script that blocks logins from those addresses. It should not stop you from reaching the site. In particular it does not block lower level protocols, you should be able to ping/traceroute the server even if your address is blacklisted. If you cannot then the reason for the problem lies elsewhere.

If somehow your address is indeed blocked in the PG database do not contact us about it, it is not our policy to open ad hoc exceptions. You should clear your IP with the database maintainers instead.


Your ISP blocks the site's address

(In first place, it's unlikely your ISP is doing so. DNS name resolution and/or network problems are the usual culprits.)
There's nothing we can do. You should contact your ISP (or get a new one). Note that you can still visit the site via a proxy, follow the instructions in the relevant section. In this case it doesn't matter if the proxy is anonymous or not, or which port it listens to.

Notice that you will always be listed as an "unconnectable" client because the tracker will be unable to check that you're capable of accepting incoming connections.


Alternate port (81)



What if I can't find the answer to my problem here?


Post in the Forums, by all means. You'll find they are usually a friendly and helpful place, provided you follow a few basic guidelines:
  • Make sure your problem is not really in this FAQ. There's no point in posting just to be sent back here.
  • Before posting read the sticky topics (the ones at the top). Many times new information that still hasn't been incorporated in the FAQ can be found there.
  • Help us in helping you. Do not just say "it doesn't work!". Provide details so that we don't have to guess or waste time asking. What client do you use? What's your OS? What's your network setup? What's the exact error message you get, if any? What are the torrents you are having problems with? The more you tell the easiest it will be for us, and the more probable your post will get a reply.
  • And needless to say: be polite. Demanding help rarely works, asking for it usually does the trick.

FAQ edited 23-09-2006 (08:36 GMT)