5 ms·

I've been pirating everything I can for as long as I've been watching TV. My wife and I still have a box of CD-R's labeled in marker with our favorite late 90s

by maxaf 9y ago

I've been pirating everything I can for as long as I've been watching TV. My wife and I still have a box of CD-R's labeled in marker with our favorite late 90s - early 00s movies on them. Back in the day we've leeched off private FTP servers. Now we run a torrent box in EC2. Weirdly enough, AWS neglected to send us warnings in almost a decade. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

koolba 9y ago
Does Amazon not respond to torrent notices for illegal downloads? Do you periodically rebuild the instance to get a new IP? I’ve considered setting up a torrent box but ruled out EC2 before even looking further into it. Figured it would need to be something overseas.
- maxaf 9y ago
  Before the torrent box went up, we used to get notices from our ISP every few weeks. Amazon just... swallow them somewhere, I guess. I do rebuild the instance occasionally when it gets too crusty, but I use an elastic IP for my own convenience. Funnily enough, I do keep another box in Moscow which I use for more serious stuff than piracy.
chocolatebunny 9y ago
How much does it cost you to use an EC2 instance for torrenting? Doesn't that eat up a lot of bandwidth? Any guides you recommend following? ...I am asking for a friend.
- maxaf 9y ago
  At the minimum, you would need a t2.micro instance with enough disk to store files before you've copied them to wherever you're going to do the watching. I've tried doing this with a t2.nano, but the memory there simply isn't enough. There are dedicated torrent box packages out there, but I have no personal experience with them, as for me tmux + rtorrent + nginx has been sufficient for years. It used to be that only certain versions of rtorrent supported magnet links, but the latest Debian stable ships with one that works just fine, so there's no longer any need to compile anything from source. I do recommend reading through rtorrent's configuration file because the settings can make a difference in how long it takes to download something. Also, be sure to adjust your security to allow BitTorrent traffic. As for cost, it's never been a problem: I haven't seen an AWS bill above $60, which includes a bunch of EBS volumes, the instance, the bandwidth, and my various encrypted long term backups in S3.
  - EpicEng 9y ago
    What's the advantage in using an EC2 instance as opposed to a box sitting in your house behind a VPN? VPN services cost about $6 / month or less.
    - maxaf 9y ago
      I can (and do) use the EC2 instance for other things. It often pulls quadruple duty. The available bandwidth also allows me crank up rtorrent to aggressively seek other peers, such that a typical 45 minute episode takes about 15 minutes to download in 1080p. I then feed the https URL to VLC and watch the file. Torrenting directly here always takes longer. I've never tried a VPN, but it wouldn't make the bits travel any faster. Additionally, in my household everything with a CPU and a network interface ends up getting cannibalized for some project or another. There must be a name for this phenomenon.
      - EpicEng 9y ago
        >I've never tried a VPN, but it wouldn't make the bits travel any faster. No, definitely not; its purpose is only to hide your true IP. Fair enough, if I had other things running in EC2 I'd probably consider this as well.

by maxaf 9y ago

koolba 9y ago

Does Amazon not respond to torrent notices for illegal downloads? Do you periodically rebuild the instance to get a new IP? I’ve considered setting up a torrent box but ruled out EC2 before even looking further into it. Figured it would need to be something overseas.

maxaf 9y ago
Before the torrent box went up, we used to get notices from our ISP every few weeks. Amazon just... swallow them somewhere, I guess. I do rebuild the instance occasionally when it gets too crusty, but I use an elastic IP for my own convenience. Funnily enough, I do keep another box in Moscow which I use for more serious stuff than piracy.

chocolatebunny 9y ago

How much does it cost you to use an EC2 instance for torrenting? Doesn't that eat up a lot of bandwidth? Any guides you recommend following? ...I am asking for a friend.

maxaf 9y ago
At the minimum, you would need a t2.micro instance with enough disk to store files before you've copied them to wherever you're going to do the watching. I've tried doing this with a t2.nano, but the memory there simply isn't enough. There are dedicated torrent box packages out there, but I have no personal experience with them, as for me tmux + rtorrent + nginx has been sufficient for years. It used to be that only certain versions of rtorrent supported magnet links, but the latest Debian stable ships with one that works just fine, so there's no longer any need to compile anything from source. I do recommend reading through rtorrent's configuration file because the settings can make a difference in how long it takes to download something. Also, be sure to adjust your security to allow BitTorrent traffic. As for cost, it's never been a problem: I haven't seen an AWS bill above $60, which includes a bunch of EBS volumes, the instance, the bandwidth, and my various encrypted long term backups in S3.
- EpicEng 9y ago
  What's the advantage in using an EC2 instance as opposed to a box sitting in your house behind a VPN? VPN services cost about $6 / month or less.
  - maxaf 9y ago
    I can (and do) use the EC2 instance for other things. It often pulls quadruple duty. The available bandwidth also allows me crank up rtorrent to aggressively seek other peers, such that a typical 45 minute episode takes about 15 minutes to download in 1080p. I then feed the https URL to VLC and watch the file. Torrenting directly here always takes longer. I've never tried a VPN, but it wouldn't make the bits travel any faster. Additionally, in my household everything with a CPU and a network interface ends up getting cannibalized for some project or another. There must be a name for this phenomenon.
    - EpicEng 9y ago
      >I've never tried a VPN, but it wouldn't make the bits travel any faster. No, definitely not; its purpose is only to hide your true IP. Fair enough, if I had other things running in EC2 I'd probably consider this as well.