this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2025
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Without port forwarding you can only connect to those who do have it set up. Doing so yourself allows you to be a better citizen of the internet and share with people who don't know what it is.
(Caveat: I am one of those people who don't understand it and am just parroting what was explained to me when I asked about this)
See my comment here. An open port is only required for TCP connections. uTP/UDP allows the tracker to open up a port temporarily in many cases. This won't work for those stuck with ancient torrent clients.
It also doesn't work with Private Trackers.
So it's more a seeding issue rather than a leeching issue in this case I assume.
well, you can't leech from people with closed ports so.. it's still worse. better to get something that can actually forward ports.
So Proton is okay then, or do you have a better suggestion? I'm trying to look through the megathread for info.
proton would be fine. i've heard great stuff about airvpn too. haven't used any though, i mostly don't use a vpn
I think it's both? I'm assuming you get fewer seeds you can connect to as well.
Either way, seeding issues are leeching issues, in the grand scheme of things.
Edit: I only stress the seed side because I've found I get things plenty fast even with Mullvad, so not explaining the issue and just talking about down speed can make it seem unnecessary, when it is in fact critical to the health of the community.
Probably the port forwarding was automatically set up by UPnP, which is also something that can't be done on a vpn without port forwarding. If you have a tracker, the torrent might also work, but then the tracker itself would have to be port forwarded.
Were you using a VPN at the time? I was under the impression that the issue is at standard anything involving ports just doesn't work with a VPN because it would be trying to get to the port on the VPN, which the VPN would rightly refuse unless you'd set it up to forward that port
Port forwarding allows you to seed without revealing your IP address. If you seed on a VPN and you don't have port forwarding, your IP is revealed to those you seed to.
Edit -- I was wrong. You can technically seed securely behind a VPN connection, but since you can't be connected to directly behind a vpn without port forwarding, you would only be able to seed to ppl who port forward, or who can be connected to directly. You would only be able to leech from everyone else.
If everyone torrented like this (behind a VPN without port forwarding), all torrents would grind to a halt; nobody would be able to seed.
Port forwarding allows connecting to peers who have not set it up (for both leeching and seeding). Two peers without port forwarding can't connect to each other, if you set it up you can connect to every peer in the swarm. Torrenting behing a VPN always hides your real IP address๐
No. Port forwarding, with or without a VPN, helps connectivity โ you'll be able to accept incoming connections.
Without a VPN, peers can see your IP address with or without port forwarding.
Doesn't that completely defeat the purpose of using a VPN?
If you were intending to seed, yes.
Do you know where I can learn more about this? That's a pretty important detail to be as glossed over as it is in this community
Not exactly sure, but playing with setting up your own VPN will give you an idea of it.
Essentially, the VPN is run on a remote server. When you connect to the VPN, your traffic gets masqueraded out through the remote server, and replies get natted back to you. If you tried setting up a webserver on your computer and then accessing the webserver on the VPN server IP, it wouldn't work, because the request coming in to the VPN server port would by default just reach the VPN server at that port.
This is where port forwarding comes in -- if the VPN server allows you to port forward, you can set port X on the VPN server to go to port Y on your router (which would likely also have to port forward on your router to get to your computer).