trackers offline (timed out). uTorrent forum search was no help

[Nikaido]

So yea, these past couple of days uTorrent hasn't been wanting to connect to trackers. They've been saying "offline (timed out)" so I searched the uTorrent forums to see what the culprit is.

-First they said, "it may be that the settings were recently changed," but I haven't changed them in months (last time I did an OS reinstall). So that couldn't be it, since it was working fine earlier this week.
-Then they said, "have you tried manually updating?" But if it was that easy I would've already have the problem fixed, since that's the first thing I did.
-Then they said, "it could be your router," but my comp's connected directly to the modem. So that one was a dud as well.
-Next they said, "your ISP could have the P2P feature blocked or be throttling their network." But that's not it since Frostwire works fine, and the torrents are still able to download using the [peer exchange] connection at descent speeds.
-Then they said, "well piratebay's tracker got shutdown so that could be it." I already knew that but mine doesn't connect to any tracker, openbittorrent, torrentbox, etc. But strangely Bakabt's tracker works perfectly fine.
-Then they said, "well the tracker may be overwhelmed, wait several hours and it should be able to get a connection." It's been 4 freakin' days. And still not one sign of a connection. Even if it had connected when I was gone I would have seen a change in the torrent's percentage the next time I checked it.
-I even checked my firewall's settings and everything checks out fine.
-I tried shutting off UPnP, DHT, and IP Resolve (consecutively) and still no success.
-I even tried updating to the latest build of uTorrent 1.8.5 but it's still getting the same problem. And yes, I did make sure to delete the previous settings when I uninstalled it.

So, any ideas...

[EDIT] Oh crap, sorry for posting in the wrong section but for some reason the trackers subforum link didn't show up on my browser, only the posts in this section. Then finally once I finished posting it showed up. Someone mind moving this topic for me please?

[Arveene]

Try removing all but one of the trackers from the tracker list. See if that changes anything.

Edit: It's really not an issue with OUR tracker though so there's no reason to move it. Also there aren't many reasons to have it here at all. I'm curious though because it doesn't work anywhere but here.

[Xiong Chiamiov]

A link to the actual uTorrent forums thread would be helpful, so we don't have to rely upon summaries.

[Nikaido]

actually those suggestions were from 6 or 7 different threads (from looking through about 10-15 pages of threads). And I have my browser set up to delete my history whenever I close the program, so I can't necessarily backtrack to it.

[vuzedome]

It its not private, try relying on DHT for a while.

[Nikaido]

I did, for four days, but some of the torrents I have only have seeds on the trackers. At least the really important one has seeds on [Peer Exchange]. I need that one for college. Also I don't use private trackers, at least not now, maybe in the near future.

oh and Arveene, your advice didn't work.  

[Lupin]

A few suggestions:

1. Reset your modem.
2. Use openDNS servers for your DNS.
3. Are you using any firewalls? Make sure uTorrent is allowed to connect to internet
4. Are you using any software like Peer Guardian that blocks connections to certain IP addresses? Make sure bakabt (as well as other trackers) aren't blocked.

[isukianime]

in addition to the other suggestions

Options > Preferences > Bittorrent > Protocol Encryption > Outgoing > Forced

[Slykester]

-Next they said, "your ISP could have the P2P feature blocked or be throttling their network." But that's not it since Frostwire works fine, and the torrents are still able to download using the [peer exchange] connection at descent speeds.

Does that mean your problems are solved by switching client? These trackers work fine in frostwire but not utorrent? Offline implies destination reachable, but you could also check a trace route to host (perhaps your isp has a routing problem).

The only other thing I can think of is to proxy your tracker communications temporarily to see if that halps.

-First they said, "it may be that the settings were recently changed," but I haven't changed them in months (last time I did an OS reinstall). So that couldn't be it, since it was working fine earlier this week.

Which OS? and..

(click to show/hide)

wat u do?

[Nikaido]

Does that mean your problems are solved by switching client? These trackers work fine in frostwire but not utorrent? Offline implies destination reachable, but you could also check a trace route to host (perhaps your isp has a routing problem).

No using another client didn't work and I tried two (bitcomet & bittorrent). And I meant that regular frostwire downloads still work. Plus the uTorrent peer exchange still works.

1. Reset your modem.
2. Use openDNS servers for your DNS.
3. Are you using any firewalls? Make sure uTorrent is allowed to connect to internet
4. Are you using any software like Peer Guardian that blocks connections to certain IP addresses? Make sure bakabt (as well as other trackers) aren't blocked.

1.Tried that 5 times already.
2. Don't know how to use an openDNS server, maybe I should learn.
3. If you read my first post you would've seen that I had already checked to see if that was the case.
4. I don't have anything like that on my comp.

Which OS? and..

(click to show/hide)

wat u do?

XP home SP3, and the only change that I made was limit the max upload rate from 60kB/s to 40kB/s. But after re-installation of uTorrent I left it with the default settings for a 640k connection type which is 60kB/s.

Options > Preferences > Bittorrent > Protocol Encryption > Outgoing > Forced

Tried that, didn't work.

I still don't understand why Bakabt's tracker is the only one that works. It doesn't make any sense that that one would work, but others don't.

here's 2 print-screens of my uTorrent trackers for 2 different torrents:
Bakabt - http://img38.imagefra.me/img/img38/1/12/3/nikaido/f_13lkbusn7tm_b2ce058.png
others - http://img37.imagefra.me/img/img37/1/12/3/nikaido/f_13lkbusn7um_812c5b4.png

[Arc-sama]

I'm wondering if your IP is blocking access to those trackers.


Try doing this ... open the command prompt (usually in start > programs > accessories)

type this in tracert and the tracker address ...
(note: you don't type in the full address, just the main part of it)

examples: tracert tracker.publicbt.co m  or tracert tracker bt1.cdres.cn


It should scroll & give you the hop points with a number ms and the IP address for that hop ... if there are any * that point has timed out.  It should show you if you actually get a connection or if there is blockage between you and the site.

This will give you an idea if you are connecting or not. If it's slow, where it's having the slow down.

[Xiong Chiamiov]

Google just started their own DNS service; it's a bit easier to setup than OpenDNS, I believe.

[Nikaido]

Here's my traceroute and there was no lag between hops. And I'm sorry it's an image file since the "forward to text file" command doesn't want to work properly (pop up the file after trace finishes).

[Arc-sama]

It looks like there is lots of traffic after the 19th hop ... that is what the asterisks means. 

That is probably why you are getting the offline notices, but it looks like you are connected thru the DHT connection.

It may clear up later or stay like that depending on the tracker.  Some places are switching to this new technology of magnet links so it doesn't use a tracker at all.

(guys feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that)

[Nikaido]

Well come to find out my ISP has most likely started to block torrents (I found this out with a lot help from a guy named Switeck on uTorrent's irc channel).  And they're being tricky too, because Glasnost saw no problems.

So I got a proxy to handle authentication, but now the trackers say, "Connection Closed by Peer" on every tracker. I was looking on the proxie's managing client, and in the message board it says this for every connection, "Blocked_Protocol: Blocked_Protocol # HTTP.GET.BitTorrent _Tracker". Switeck says that the proxy blocks the bittorrent protocol.

I'm wondering if you guys could suggest a free proxy that does allow this protocol. I am currently using YOUR FREEDOM which seems not to.

On another note: Come to find out why Bakabt's tracker is still working is because the tracker's announcement ends with a .php extension, instead of just being "/announcement". Well even if I'm not able to get the proxies to work, at least I won't miss out on watching anime.

[isukianime]

Well come to find out my ISP has most likely started to block torrents (I found this out with a lot help from a guy named Switeck on uTorrent's irc channel).  And they're being tricky too, because Glasnost saw no problems.

So I got a proxy to handle authentication, but now the trackers say, "Connection Closed by Peer" on every tracker. I was looking on the proxie's managing client, and in the message board it says this for every connection, "Blocked_Protocol: Blocked_Protocol # HTTP.GET.BitTorrent _Tracker". Switeck says that the proxy blocks the bittorrent protocol.

I'm wondering if you guys could suggest a free proxy that does allow this protocol. I am currently using YOUR FREEDOM which seems not to.

On another note: Come to find out why Bakabt's tracker is still working is because the tracker's announcement ends with a .php extension, instead of just being "/announcement". Well even if I'm not able to get the proxies to work, at least I won't miss out on watching anime.

dslreports.com is an excellent site to find out if your ISP is blocking torrents.

regarding the Forced Encryption suggestion you did leave it like that for a few hours right. It takes awhile for torrents to get moving when that's on.

also if that turns out to be the case...either subscribe to newsgroups or get a seedbox. you download stuff on your seedbox and ftp it back to your computer.

[K7IA]

On another note: Come to find out why Bakabt's tracker is still working is because the tracker's announcement ends with a .php extension, instead of just being "/announcement". Well even if I'm not able to get the proxies to work, at least I won't miss out on watching anime.

bakabt's tracker seems to work without the .php extention

like http://tracker.bakabt.com:2710/{your_key}/announce

if when you change the url to the form above, you can not connect to the bakabt tracker with the same error, you can narrow the cause of error imo

good luck

[Nikaido]

Yea the thing is that it seems that my ISP is only set up to block trackers that end in /announce, not one that has an extension.

regarding the Forced Encryption suggestion you did leave it like that for a few hours right. It takes awhile for torrents to get moving when that's on.

It's been on for a day and a half and still no connections.

dslreports.com is an excellent site to find out if your ISP is blocking torrents.

No help there, only thing they had on the company (in the whole site) was a small summary of their services. http://www.dslreports.com/reviews/2617

[K7IA]

Yea the thing is that it seems that my ISP is only set up to block trackers that end in /announce, not one that has an extension.

in that case I suggest adding a suffix to the announce url (i.e. tracker.openbittore nt.com/announce.blah) and see if that works for you

if it works, it will mean that any dns workarounds will not help you. I don't know if url encoding works though

if proxy fails, only a change of announce path on the tracker or a https connection to the tracker can deal with that kind of filtering