Shanghai's Expats and Their Torrent of Passion
If you're thinking that I'm talking about gaggles of foreigners indulging in water-sports on the Huangpu River or Suzhou Creek after a downpour, or the amorous happenings on Julu Lu each evening, it is time to look at another webpage.
Almost every foreigner in Shanghai with an ounce of internet nouce knows what torrent downloading is. One of the downsides of living in a land with a culture & language that is far removed from your own is lack of cultural and entertainment stimulus from legal sources in China. CCTV9 is an amazing service in that it caters for non-Chinese, but really it is like watching paint dry. I sometimes flick through the other TV stations we get here and just marvel at (A) how much Chinese I don't know, and (B) how unappealing local productions are to my tastes. Yes, I still have a lot of Chinese media & entertainment appreciation classes to attend.
So for most expats, getting that fix of your favourite shows from back home is a welcomed respite from reruns of 'The Journey To The West' or Da Shan's "Travel In Chinese". The usual process involves a quick trip to your favourite DVD store/stall/dude on the street and pick up a pirated copy of the latest movie releases, or just box of the latest season release of your favourite TV shows. I've found that the boxed-sets of TV shows lead you into a quagmire of chain-episode watching where you may not leave the couch for a number of hours, or in the worst case, days. The ability to run through an entire season of (lets say for example, Lost) in one or two days definitely raises your appreciation for these productions, but also your appetite for more. Yes, boxed-TV sets are really the MSG of the expat entertainment world. You just want more despite how much you've already consumed.
The problem is, you quickly get up to date with all the shows you've missed and your left facing a six to twelve month wait before getting your hot little hands on the next season's episodes. But like me, you're too impatient, so you must rely on getting techamanological and obtain them from the net.
There's a number of ways to do this. I'm not going to write here about direct downloads or old P2P programs like Napster or Limewire, but rather write about how to use Torrent Clients and how you can expect they can perform in Shanghai. The reason I'm doing this is that I've been wrangling with other people's installs (and my own problems) recently, and thought I'd share the joy to a wider audience. Please note, you can use the BitTorrent protocol to distribute and download any type of computer file, but the content and legality of what you download is on your shoulders.
Software
I use a client called Azureus for my torrent downloads. Azureus along with µTorrent and BitComent are the most popular torrent clients. Comprehensive installation instructions are available from each software's distributors. To find the files to download, I use a number of different tracking sites. TorrentReactor, Demonoid, Mininova, and AussieTorrents are amongst my favourite general sites. There are thousands of torrent sites that specialise in all manner of files too.
Internet Service Provider
We use China Telecom personal ADSL here in Shanghai. We've used two different unlimited use ADSL plans. The basic 512K/512K and the fastest (as of today) 2M/512K plan. Private or business plans are available for faster DSL systems, and some areas have cable internet capability. I've never used these. The personal plans I mentioned should give theoretical maximum capped speeds of approximately 64Kbps/64Kbps and 256Kbps/64Kbps respectively. Practically speaking, the transfer rates are about 80% of the theoretical. The monthly charge cost for each plan is RMB130 and RMB150 respectively. RMB20 more per month gives a lot more bang for your kuai! If you're not sure what plan you have, call China Telecom on 10000. You can also ask for an English-speaking operator if you need to at this point.
Local Area Network
My home network is a combination of a TP-Link Ethernet ADSL Router used to connect to the China Telecom. This internet connection is shared throughout my home via a D-Link DI-624+ wireless router. When configured correctly, the rate of data transmission around my apartment is much much faster than my connection to the internet care of China Telecom. One other thing to mention is that Azureus requires a dedicated port to be opened in your network router and/or your computer to connect to the internet and to download files. Without opening a high-numbered port, you may receive connection errors (meaning Azureus can't connect to the internet). See this page on why this is important.
Performance & Troubleshooting of Azureus in Shanghai.
The maximum speed of internet connection provided by your internet provider will be the maximum rate at which you can download using Azureus. Thus for China Telecom's ADSL 2M/512K plan, the maximum download rate should be approximately 200Kbps. However, actually achieving this rate also depends on configuring your Azureus client correctly to take maximum advantage of what is available.
I'd recommend the use of the Azureus Wiki's guide to configure your Azureus client. This guide bases your Azureus client configuration upon your network's capability (i.e. how much you can share). The guide also recommends not utilizing your entire network's bandwidth, but rather use 80% of what is available to you. This frees up network traffic for other computer functions like email, websurfing and the like. My friends and I have independently observed that normal internet use and optimal download speeds can be obtained when you limit your Azureus upload rate to 30Kbps. This equates to approximately 60% of the maximum upload rate on unlimited China Telecom ADSL plans I have used.
Other factors affect how fast your files can be downloaded. Foremost is how many people are sharing the completed (seeds) or partially-completed file (peers). If the availability score for a particular torrent is above 70, you should have no problems achieving your calculated maximum rate if you have correctly configured your network and client. Some ISP's worldwide have also been known to monitor network connections and block traffic that appear to be transmitting P2P information. I haven't observed this yet in Shanghai. Such a move can easily countered by reconfiguring your Azureus client & your network router to open a different port. This takes a few minutes to do.
Here's a few links to help you get started if you're new to BitTorrent sharing.
Azureus: My choice for downloading. Works on all platforms, including Linux.
BitTorrent: The grandaddy of the torrent clients.
µTorrent: Elegant torrent client but for Windoze only.
Transmission: Simple, fast client for Mac.
AzureusWiki: contains are great FAQ on all things torrent releated, and how to do things with Azureus.
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Hey, cheers for the guide...Have China Telecom the nice 2mb connection, got td telecom wifi router connected to zte corporation zxdsl 831...How do I open the ports, accesing through 192.168.100.100 is no problem but its all in chinese...Havent found a guide for that, do u have to change both devices??? Give me a hint please..
Got Bittorent working,,,its downloading and got speeds, some files at 50k...But uploading hardly anything (1-2k)...Let me know your ports please
Pat,
Sorry about the silent response. Bloggging was not on my radar for the last month.
When you open ports on your router unit (either a dedicated router, or an ADSL modem + routing unit), you must allow traffic in both directions.
If you have a 1) wireless router and 2) ADSL modem with routing capabilities, these units could conflict. In such a case, you should configure the ADSL modem into a pass-through configuration which directs all internet traffic management to the wireless router.
A high level port (usually above 5000 in number) isn't blocked by your ISP. Azureus has a built-in plugin to check if your ports are active, as do other Torrent clients.
Cheers,
Tim
just happened to zip by this page--I don't live IN shanghai but I am frequently there for work...Just a FYI for all you torrent users, make sure you turn on traffic encryption so you can bypass the traffic shaping thus prevent the ISP and China Firewall from throttling your P2P traffic.
Encryption works great, here's the link:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Avoid_traffic_shaping
Note, that's for azureus, but i'm sure your other clients can take advantage of it too.
just happened to zip by this page--I don't live IN shanghai but I am frequently there for work...Just a FYI for all you torrent users, make sure you turn on traffic encryption so you can bypass the traffic shaping thus prevent the ISP and China Firewall from throttling your P2P traffic.
Encryption works great, here's the link:
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Avoid_traffic_shaping
Note, that's for azureus, but i'm sure your other clients can take advantage of it too.