How do seedboxes work

Welcome to the world of seedboxes. In the BitTorrent jargon, a "seed" is a user who has a complete copy of the file and shares it with other users in the swarm. If you're a generous seeder then the torrent tracker will reward you with a bigger slice of bandwidth and you'll see faster downloads. This is especially important with private trackers where people have to do their share for the tracker to be viable.

Being a dedicated seeder isn't the easiest thing to do from a home connection, however. For one thing, it eats up your upstream bandwidth like it's nobody's business. The longer you seed the bigger a target you are as well.

Frankly, most people on public trackers end up being "leechers" who download a file and then immediately leave. In order to solve this problem, the "seedbox" was invented. This is a dedicated online server that has the sole job of seeding torrents.

People who belong to fancy elite private trackers use them as a way to maintain incredibly good ratios. In turn this mean they get fantastic download speeds. You might not be all that interested in seed ratios if you're not a hardcore BitTorrent user, but there are plenty of other reasons to pony up the money for a decent seed box.

Especially since these days you can get one tailored to your budget and needs. Let's look at some of the key reasons beyond being a seeder god to get your own seedbox. As I explained above, when you use BitTorrent from your home computer without a VPN everyone can see what you're up to. A seedbox takes your own computer out of the picture entirely. After all, it's a remote computer somewhere in the cloud that torrents on your behalf. All you do is let it know which torrents to get and wait until its done.

This means that nothing about you is directly connected to the seedbox itself. Just like good VPN providers, reputable seedbox providers also won't record anything about your activities. They also have no idea what's being stored in your seedbox and usually can't look even if they wanted to.

Of course, you still need to get the files from the seedbox to your own local computer, but seedboxes have that covered too. In either case it's normal web-traffic that doesn't get throttles and no one knows what you've downloaded. All they know is that you're connected to the seedbox itself. Many seedboxes are hosted in countries that have a favorable legal framework when it comes to file sharing via peer-to-peer technology.

Countries like Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Mexico provide safe havens for torrenting services such as seedboxes. It provides a double-layer of privacy, as long as the seedbox provider itself has a good personal information policy.

While most of us think of torrents as being a place to download stuff, it's also a great way to share files. Let's say that you have a website and you want to make files available, but regular hosting is too expensive or slow. Well, you can use your seedbox make the file available via torrent. If your file is only meant for a few people then you don't have to pay much for hosting at all. However, if plenty of people want the file then the distributed nature of BitTorrent will also help easy the bandwidth use on your seedbox.

If you hit the bandwidth limit you can also easily pay a little more to get it extended for a while. Torrenting uses significant up- and down- stream bandwidth. Even if you're on an uncapped connection, you're still degrading the overall experience by chopping of a piece of bandwidth for your torrents. You can either give up your connection for maximum speed or deal with slooow downloads but a usable internet experience. With a seedbox that's not your problem anymore.

The seedbox does its thing until it's ready to provide you with the actual files. Until then your bandwidth remains completely untouched. With that said, Seedbox servers only take care of your torrenting activities. For an all-encompassing privacy solution, VPN services are the way to go. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam.

Learn how your comment data is processed. Advantages and Disadvantages of a VPN? Pros vs Cons. Table of Contents. Note that the vast majority of seedbox servers are built to do one thing: upload and download torrents. There are seedbox servers that can stream content as well but most seedbox providers stop at offering downloading services with no streaming services.

Note: Generally, seedboxes are for downloading and uploading torrents while VPNs are for encrypting your internet connection and changing your IP address. Many people choose to use a seedbox and a VPN at the same time to maximize their security and privacy.

Zohair A. Or is your internet connection not up to scratch? Then you are in need of a seedbox. One thing to note with this is that you will still need to download the file from your seedbox over you standard home connection. This should download at the maximum speed your home internet is able to. This makes it much more difficult for you to be tracked and targetted. A lot of seedbox providers offer VPN services in addition that further anonymize your internet usage.

Furthermore, if you sign up for a service that accepts bitcoins or pay with a prepaid credit card whilst using a VPN, there is no personally identifying information linking you to your seedbox provider. More on using seedboxes anonymously will come to this site soon.

So if you want to download torrents anonymously and without the risk of getting extortionate fines from copyright agencies then you need a seedbox. This is sensible because the agencies that track and fine torrent users mainly monitor public trackers.

Once you manage to get. Once you manage to get into a private tracker , the main issue you will likely have is maintaining your ratio uploading as much as you download. With a seedbox maintaining your ratio is simple. A seedbox comes with a large hard drive is constantly on, so you can download a file using a private tracker and then leave the file on the seedbox uploading.

This takes no effort on your part and maintains your ratio on the site. ISPs can be rather sneaky when it comes to you using their service. A seedbox avoids this by not using torrent traffic on your home ISP. Additionally, your BitTorrent ports might be blocked by your ISP which is also avoidable by using a seedbox. To download files from your seedbox you use FTP.

An alternative to this is to use a VPN which many seedbox providers offer as part of their service.