Connected or Not Connected

You may have noticed that the right-margin below your profile name and credits used to always say "Connected: xx up, xx down". For years this would always say "Connected" no matter if your torrent port was forwarded correctly or not.

Well, some sysops, droz in particular, decided to make the site a better place (and droz has certainly put in the work to get things up to a modern platform). In the many bugs he's squashed, he also fixed the "always connected" bug.

Basically, if it says "Not Connected" within the margin that shows your current number of uploads and downloads, it means the tracker sees that your torrent port is closed. To fix this, you need to configure port forwarding for your network connection to your torrent client.

You can test if your port is forwarded by using any of the numerous online port scanning tools by inputting your IP and Port that would lead to your torrent client. For example, if your torrent client listens on port 485682 then use that as the port number.

What are the drawbacks of being Not Connected? Here are the 4 possible combinations within a peer-to-peer connection:

Downloader, closed port ---> Seeder, closed port: Tough luck! No data is transferred between these two individuals.
Downloader, closed port ---> Seeder, open port: Instant! Data begins to instantly transfer from seeder to downloader.
Downloader, open port ---> Seeder, closed port: Bummer. Need to wait until Seed sees and connects back to you. Data transfer is started up to 30min (or tracker refresh time) later.
Downloader, open port ---> Seeder, open port: Instant! in either direction

As you can see, data will only transfer between a seeder and a leecher if and only if at least one peer is connectable (open port). Peer-to-Peer networking requires this basic fundamental. We understand certain connections are out of your control. Just understand that you are the one who suffers the consequences with poor performance if you are Not Connected.

Every network configuration is unique for each user. We can only help so much.
Please click this link to view the wiki page before joining IRC #help

If you have a VPN, you need to check with your provider to see if they support it, and how to setup port forwarding. It is different for each provider. If your ISP uses a CGNAT then port forwarding won't be possible without using a VPN that supports it.

Thanks,
PreToMe