I use Surfshark VPN and so far I enjoyed it however it doesn’t offer port forwarding for security and privacy purposes for my protection. Other commenters said use vpn with port forwarding. So, is it a good thing my VPN doesn’t have port forwarding?
Binding to vpn gets you security
Port forwarding gets you speed
No PF, you can only connect to peers that do have PF so you can find them. But no one can find you. Particularly while seeding.
I started using port forwarding a while back with PIA and my speed went from a max of 10 mbps to a max of 250mbps for downloads.
The difference is night and day.
Set portforward on your VPN and copy the port to qbittorrent. DO NOT port forward to your router
Yes, you don’t need it for Q to work but port forwarding makes it easier for people to connect to your seeds, boosts speeds and ramp up. I’m now stuck with NordVPN for another 2 years but if I could go back I would’ve gone with ProtonVPN since they offer port forwarding and tons of servers too.
It works without, but it’s far better with it.
If you torrent port forwarding makes a huge difference.
Airvpn has been great. Good speeds too.
With if you’re going to be seeding
PIA is roughly the same price when buying in bulk and has Surfshark, albeit with less server locations.
I left Surfshark after 4 years because of my sailing needs and the app is bloated with bullshit now like antivirus + online identity + and other useless shit. The bonus of port forwarding has really been helpful in finding more peers
I went from express VPN to mulvad and now PIA and I’m loving it
Port forwarding allow others to initiate a connection to you, withou port forwarding your client can only talk with clients that accept a connection you initiated, in other words, people who have port forwarding. Without PF you’ll be limited to connect to only a few peers, with PF you can connect to anyone.
Torrent is literally designed to use Port Forwarding.
There’s even a mechanism but into it called “choking” that will make seeders pot people who don’t have PF to a lower priority.
My VPN does not mention if it uses port forwarding.
Curious to see what people say. I’ve been using Surfshark for like 5 years and never had any issues with torrenting.
What if I bind it first then turn on port forwarding? I’ve been doing this with protonvpn but also been having connection issues (I can’t seem to seed for some reason)
How do you port forward with PIA?
What do you mean do not port forward to your router? There is a way to read that that gave me a jolt of anxiety.
May i ask what vpn do you use
Same. I’ve actually been wondering whether they’ll do refunds.
Since you don’t have port forwarding with Nord anyway have you tried their SOCKS5 Proxy instead? It’s crazy fast. You don’t have to use an app to connect, just set it up in QBT. I used that for years then I switched to PIA with pf which makes it easier to grab less popular torrents for me but I really miss the speeds I got with Nord’s SOCKS5.