Tips About Using Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Torrent Software
First of all, P2P (Peer to Peer) networks are not illegal by any means. Many users and businesses have them within their infrastructure and you may not even know it. Whether material used via a torrent that is shared simultaneously or downloaded is illegal is open to subjective debate.
There are millions of users worldwide that use P2P to watch TV shows or movies with available torrent software. There is Popcorn-time, Cinema time and others that have a Netflix style interface. Regardless of the interface, users need to understand the process of P2P in order to maximize enjoyment.
There are several connections that all need to be working for files to be shared. The first is a stable and fast Internet connection from your ISP. Many ISP's have speed boosters for an additional price that should be purchased to increase upload and download speeds. Another connection is the torrent connection that needs to be secure. The P2P connection must equally be fast and secure. It is possible that your Internet connection is good, yet, one of the other connections has failed, which stops your file sharing or download. All connections must be working for P2P to work. Most of it is out of your control as a user.
P2P users should always use a VPN ( this is yet another connection that must be working) if you feel the files are private. VPN is used all over and just because you use it does not mean something nefarious is occurring. Assuming your Internet connection is fast, launch the VPN, then launch your P2P software.
Assuming everything remains connected and your software allows you to monitor how many peers and speed is occurring, you can project if the connection is good. This connection fluctuates during the use, it may suddenly drop or spike much faster.
The general rule is that the more peers that are using the same item (whether it is a file, TV show, movie) the faster file sharing or download occurs. This is what you want. Some torrent software will rate the connection as bad, medium, good, or excellent. Use it has a guide to help you decide but remember the actual connection depends many variables (like, everything must remain connected, which usually does not happen). If the connection fails, you will need to go through all the steps to reconnect usually (although, if the Internet connection is good, but the VPN fails, this may stop file sharing, or, the VPN and Internet is fine, but the P2P fails).
Speed Guidelines
When sharing files, you want the fastest KB\s (Kilobyte per second) and the more peers (people using the same file) the better.
Usually, anything less than six peers means the sharing speed is only around 100 Kb\s. Depending on the size of the file, it took take forever. Anything between seven to nine peers, means your speed increases to around 320 Kb\s. If the sharing has 10-12 peers, this is a much better optimal speed of around 700 Kb\s. However, for movies and hour long TV shows, which are around one to two gigabytes in size, you want to find either with 14-19 peers with a speed of around 1-2 MB\s (Megabytes per second). This will download or share within 15 minutes or so. When compared to 10-12 peers, which takes 30 minutes, you can see why the number of peers are important.
Lastly, the fastest rates I have encountered on rare occasion is when 24-30 peers are sharing the same file at a rate of 2-3 MB\s! In this case, download happens within less than 10 minutes.
The number of peers sharing the same file is important not just for speed, but stability. The more peers sharing means the less likely the P2P connection will be dropped for whatever reason (that does not mean your Internet or VPN connection is more stable, however).
