Hi there, I'm trying to torrent an actual Linux ISO, but it's completely slow on aria2c and not happening at all on qbittorrent, even after downloading the qbittorrent 5.1.4 app image. I'm on CGNAT. I used to get good speeds but now it's all come to a screeching halt.

In qbittorrent, I see the fire icon, and have connections to ~304 DHT nodes, but the fire icon is still there.

Obligatory fuck my ISP...

update 2026-06-03

Holy, I probably shouldn't necropost, but it turns out it was because I set my LAN IP address to the lo network interface. Basically, Qbittorrent was listening only on localhost. I run a complex intranet setup, so I just gave myself an extra IPv4 on the network bound to my physical Ethernet port and made qbittorrent use that and all is well now.

I was the network admin who blocked torrenting 🤣

Get a VPN with port forwarding. Problem solved.

In qBittorrent what is the Status of DHT, PeX, LSD when you click on the torrent and click its Trackers tab?

I’m on CGNAT

Your own torrent peer is not and cannot be connectable (port forwarded), unfortunately.

Not sure if you'll be able to get much improvement, it'll always be slow or impossible depending on the amount of connectable peers in the torrent swarm. But you should be seeing okay-ish speeds if the torrent you're trying to download has tons of connectable peers. Does the torrent you're downloading have a lot of seeds/leeches on it?

PS - If you're saying everything usually works fine then something changed, could try restarting your internet router just to rule that out.

Update: I was somehow able to torrent a different one with aria2c, and it went at full speed, so I'm very sure that I'm NOT being blocked by my ISP...

Is my VPS provider going to nuke me if I dare use my VPS as my VPN, though? Ionos, if it's relevant...

Sounds like ISP throttling. Are you using a vpn?

That probably depends on your VPS provider. Some providers have bandwidth or application limits. Hetzner for example doesn't allow people to host or forward traffic from media (Plex, Jellyfin) servers (iirc). You'll just have to log in to your dashboard or browse their rules for that info.

Mostly unrelated to your question and post but you could also deploy Pangolin on your VPS and hole-punch through your CGNAT using one of their Newt tunnels. This is what I do to forward my Plex server to my friends and family outside my home, among other things.

I'm pretty sure it's not ISP throttling but more some weird BitTorrent issue; how was aria2c able to saturate my connection while BitTorrent couldn't move a single byte to save its life?

I feel like a linux ISO swarm would have quite a lot of fully connectable peers.

Okay, now that's weird. I switched to "any interface" for what to bind to instead of my Ethernet interface and that somehow made torrenting work again?

I've never used any CLI BitTorrent apps so I'm not familiar with aria2c. That being said, I've had no problems with qbit on windows or Linux. Try checking your settings to use if you're binded to your vpn, if that doesn't work then there's other applications like Transmission that are good. If that still doesn't work then most "linux ISOs" have a direct download option