Hello, lovelies. QBT was working well in both directions. Now it isn't. The little fire icon at the bottom of the screen is always on. I've downloaded, but peer connections don't seem to be working. I've been all over the internet trying to troubleshoot, to no avail. I posted on Reddit, but then the exodus happened. 1.) It's not the firewall (Bitdefender). There's a rule in place. Also, I turned off the firewall, and nothing changed. I tried enabling port scanning. Nothing changed. 2.) I went to Nord's advice page https://support.nordvpn.com/Connectivity/Proxy/1087802472/Proxy-setup-on-qBittorrent.htm
and followed their directions, screenshot attached.
Part of their instructions include going to ipleak.net and using ipleak's magnet link. Nord says addresses are supposed to match. They didn't. Here are screenshots. I tried different servers. I tried a P2P server. 3.) In the absence of help during the exodus, I reset Windows network connections. Nothing changed. I reinstalled Windows 11 (what a PIA!). Nothing changed. Since reinstalling all software, QBT ratios show nobody's downloaded anything from me, which is unusual, even though stuff I like has small swarms.
4.) I tried reinstalling QBT. Then I tried versions 4.5.3, 4.5.2, and 4.5.1. Nothing changed. The little orange flame is still burning. In case it matters, the only place I'm torrenting from/to is rutracker.
If you read this far, tyvm. If you've got suggestions, thank you even more.
Most of the stuff you wrote doesn't have anything to do with VPN incoming connections. Don't worry you don't need a VPN with port forwarding to use iPlayer, your optical drive, pot player, aimp, etc.
The incoming port is specifically for applications that need it e.g. peer-to-peer, bittorrent clients, that sort of thing.
Not sure what else is going on with your system, I'd maybe suggesting starting with whitelisting your applications in any anti-virus/malware software you use and/or try disabling or uninstall the anti-virus/malware & see if that resolves anything.
Thanks, again. I've done all that. Bitdefender used to be clumsy with whitelisting. Since reinstalling everything, I've noticed it seems to do that automatically now. I thought maybe the issues were related. In the end, I shouldn't torrent without a VPN, and Nord won't allow uploading, right?
The bittorrent protocol always uploads/downloads simultaneously so you will always upload. Without incoming connections you will upload to less peers at lower speeds.
The other downside is if you join smaller torrent swarms (less peers), & all the other peers also do not have port forwarding, then no one will be able to exchange data with each other. Since you are not connectable yourself you are relying on connectable peers to be in torrent swarm you join so that you can still download/upload anything.
For what it's worth the above isn't much of an issue in large torrent swarms, there's usually a good chance there are multiple connectable peers in large swarms so in those situations you won't notice much difference.
Thanks so much. Baroque opera, anyone? Lol!