BitTorrent for everyone

Setting up uTorrent on your server solves a lot of problems and lets you trigger downloads from anywhere so they’re ready when you need them.

Using a server as a centralised peer-to-peer downloader has a number of advantages: it’s (probably) always switched on; you can download files to a shared directory; it can be easily administered for bandwidth usage and you avoid having multiple peer-to-peer clients flooding your upload channel. That last one is especially important in homes with multiple P2P users, since running several P2P clients at once stands a good chance of flooding the router and making all internet activity painfully slow.
For those who wish to run it on a server, uTorrent has had a web interface for some time, but in version 3 of the BitTorrent client the developers have made it extremely easy to set up. You don’t even have to worry about firewall negotiation and IP addresses/dynamic DNS for remote access — everything is managed through the uTorrent Remote web service.

Setting up uTorrent Remote is as easy as entering a username and password.

uTorrent Remote lets you access your BitTorrent client from anywhere and any device just by visiting remote.utorrent.com in your web browser. This gives you fully functional remote control of your uTorrent installation. You can add new torrents, stop and start existing ones and even transfer downloaded files from the server to the device you’re accessing it from.

The Android uTorrent Remote app lets you control the program from a mobile.

To set up uTorrent Remote, just click on the remote control icon in the top right-hand corner of the uTorrent window. This takes you to the Remote section of the preferences panel. Then just check the box to enable Remote and add a username and password. You’ll be asked to answer a security question, and that’s it. uTorrent gathers no private information.

The Remote interface for uTorrent looks a lot like the local one.

Now head over to remote.utorrent.com and log in. You’ll be shown a very similar interface to the standard uTorrent one, with a bar at the top where you can paste URL links to .torrent files, links to RSS feeds or you can upload a .torrent file from the machine you’re using. Once you start a download, it will be controllable from either the web interface or the regular interface.