If you are a serious torrent user, you'll need a seedbox server. Seedboxes are built for the single purpose of torrenting. They are designed with the right CPU, memory, storage, bandwidth, and applications so that you can download torrents fast and safely.
In this post, we'll go into seedbox territory. You'll learn the concept of a seedbox and its benefits over a VPN. In addition, you'll also learn what it can do for you. How to start using one? And how can you download torrents anonymously and fast, using one?
What is a Seedbox?
In a nutshell, a seedbox is a server purpose-built for sharing torrents 24/7.
But to understand the concept deeper, let’s define some BitTorrent concepts. BitTorrent is an efficient Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing mechanism designed to share files (especially large size) with large groups of users. In the BitTorrent jargon, there are concepts like swarm, seeders, peers, and leechers.
- A torrent swarm is a group of users sharing the same content.
- The seeder is the key player. It is the user that has the entire torrent file already downloaded.
- Peers and leechers are users downloading the content.
So why are these concepts relevant to a Seedbox?
Torrenting is based on sharing “the more you share, the more the community has''... However, many people, considered leechers, would only download content for themselves without sharing. But to keep the torrenting community alive, recovering leechers need to transform into seeders. And this is precisely the goal of private trackers: to demand a sharing ratio for users if they want to participate in their communities. But still, not everyone has the resources to leave a computer on 24/7 explicitly for sharing content. Torrenting hurts the computer and its Internet connection.
Enter Seedbox.
As said in the beginning, seedboxes are purpose-built servers. They download/upload torrents 24/7, so they are generally quite robust. Seedbox servers can be anything from a cloud-based Virtual Private Server (VPS), a container, to a bare-metal server deployed at home. As long as these servers have the capacity, security, performance, and speed to share torrents, they can be referred to as seedboxes.
Seedboxes can be either shared, dedicated, managed, or unmanaged.
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Shared: The resources from a server are shared among other users.
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Dedicated: The server resources are dedicated to a single user.
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Managed: The service provider deals with software installation, updates, and some security.
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Unmanaged: The provider rents the server resources, but the user installs and updates the seedbox software.
VPNs vs. Seedboxes for torrenting.
VPNs are the go-to solutions for downloading torrents anonymously. And indeed, VPNs are great tools for maximizing online privacy. VPNs encrypt network packets from your computer, so your entire Internet connection is hidden, including torrenting clients. VPN servers also mask your IP. But still, there are some disadvantages of VPNs while torrenting.
Privacy?
When it comes to downloading torrents anonymously, both VPNs and seedboxes provide the same privacy level. VPNs encrypt (hide) BitTorrent traffic data from ISPs, government, or hackers. But with Seedboxes, you don’t even use BitTorrent from your computer, instead, you'll use an encrypted remote admin connection. In addition, both methods mask your IP within the torrent swarm.
Speed?
When it comes to speed, however, VPNs utilize all your resources, your CPU, memory, bandwidth, and even traffic data, so they can make torrenting super slow. A seedbox, on the other hand, is simply a remote server that has nothing to do with your resources. You would only use your computer to log into the seedbox and manage it remotely.
Seedbox servers are built with robust resources, including CPU, memory, and storage. They are also deployed in high-speed data centers with speeds ranging from 1Gbps, 10Gbps, to even 40Gbps. Such data centers have strong privacy and security measurements. The above qualities are hard to find for a home-based server. So, seedboxes are usually deployed in the cloud, and found via service providers.
How to use a seedbox to download torrents fast and anonymously?
Below is the step-by-step guide on how to use a seedbox and download torrents anonymously and fastly.
- Accessing web console. After signing up to a seedbox, you’ll get a welcoming email with account credentials. These credentials will give you access to a web interface (the seedbox management console).
- Find access information. The seedbox management console will show you all the active seedboxes along with their access information (credentials and IP), their applications (FTP, VPN, etc.), and utilization. Here, you are also likely to find invoices and other services.
- Access your remote seedbox. Depending on the type of seedbox (and application) you’ve got, you’ll have to access it one way or the other. The common way to access a seedbox’s torrent client is via a web interface with an IP and credentials. But if you got a full VPS seedbox, you might need to access it in other ways, including SSH, Telnet, Remote Desktop, etc.
- Managing and loading torrents. Let’s say you are accessing the seedbox’s uTorrent web interface. The most straightforward way to load a torrent is using magnet links. Almost all modern torrent clients support magnet URLs, especially ruTorrent.
- Monitor your torrenting activity. Thankfully, you can add more and monitor your current torrents simply by logging into the web interface provided by the seedbox. You can do this even from a mobile phone. But having content online won’t do you any good unless you put it into good use.
- Download the content. To put that content into good use, you can either download it to your home hard disk or stream it online. Seedboxes enable file-transferring protocols, like SFTP, FTPS, HTTP, or RSync, if you want to download the content. Install FileZilla or any other file transferring software on your computer, input the credentials given by the provider, establish a session, and download the content.
Seedbox’s Extras.
Stream the content. VPS Seedboxes that come with streaming media server software installed (such as Plex or Kodi) will give you access to your content. Such applications can organize your content, display it in beautiful dashboards, download metadata like subtitles, and make your content available through any device, including TVs.
Transcode your media content. Some advanced seedboxes come with professional video encoders such as Handbrake so that you can optimize your media right from the online server. You can compress files, optimize videos, crop, embed subtitles, and more.
Open a VPN connection between you and the seedbox. Some VPS seedboxes come with additional applications to maximize your experience. One of those applications is the OpenVPN server. Just install an OpenVPN client on your computer, enter the credentials to the server and establish a VPN tunnel between your computer (client) and seedbox (server).
Torrent automation software. Other applications worth mentioning are the torrent automation software. Applications like Radarr, Sonnarr, or Readarr are content managers for BitTorrent and Usenet. They keep track of multiple RSS feeds (that you initially configure), find the movies that you like, connect to your torrent client, and automatically download your content. Such tools can even find better and higher quality content and replace it with the old.