Oversized File DL/hash fails

[Ruby Rooster]

Hello guys, I've been using uTorrent for years and haven't had any problems with it. I've always been a careful downloader too. That is until yesterday!

I collect audio comedies and scoop them up when I see them. Yesterday there was a series of shows that were supposedly 299mb and I used uTorrent to DL them. It looked wrong because the file was saying 299mb and the DL speed was around 1.5mb with the bar showing less than 1% after 5 minutes. Foolishly, I left it running and went to bed.

I've just checked it and it's downloaded over 5gb with an excessive number of hash fails. What happened here? Any help is appreciated just so I know what happened and if there's anything I can do to avoid this in the future. Thanks.

[DreadWingKnight]

That level of hashfails either indicates a poisoned torrent (anti-p2p peers actively poisoning) or a fault in your own networking setup such as the DLink DMZ Download Destroyer.

[Ruby Rooster]

Thank you very much for the answer. I'm not well-informed enough to fully understand your reply and will look into my network setup.

With the file being an obscure album of comedy, it's less likely to be a poisoned torrent. They amount to half a dozen DLs per year (or fewer) for many of them and would be a waste of resources for anti-P2P guys pissing in the pool. I'll seed for a couple of months sometimes and barely upload any of it.

Setup seems more likely, but I'm also a keen follower of the statistics and haven't ever seen this type of behaviour before. My ratio runs from ~1.8 to ~1.6 and this build has run for over 5000 hours.

Thanks again because I was more worried that the link had somehow used my IP to piggyback shit to other places. I wouldn't want to be a temporary 'bot' in a wider network.