Setting up a torrent application to be able to connect to from outside your network can be a bit hard. That’s why often users get stuck at successfully connecting to their servers or home computers using Transdroid. Here is a little step-by-step help for anyone that has troubles:
You need one of the supported torrent application running on your server or home computer, with the web interface enabled. Remember the port number that you fill in here; you use it later to open the port on your router and to fill in in the Transdroid application.
If Transdroid doesn’t work (‘error in parsing of server response’, for example), try these steps:
- Enable the web UI in the preferences window of your torrent application. Make sure you use a username and password, you set a listening port (this number you will need later) and do NOT set IP filtering on. For uTorrent and BitTorrent set the listening port to 8080, for Tranmission leave it at 9091, for Deluge leave it at 8112, rTorrent normally uses port 80.
- Check if the web UI works on your local machine. For uTorrent and BitTorrent use http://localhost:8080/gui, for Transmission use http://localhost:9091/transmission/web/, for Deluge use http://localhost:8112/, for rTorrent use the wTorrent web front-end. If this link does not work, go back and check the settings.
- Get the internal IP of your computer running the torrent application. On Windows, you can find it by looking at the properties of the network connection or by running ipconfig.exe in a command prompt. On Ubuntu, right-click the network manager applet and choose connection details, or by running ifconfig in a terminal windows.
- Open port 8080, 9091, 8112 or 80 (or whatever you’ve set) on your router/ADSL modem. You can use the instruction from the portforward.com website. Of course you map this port to your server, using the IP you just retrieved.
- Now get your external IP address by surfing to whatismyip.com, again from your local machine. Write down this number. It is you public IP address on the web.
- In Transdroid, fill in the external IP address you just looked up, the port number, username and password. Make sure you are NOT connected to the local WiFi network. It should now connect.
- If it does not. Connect your Android device to the local WiFi network and use the internal IP address of the computer running your torrent app instead of the external IP address. If this does work, you haven’t set up the port forwarding correctly.
Good luck.
Thanks for the info, very nice app you have there!
Checkout my android app (game): http://spacewarsgame.wordpress.com
(btw ik ben ook nederlands
Greetings!
noticed an error:
Transmission’s link to “http://localhost:9091/transmission/web/”
actually goes to “http://localhost:9112/transmission/web/”
the port is wrong. Confused me for a few minutes. thank you for the helpful post.
Thanks Eddy, I fixed it.
Hi,
I had transdroid set up and working fine but now I keep getting the message “error building request”.
Any ideas what’s gone wrong? Is the issue on the phone, the server or the communication between?
Great app through!
When I use the feature to only show currently downloading torrents, it isn’t able to do this. I’m using Transdroid 0.9.1 and uTorrent 1.8.3. I do have 481 torrents in my client. Could it be a problem with having so many?
Eric,
Transdroid does show the files at 100% complete. All of my torrents do show up. I’ll experiment with stopping most of them and trying with just a few uploading and a few downloading.
- Jeff
Eric,
Stopping all of my other torrents and just having downloading ones works correctly. I guess I’ve just got too much stuff!
By the way, this is a fantastic app. I look forward to future updates.
- Jeff
If people are still having difficulties with connecting, ensure that the firewall is allowing both TCP and UDP inbound connections on the relevant port (all decent software / hardware / router firewalls should have this fine-grained control).
Works perfectly over wifi with my external IP, but I get a message ‘error building request’ when I turn wifi off and try to connect with 3G using the exact same settings. Can you help?
So I’m having a little trouble with Transdroid. I’ve had it work fine in the past, but it’s now giving me the message, “Error during communication with server.”
My ports are forwarded correctly, I’m very familiar with doing that for other purposes.
I can connect to the webUI portal, and also via transdroid while on wifi with internal IP.
It’s only on 3G with external IP that it won’t connect.
I’m using uTorrent, by the way. Any ideas?
I am having the same “error building request” issue. I can connect to the webgui from a laptop connected internally and externally so it isn’t a problem with my port forwarding or the web gui.
It was working perfectly before I switched ISPs which is strange. The only difference I have notices is that since I have switched, I cannot connect by computer name, only IP. I hope that helps.
I am not sure exactly what the issue is, I deleted the config file and put all the information again and now it seems to be working.
Thank you very much for your help.
I am having this error building request issue.
I can access the server via the phones web browser on my www IP address and my home network address. For some reason Transdroid gives me this error.
I went back and found out that the uTorrent software sees usernames in upper and lowercase differently. So I set it to the same uppercased username on the phone and now everything is working fine.
Would be nice if uploading torrents were in yellow instead of green so I know at a glance which torrents are currently actively uploading.
Should add another bullet to make sure that either the whitelist is turned off or the phone’s IP is in the whitelist. Just spent about 30 minutes to figure that bit out.
Can you tell me what torrent application you are using? Also, did it stop working just after updating Transdroid? Can you still connect to the web interface?
I will look into it.
Hi Jeff,
It seems to work fine for me, but it might be that uTorrent reports the files as downloading, like this issue: http://code.google.com/p/transdroid/issues/detail?id=35&colspec=ID%20Type%20Status%20Priority%20Component%20Owner%20Summary
Do all the torrents show up in Transdroid? Or none at all? I have never used the app with more then 10-20 torrents running at a time.
Eric
Hi Joel,
I am a little confused; you should use you internal IP on local wifi connections and your external IP on. 3G connections (or when conneced to another wifi network of course).
Make sure you forwarded the right port on you adsl modem/router and check if this works.
Eric
Having checked my ports, they were definitely forwarded correctly in the router config, but it turned out my software firewall was blocking them. With the firewall off, Transdroid works perfectly over 3G, so I guess I now have to figure out how to set up an exception for those ports.
Internal IP still doesn’t work over wifi, but I honestly don’t mind, since it works fine with the external one.
Thank-you for the response.
Hi Danielle,
Can you connect to the web UI on your Android device while connected to 3G? If so, Transdroid should also work. Are you sure you have the correct external IP set up in Transdroid? Hope this helps you,
Eric
Hi Jayme,
It probably has to do with your ISP switch indeed. Have you set up the port fowardings again? Your external IP address will be changed, but your internal IP address as well. Also, you say you cannot connect by computer name: what name is that? You mean a domain name that is tight to your external IP or a computer name that is only available on you internal (Windows) network? Can you connect to your server using Transdroid when you are on internal wifi?
Eric
I set up all the port forwards again. I have set a static ip of 192.168.0.2 to my server which for this purpose I will say has a computer name of “server” as well.
I can access the webgui from my browser both while internal to the network as well as externally. However transdroid is unable to for some reason.
What I meant by not being able to connect by computer name is another issue that may be related. For example, typically when I use remote desktop I would type the computer name rather than an IP, ie “Server.” I am unable to do so anymore and have to access it via 192.168.0.2. Like I said, I’m not sure if this has anything to do with the problem.
Thanks for the clarification. You would never be able to use the name ‘server’ when not connected to your local network. That is unless you have something in your hosts file. Have you hard-coded the server’s IP in your C:\Windows\system32\etc\drives\hosts (or /etc/hosts) file?
It should still work fine by using the IP though. Can you connect to the web UI using the browser on your Android device? If not, the port forward isn’t set up properly. If you can: what torrent app are you using and have you made any specific settings? Like IP whitelisting or an uncommon /path/to/webui? Thanks for your help.
I figured the inability to connect via computer name was a seperate issue on my side… I can connect to the web ui from my phone.
The torrent application I am using is utorrent and all the settings are fairly standard. Port 8080, no whitelisting, and like I had said, this started occuring with change of ISP. All the settings, excluding external ip, remained the same.
Okay, so if the web UI works from your phone we are left to 3 options.
1: You have the wrong settings in Transdroid. But since you have undoubtly triple-checked this this is probably not the case. You may want to delete your config and add it again.
2: Do you have token auth turned on in uTorrent? This is not supported yet. But since you have a normal install, I gues this isn’t it as well.
3: There is something wrong with my app.
Can you mail me you log file, right after you started Transdroid and tried to connect? You can use the app Log Collector for that. Thanks for your help.