Mullvad VPN stalled torrents

VPN
1

So I’m a complete noob compared to most of you people on this subreddit.

I’ve been having stalling issues recently for some reason and I fixed it about a week or two ago by going into Mullvad’s settings and switching from automatic tunnel protocol to Wireguard. But now I am stuck on stalled again and don’t know what to do. I’ve already followed these steps to bind the VPN up and rechecked to make sure the settings are still the same: (I’m on a mac)

macOS

  1. Start the Mullvad app and connect to a location.
  2. Open the Terminal app.
  3. Run the command
    ifconfig | grep -A 2 utun
  4. Check which utun interface Mullvad is using by looking for the internal IP “inet 10.x.x.x”.
  5. Open qBittorrent.
  6. Click on the Preferences button on the toolbar.
  7. Click on Advanced.
  8. Change Network interface to the utun interface you found above.
  9. Click on OK.
  10. Click on the qbittorrent main menu > Quit qbittorrent and then start qBittorrent again.
  11. Continue with the steps in the next section.

Recommended qBittorrent settings

  1. Click on Tools.
  2. Click on Options (in Windows) or Preferences (in Linux and macOS)
  3. Click on BitTorrent.
  4. Check Enable anonymous mode.
  5. Uncheck (disable) Enable DHT.
  6. Uncheck (disable) Enable PeX.
  7. Uncheck (disable) Enable Local peer discovery.
  8. Click on Connection.
  9. For Peer connection protocol, use the drop-down menu to select TCP.

I’d appreciate any help!

2

Mullvad dropped port forwarding a few months ago. Probably not connectable.

3

Check Enable anonymous mode.
Uncheck (disable) Enable DHT.
Uncheck (disable) Enable PeX.
Uncheck (disable) Enable Local peer discovery.

This is why your torrents are stalling. Turn all these on again

4

A lot of these settings can vary based on whether you are using a public or private tracker

5

had this issue for a while, the only thing that fixed it was to try out protonvpn and use their port forwarding feature, it unblocked all the stalled torrents

6

They did not drop port forwarding, I’m using Mullvad right now and it works perfectly fine for torrenting. The option is under ‘Advanced settings → Custom Port’ and you have to set it up prior to downloading the config.

7

This.
Those recommended settings are trash.
The only reason why anyone would recommend those it is because it’s a little tiny bit more anonymous. But you’re using a vpn so you’re already good on that front.

8

Yes they did.

Port forwarding is not required for torrenting to work. You can still torrent using Mullvad, with no ports forwarded. But it makes it so that you can’t connect to as many peers.

If you use a port checking tool or look in your torrent client, you’ll probably see that the port is not actually open on Mullvad’s server.

9
10

That’s not port forwarding. That’s just the port the wireguard protocol uses for outgoing connections.

Mullvad definitely removed port forwarding.

11

I’ve heard others speak highly of Proton and TorGuard.

12

I’m confused by both of you - do we want these settings checked (on) or not? OP said he unchecked them, then Fit_truck says turn them on, but then you say turning them on (a little bit more anonymous) is trash. I’m so confused.

I’ve been trying to download a few files for two weeks now, I start at 1+MiB/s and then it dwindles down to a few KiB/s and nothing ever completes. Mullvad VPN with docker bound directly to the wiregard server.

13

Sorry I meant to say that the recommended settings OP mentioned in his post are trash. You want to leave DHT, PeX and Local peer discovery on because they help a lot in finding peers (helps a lot with small or dying torrents). IIRC you are technically more anonymous if you disable those settings but if you’re using a vpn anyway it won’t matter at all. The “anonymous mode” setting you can leave enabled because why not.
So I recommend to leave them on. Sorry for the confusion