Client Side Implementation

Client side implementation of the bit torrent client is rather straight forward in 99.9% of the situations. You are basically going to a website where you can download a bit torrent client, download and install it and that’s it. However, there are some issues that may come up when dealing with the client side implementation of a bit torrent client.

First and foremost is a firewall. In general, most people’s firewall is set-up to automatically create rules that will allow a bit torrent client to gain access to a port of its or your choosing. However, this is not always the case as some people have their firewalls set-up to make no exceptions. If this is the case, the best way, and of course the easiest, is to change your firewall settings before installing the bit torrent client. If not, chances are, you will have to manually make an exception.

The bit torrent clients need access to a port in your computer. This is not a visual port, but rather a computer generated one. In many instances, you may already be utilizing some of your available ports. For example, if you access the internet to get your bit torrent client, you are connecting to another computer’s port 80.

It is these ports that allow simultaneous connections to the world. If you are in a network, and you have a router in your home or office, most likely you will have to access your router’s configuration and add the bit torrent client to create an exception. What this does, is it actually forwards any incoming connections that are asking for a particular port, directly to your computer. Otherwise, the incoming connection will not be allowed. Sometimes your ISP may be using a router of some type and therefore you may not be able to get them to forward a port request. Do not feel bad if this is the case, you can still download, but it may not be as fast. The reason it may be slow, is instead of another computer connecting to you, their computer will send a request to someone you have already been connected to you, which in turn, that request will be forwarded to you. This is known as pushing UDP, all that it does, is tells your bit torrent client to connect with them instead of them connecting to you. This is sometimes called a handshake as well.

You may notice if you ever check your stats with your bit torrent client that you only made X number of incoming connections, but you had X² “Handshakes.” These are instances where you connected to another computer instead of that computer connecting to you. It all works out in the long run as long as you download the file you wanted.

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