How is the Piracy community adapting to port forwarding becoming a rarer premium feature, and most users on public trackers do not have it? Is the bitorrent protocol in need of update?

IPv6. My stupid ISP actually shipped their router with all inbound ipv6 blocked with no way to unblock it, so I set up opnsense. Works like a charm!

At least your stupid ISP has IPv6. Mine doesn't (yet).
- Fair enough, I guess. Still, I was dumbstruck by lack of ability to open up a port.
I'm very uneducated about this stuff. How does IPV6 fix that issue?
- It doesn't fix it, per se, rather removes the need for layers of hacks such as nat and cg-nat. Every device gets a globally routable IP - no need to forward anything, just open the port you want.
opnsense sounds like what I was looking for (if I understand correctly)

I had no idea there was a way to go around the ipv6 restrictions
How does IPV6 makes port forwarding possible?
- It's not v6 itself, it's rather lack of layers of nat that prevent forwarding a v4 for most folks.

As someone who has recently started seeding as much as I can, this is a great question to which I don't have the answer.

I am not renewing my Proton yearly subscription after it ends due to recent developments. They seem to be the only "big name" VPN with the port forwarding feature. I heard of OpenVPN, but have not had a chance to dig into it too much.

My ISP does not provide IPV6 support, so this will be pretty important to sort out soon.

OpenVPN is client/server software for setting up a VPN on your own infrastructure. It's not a third-party service like ProtonVPN.
Airvpn offers port forwarding
- Aren't they located in Italy, the Shithole that keeps trying to outlaw all VPNs and/or force them to provide backdoors and identifiable customers? They can only be stopped so many times before they succeed...
I seem to be out of the loop in regards to proton controversy and I haven’t found anything outstanding against them…

Can you help me understand what you’re specifically referring to? I’m a proton user… so kinda want to know lol
- as far as I can tell their CEO is a semi alt right cunt. Apart from that everythin seems pretty okay and the recent shift to nonprofit status is cool
- https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
- CEO is a libertarian idiot who can’t see any difference between American Republicans and Democrats. CEO doesn’t have absolute control of proton, that’s a board of other privacy advocates. Proton as a service provider is still safe despite their CEO being a political twit.
  
  IMO: A libertarian who doesn’t understand any value in why a government could possibly be good is the kind of person I want running an encryption service company. Wouldn’t trust him for running anything else though.
  
  Devils advocate: Both parties love the alphabet agencies unconditionally and historically saw no problem with them. Still waiting for the Snowden wrist slap to happen. He is a bigger idiot for not letting public relations for the company handle his opinion.
I use Private Internet Access (PIA) and that has port forwarding. I read something about it on reddit but forgot about it, so idk of there's anything bad it controversial surrounding PIA.
- They got bought by a malvertising company a few years ago. It's what made me drop them after being a customer of theirs for years.
- There is, just not in relation to piracy. The concerns are more over its financial incentives/ownership and privacy.
I've been happily using Windscribe for a while now, they have port forwarding with a dedicated IP. Averaging out the separate charges, it's about $4 USD/month for a custom plan (1 location + unlimited data) + dedicated IP. Technically their Pro tier includes ephemeral port forwarding, but I don't like how it works.
I believe airvpn has port forward.
- It does.
If you have a bit extra money, get a seedbox. Cheapest I've seen is €10/mo
Torguard looks very BT friendly but I've still got mullvad subscription left and haven't tried them. That and the branding / website just seem illegitimate though I've not found any legit criticisms.

Bulgaria, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Russia, Cyprus, Moldova, Romania, Ukraine, Singapore, and Sweden. They all spit in the eye of DMCA.

VPS in any of these countries, or just find a provider that doesn't care about torrenting. If you go the VPS option, run your own VPN and just look for a VPS that allows considerable traffic. A quick example, Ultahost (Netherlands) offers a VPS with unlimited bandwidth for $7/mo if you pay for 3 years in advance. Like sure, now you're paying to torrent, but I would rather pay $7/mo to protect myself with a VPN that I control vs worrying about port forwarding and getting DMCA's in the mail. 🤷‍♂️ I guess it depends on how much skin you want in the game.

That's exactly what I did. Better yet I routed it though a wireguard tunnel! I documented the process here.

We just need to add I2P directly into the client in a way that's transparent to the user and all the problems are solved.

How does the I2P architecture solve the port forwarding issue. Is peer discovery easier within I2P?
If I could have an all in one browser like Tor or have jackett do postman too I'd be set, except for the whole "works better the longer you leave it running" thing is only true until my battery dies.

The best solution IMO are seedboxes

We also have a community dedicated to them: !seedboxes@lemmy.dbzer0.com

Seedboxes?

Can't have 20+ tb in a seedbox at a reasonable price
- Localhost NAS with large storage, Rclone to seedbox, synch, remove old content from seedbox
  
  Source: I have 8TB rn and about to add more, this is how I use my seedbox and store shit
- Ah, right. Thank you for your service. 🫡

why is port forwarding a premium feature? isn't it just a setting on your router

Bc $$$.

My provider won’t allow it unless I pay them $15/mo extra.

You can change the setting on your router anytime but it won’t work if your ISP doesn’t actually allow it.
- Likely they don't have enough IPs to go around
There are providers that do not provide you your own IPv4 address, with a feature called "CGNAT". Often, they will then block you from port-forwarding altogether.
- that is wild, man

I've never used port forwarding. Everything works fine

That's for downloading, but it you want to upload/seed, then you would need port forwarding.
- and for downloading too when no one else has forwarded a port in the swarm
- You can still seed to users that do have port forwarding.
- yes, seeding works too, with no port forwarding. With mullvad, it just works and with proton I have to enable "moderate NAT" sometimes, but seeding works without port forwarding, it always has
When you are not port forwarding you can only download from users who are actually port forwarding, or am I incorrect?
- You are right
- I just said twice that everything works fine as long as "direct" connections can be made. if your torrenting client says that's happening, everything is working fine

Look in to i2p

~~I have looked into i2p and find it not easy to understand and use. I have yet to download something successfully using it.~~

Confused it with ipfs.
- I2P is IMO the future for torrenting. The only downside it still has is that their is less content. But that will be solved when more and more people migrate to I2P
TIL it's not L2P, as in "Learn 2 Peer"
Can someone correct me here.

If I have i2P enabled on my qBittorent client and I start seeding a torrent downloaded from a non-i2P connection.

Does my seed of it allow others to download that torrent through i2P?
- No, you need to cross seed. A torrent client that allows for this is biglybt. Or you need to manually re upload it on i2p

You have to separate pirating and torrenting. I'm pirating stuff non stop each day. I'm torrenting maybe once a month, if that. It's just not the go to thing for a lot of users, so issues around VPNs and torrenting probably aren't that pressing to warrant any kind of reaction.

Yuup. Torrents are for the rare thing I care about that isnt on either nzbgeek or matrix.
- Matrix? Are there some Matrix rooms with Linux ISO?

I've never had a problem with it in Spain. What is different where you live? CGNAT?

I think it's that VPN providers offering port forwarding are becoming fewer and fewer.

most are still stuck to ipv4 and being NATted to oblivion, instead of adopting newer ipv6

Does STUN no longer work to allow port-forwarding when needed by P2P applications?

Assuming you mean IPv4 CGNAT: IPv6.

Contact your ISP, and request for CGNAT removal. Unless you live in Germany.

You can do that in Germany as well.
Why not in Germany?
- I mean, torrenting in Germany is a big no without a VPN.
CGNAT is the new reality, we must embrace IPv6.

I don't see that where I live - some ISPs offer port forwarding, some don't. Some just give you IPv6 with ports unlocked manually in router config

It still works for now, but it would be neat if only the uploading part needed to go through a VPN since that's the bit you can get in trouble for.

Would need a way of obfuscating the uploaders and downloaders though.

I use Proton VPN which has port forwarding

Port forwarding is premium? On what exactly? I must be out of the loop...

Anti Commercial-AI license

Mullvad pussied out and removed port forwarding
- Mullvad had issues with threat actors abusing its services... so mullvad decided to go with PRIVACY instead of PIRACY user base is my understanding
we ran out of IPv4 addresses quite some time ago. the likelihood of being on a carrier grade NAT is pretty high.

and if you're lucky enough to have access a direct IPv4 address (also a premium feature and priced as such) your ISP can still be blocking certain ports.

and on top of all that what @DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com said
- your ISP can still be blocking certain ports
  
  that's no problem here because bittorrent can run on any port. qbittorrent randomizes it at install

The first thing I do with my isp provided modem is set it to bridge mode.

Rent a seed box. That's the best solution for everyone.

Does port forwarding really matter if you have symmetrical fiber?

Does port forwarding really matter if you have a Holborn 9100?

Does port forwarding really matter if you have Hannah Montana Linux?

Does port forwarding really matter if you have a Dawson's Creek trapper keeper?
Do I have a misunderstanding of one of these, because these seem unrelated
Port forwarding allows a connection to reach your fiber in the first place.
- I see, but there are alternatives, right?
In principle yes it does - in case of TCP based protocols, without forwarded ports incoming connections aren't possible. In the context of the main Torrent protocol this means you can only connect to peers that have ports forwarded. This is largely solved by uTP protocol that uses UDP hole punching method to circumvent this.

So the sort answer is no this doesn't matter unless you're using very feature poor torrent client.