Contents
Site information - Top
What is this bittorrent all about anyway? How do I get the files?
Check out Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide
Where does the donated money go?
goem.org is situated on a dedicated server. For the moment we have monthly running costs of approximately 100 Euros.
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User information - Top
I registered an account but did not receive the confirmation e-mail!
You can use this form to delete the account so you can re-register.
Note though that if you didn't receive the email the first time it will probably not
succeed the second time either so you should really try another email address.
I've lost my user name or password! Can you send it to me?
Please use this form to have the login details mailed back to you.
Can you rename my account?
We do not rename accounts. Please create a new one. (Use this form to
delete your present account.)
Can you delete my (confirmed) account?
You can do it yourself by using this form.
So, what's MY ratio?
Your ratio appears at the top of every page. You will see a green arrow pointing up ( ) that indicates your uploaded amount, a red arrow pointing down ( ) that indicates your downloaded amount. The (/) symbol refers to your ratio of uploaded amount divided by downloaded amount. This is your share ratio.
It's important to distinguish between your overall ratio and the individual ratio on each torrent
you may be seeding or leeching. The overall ratio takes into account the total uploaded and downloaded
from your account since you joined the site. The individual ratio takes into account those values for each torrent.
You may see two symbols instead of a number: "Inf.", which is just an abbreviation for Infinity, and
means that you have downloaded 0 bytes while uploading a non-zero amount (ul/dl becomes infinity); "---",
which should be read as "non-available", and shows up when you have both downloaded and uploaded 0 bytes
(ul/dl = 0/0 which is an indeterminate amount).
Why is my IP displayed on my details page?
Only you and the site moderators can view your IP address and email. Regular users do not see that information.
Help! I cannot login!? (a.k.a. Login of Death)
This problem sometimes occurs with MSIE. Close all Internet Explorer windows and open Internet Options in the control panel. Click the Delete Cookies button. You should now be able to login.
My IP address is dynamic. How do I stay logged in?
goem will allow login from an IP that has the first 2 octets same as the first 2 octets of the IP saved in our database, from your last access to the site. This accounts for any Dynamic IP changes by your ISP, at the same time secures your account from being hijacked if your cookies are stolen.
Remember, you will need to re-enter your login details in case you login from another IP.
Note : We use a passkey system and as such your changing IP will not affect your communication with the tracker. Your downloads will remain active irrespective of the IP address.
Why am I listed as unconnectable? (And why should I care?)
The tracker has determined that you are firewalled or NATed and cannot accept incoming connections.
This means that other peers in the swarm will be unable to connect to you, only you to them. Even worse,
if two peers are both in this state they will not be able to connect at all. This has obviously a
detrimental effect on the overall speed.
The way to solve the problem involves opening the ports used for incoming connections
(the same range you defined in your client) on the firewall and/or configuring your
NAT server to use a basic form of NAT
for that range instead of NAPT (the actual process differs widely between different router models.
Check your router documentation and/or support forum. You will also find lots of information on the
subject at PortForward).
What are the different user classes?
| User |
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The default class of new members. |
| Power User |
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Get access to Requests/Bookmarks/Top 10/Power User Forum/NFO's and immunity to account deletion due to inactivity. Also receive invites and FLS on a periodic basis. |
 |
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Has donated money to goem.org . Same privileges as Power User. |
| VIP |
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Same privileges as Power User and is considered a respected member of goem. Immune to automatic demotion. |
| Other |
|
Customised title. |
| Moderator |
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Can edit and delete any uploaded torrents. Can also moderate usercomments and disable accounts. |
| Administrator |
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Can do just about anything. |
| SysOp |
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Site Founder. |
How does this promotion thing work anyway?
| Power User |
|
Must have been be a member for at least 4 weeks, have uploaded at least 25GB and
have a ratio at or above 1.05.
The promotion is automatic when these conditions are met. Note that you will be automatically demoted from
this status if your ratio drops below 0.95 at any time. |
| |
|
Just donate using the PayPal button in the top right corner of every page, and you will automatically see a little yellow star appear next to your username. |
| VIP |
|
Assigned by mods at their discretion to users they feel contribute something special to the site.
(Anyone begging for VIP status will be automatically disqualified.) |
| Other |
|
Conferred by mods at their discretion. |
| Moderator |
|
You don't ask us, we'll ask you! |
Why can't my friend become a member?
There is a user limit of 10,000. When that number is reached we stop accepting new members.
Accounts inactive for more than 42 days are automatically deleted, so keep trying.
(There is no reservation or queuing system, don't ask for that.)
Signups are currently closed and goem is invite only.
Invites will continue to work irrespective of the user limit.
How do I add an avatar to my profile?
First, find an image that you like, and that is within the
rules. Then you will have
to find a place to host it, such as Photobucket,
Upload-It! or
ImageShack.
All that is left to do is copy the URL you were given when
uploading it to the avatar field in your profile.
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Stats - Top
What are goem's ratio requirements?
Ratio Requirements
| Level |
Downloaded Amount |
Minimum Required Ratio |
| 0 |
Less than 3 GB |
None |
| 1 |
3 GB - 5 GB |
0.25 |
| 2 |
5 GB - 10 GB |
0.30 |
| 3 |
10 GB - 15 GB |
0.35 |
| 4 |
15 GB - 20 GB |
0.40 |
| 5 |
20 GB - 25 GB |
0.45 |
| 6 |
25 GB or more |
0.50 |
This system is completely automated and cannot be altered by Staff
Once you fall below the Required Ratio you will be given 14 days to come out of it, failing which your download privileges will be revoked. However, you will still be able to upload. If after 7 more days you are still below the ratio requirements, your account will be disabled automatically.
So in all you will get 21 days to better your ratio.
Note : If you are unable to come out of it and have your account disabled, use the Chat link to speak to a Staff member (it works even when you're not logged-in to the site). The staff will then decide whether you should be given another chance. If we see you have made an effort your account will be re-enabled.
Most common reason for stats not updating
- The user is cheating. (a.k.a. "Summary Ban")
- The server is overloaded and unresponsive. Just try to keep the session open until the server responds again. (Flooding the server with consecutive manual updates is not recommended.)
- You are using a faulty client. Please consult this list of allowed clients at goem.
Best practices
- If a torrent you are currently leeching/seeding is not listed on your profile, just wait or force a manual update.
- Make sure you exit your client properly, so that the tracker receives "event=completed".
- If the tracker is down, do not stop seeding. As long as the tracker is back up before you exit the client the stats should update properly.
May I use any bittorrent client?
No.
Supported Clients
* (Recommended Client)
Versions are the minimum required, its always advisable to use the latest stable version of the client
Note
Clients not in the list above are all BANNED from use at goem.
Trying to alter a banned client's peer_id or in any way trying to get past the ban will get your account disabled permanently.
The 2 recommended clients Azureus and µTorrent, both support protocol encryption and its advisable to enable this.
Why is a torrent I'm leeching/seeding listed several times in my profile?
If for some reason (e.g. pc crash, or frozen client) your client exits improperly and you restart it,
it will have a new peer_id, so it will show as a new torrent. The old one will never receive a "event=completed"
or "event=stopped" and will be listed until some tracker timeout. Just ignore it, it will eventually go away.
I've finished or cancelled a torrent. Why is it still listed in my profile?
Very rarely, a client does not report properly to the tracker when canceling or finishing a torrent
In that case the tracker will keep waiting for some message - and thus listing the torrent as seeding or leeching - until some
timeout occurs. Just ignore it, it will eventually go away.
Multiple IPs (Can I login from different computers?)
Yes.
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Uploading - Top
Why can't I upload torrents?
You can!!! All members at goem are allowed to upload torrents. Check out the Tutorials for guidance on uploading.
Note : A user's Upload Privileges may be revoked if he/she continually breaks our uploading rules.
What are the uploading guidelines/rules?
Only Movies/TV encoded in XviD/DivX/x264 that have an iMDB listing are allowed. If uploading an older DivX 3 you must note that in the torrent.
Source must be a DVD/VHS/HDTV for movies or DVD/TV/HDTV for TV content. Movies captured from TV are not allowed unless they are 720p or 1080p.
CAM/TC/TS/DVDSCR, R5 and other similar lower quality sources are not allowed. For DVD sourced material, only R1 or R2 DVDs are allowed.
Non-SCENE Releases are allowed and encouraged.
aXXo rips are not allowed without staff approval.
Movies in the Adult genre are not allowed.
You are required to seed until there is at least 1.0 distributed copy.
RAR/ZIP'ed uploads are not allowed. All video files must reside within a folder in original container format (.avi/.mp4/.ogm). RAR'ed subtitles .sub (Vobsub) are however, allowed and recommended.
Disk images (.nrg/.iso/.bin/.cue) are only allowed for DVDR uploads.
Oversized rips are not allowed. (eg. encoding a DVD video (720 x 480) to 1024 x XXX)
Anamorphic rips are allowed
Downsampled DVDR's as source are NOT allowed. Source video MUST be Untouched.
2 Passes for video are a must. Any more or less no. of passes and the quality gets worse. DivX and XviD should have a bitrate of at least 500kbps and a minimum horizontal resolution of 480 (i.e., 480x###).
For standalone compatibility (i.e, PS3, XBox360,BluRay,NMT), x264 encodes should not exceed High@L4.1.
Aspect Error must not exceed 5% and should preferably be within 2%.
Upload of a movie already present on the tracker is allowed only if its of a better quality or has been specifically requested. The only exception is that both x264 and XviD/DivX are allowed.
TV shows can only be uploaded as single episodes or a single season or a complete series. Season packs must contain the TV series name in the main folder (i.e., 'Season 1' is NOT acceptable, 'Seinfeld S1' is.)
The Extra Info field on the upload page concerns only the special editions of a movie, or in case of TV the season/episode number. Its not for adding alternate titles or the likes, please do not do this.
Size Recommendations
| Source |
Type (XviD/DivX/x264) |
Size Requirement |
| DVD/VHS |
Movies |
700MB (1CD/2CD/3CD) |
| HDTV (720p/1080i) |
Movies |
None |
| TV/HDTV/DVD |
TV/Documentary |
175MB (20-30 mins) or 350MB (40-55 mins) per episode |
| HR HDTV (720p) |
TV/Documentary |
700MB (40-55 mins) per episode |
* A +/- 10% variation in size is permitted. Others will require Staff approval
Finally, uploads MUST be seeded until there is at least one snatch. If you are unable to remain on line continuously until this is accomplished, then you must make a note to that effect in the torrent details.
What is the maximum size of file(s) that I can upload?
The maximum total size of all torrents that you can upload simultaneously (that have not yet been snatched) depends on your upload speed. If you do not know your upload speed you can test it at dslreports.com. The guidelines below will help to ensure that all torrents are transferred in a reasonable length of time. Violating these guidelines will get a warning. Repeated violations of these guidelines will result in your upload privileges being revoked.
Once a torrent has been snatched and there is an additional seed, it is not counted towards the total for these guidelines. Uploaders should keep track of their torrents and report hit and run activity to staff.
Movie Size Guidelines for Upload Transfer Speeds
| kbps |
kB/s |
Maximum Size of File(s) |
Recommended |
| 0-128* |
0-16* |
1.4GB |
700MB |
| 128-384* |
16-48* |
2.1GB |
1.4GB |
| 384-1mbit |
48-125 |
4.3GB |
2.1GB |
| 1mbit+ |
125+ |
unlimited |
8.6GB |
*Transfer Speed must be noted in torrent description.
TV Season Size Guidelines for Upload Transfer Speeds
| kbps |
kB/s |
Maximum Size of File(s) |
Recommended |
| 0-800* |
0-100* |
1 season |
1 season |
| 800+ |
100+ |
2 seasons |
2 seasons |
*Transfer Speed must be noted in torrent description.
*No movies may be uploaded while you are uploading the series.
PM mods or admin for an exception to these guidelines for a particular torrent.
Can I upload your torrents to other trackers?
You may not upload the .torrent file to another tracker. However, the files you download from us are yours to do as you please. You can always create another torrent, pointing to some other tracker, and upload it to the site of your choice.
Note : If it is a personal rip, please make sure the uploader agrees to you sharing the files elsewhere.
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Downloading - Top
How do I use the files I've downloaded?
Check out this guide.
Why did an active torrent suddenly disappear?
There may be three reasons for this:
(1) The torrent may have been out-of-sync with the site
rules.
(2) The uploader may have deleted it because it was a bad release.
A replacement will probably be uploaded to take its place.
How do I resume a broken download or reseed something?
Open the .torrent file. When your client asks you for a location, choose the location of the existing file(s) and it will resume/reseed the torrent.
Why do my downloads sometimes stall at 99%?
The more pieces you have, the harder it becomes to find peers who have pieces you are missing. That is why downloads sometimes slow down or even stall when there are just a few percent remaining. Just be patient and you will, sooner or later, get the remaining pieces.
What is 'Hit and Run' and why is it bad?
'Hit and Run' refers to leaving a torrent immediately after finishing the download, without having a at least a 1.0 ratio. This is considered bad BT etiquette, and can kill a torrent prematurely by stranding other leeches with incomplete files. Repeated hit and run activity, or hit and run on the Movie of the Week, will result in a warning.
Hit and Run while on ratio watch will result in your download privileges being immediately revoked.
1) New TV torrents that receive a lot of hits (Heroes, BSG, Rome, etc)... there's no reason for a user not to seed to 1.0 or for at least 48 hours. If you are able to leave your computer on long enough to complete the snatch, you must be able to leave it on long enough to seed it back! If you can't do that, do not download the torrent when it is new. Wait until the next day.
2) Large torrents (TV seasons, DVDR's). these must be seeded to 1.0, unless you are a trailing leech. then you should be prepared to seed for at least a week.
3) new high demand DVD releases (pre-releases of new popular movies). again, 1.0 unless you are a trailing leech. seed for a week.
4) all other movies and older torrents. be prepared to seed for at least a week.
If you have a very limited upload bandwidth, you should extend the amount of time you are prepared to seed back a torrent. You should also limit your downloading so that you can maintain an appropriate share ratio.
In all cases, if for some reason you must interrupt your seeding, post a comment in the torrent.
What is a Free Leech Slot?
Given out at the discretion of mods and admin, these are similar to free leech Movie of the Week, but you get to use it on any torrent you want. We award a Free Leech Slot for filling a request or uploading a movie in the iMDB Top 250 that is not currently on goem. Check the forum thread for more information.
To use a free leech slot, simply click on the free leech link above the torrent link, and then download the torrent. Only your upload will be recorded against your stats.
If you do not get your FLS after the torrent has been snatched, post here.
What is that black dot next to some of the torrents?
This symbol indicates that the torrent is a 'scene' release.
What are these "a piece has failed an hash check" messages?
Bittorrent clients check the data they receive for integrity. When a piece fails this check it is
automatically re-downloaded. Occasional hash fails are a common occurrence, and you shouldn't worry.
Some clients have an (advanced) option/preference to 'kick/ban clients that send you bad data' or
similar. It should be turned on, since it makes sure that if a peer repeatedly sends you pieces that
fail the hash check it will be ignored in the future.
The torrent is supposed to be 100MB. How come I downloaded 120MB?
See the hash fails topic. If your client receives bad data it will have to redownload it, therefore
the total downloaded may be larger than the torrent size. Make sure the "kick/ban" option is turned on
to minimize the extra downloads.
What is a MotW?
Movie of the Week. You can click on 'Movies of the Week' on the browse page to see all of them at once. Otherwise, any movie highlighted in green is a MotW. MotW are free leech and a great way to improve your ratio.
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How can I improve my download speed? - Top
Limit your upload speed
The upload speed affects the download speed in essentially two ways:
- Bittorrent peers tend to favour those other peers that upload to them. This means that if A and B
are leeching the same torrent and A is sending data to B at high speed then B will try to reciprocate.
So due to this effect high upload speeds lead to high download speeds.
- Due to the way TCP works, when A is downloading something from B it has to keep telling B that
it received the data sent to him. (These are called acknowledgements - ACKs -, a sort of "got it!" messages).
If A fails to do this then B will stop sending data and wait. If A is uploading at full speed there may be no
bandwidth left for the ACKs and they will be delayed. So due to this effect excessively high upload speeds lead
to low download speeds.
The full effect is a combination of the two. The upload should be kept as high as possible while allowing the
ACKs to get through without delay. A good rule of thumb is to keep the upload at about 80% of the theoretical
upload speed. You will have to fine tune yours to find out what works best for you. (Remember that keeping the
upload high has the additional benefit of helping with your ratio.)
If you are running more than one instance of a client it is the overall upload speed that you must take into account.
Some clients (e.g. Azureus) limit global upload speed, others (e.g. Shad0w's) do it on a per torrent basis.
Know your client. The same applies if you are using your connection for anything else (e.g. browsing or ftp),
always think of the overall upload speed.
Limit the number of simultaneous connections
Some operating systems (like Windows 9x) do not deal well with a large number of connections, and may even crash.
Also some home routers (particularly when running NAT and/or firewall with stateful inspection services) tend to become
slow or crash when having to deal with too many connections. There are no fixed values for this, you may try 60 or 100
and experiment with the value. Note that these numbers are additive, if you have two instances of
a client running the numbers add up.
Limit the number of simultaneous uploads
Isn't this the same as above? No. Connections limit the number of peers your client is talking to and/or
downloading from. Uploads limit the number of peers your client is actually uploading to. The ideal number is
typically much lower than the number of connections, and highly dependent on your (physical) connection.
Just give it some time
As explained above peers favour other peers that upload to them. When you start leeching a new torrent you have
nothing to offer to other peers and they will tend to ignore you. This makes the starts slow, in particular if,
by change, the peers you are connected to include few or no seeders. The download speed should increase as soon
as you have some pieces to share.
Why is my browsing so slow while leeching?
Your download speed is always finite. If you are a peer in a fast torrent it will almost certainly saturate your
download bandwidth, and your browsing will suffer. Limit your download speed using your client, or use a third-party solution,
such as NetLimiter.
Browsing was used just as an example, the same would apply to gaming, IMing, etc...
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My ISP uses a transparent proxy. What should I do? - Top
What is a proxy?
Basically a middleman. When you are browsing a site through a proxy your requests are sent to the proxy and the proxy
forwards them to the site instead of you connecting directly to the site. There are several classifications
(the terminology is far from standard):
| Transparent |
|
A transparent proxy is one that needs no configuration on the clients. It works by automatically redirecting all port 80 traffic to the proxy. (Sometimes used as synonymous for non-anonymous.) |
| Explicit/Voluntary |
|
Clients must configure their browsers to use them. |
| Anonymous |
|
The proxy sends no client identification to the server. (HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR header is not sent; the server does not see your IP.) |
| Highly Anonymous |
|
The proxy sends no client nor proxy identification to the server. (HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR, HTTP_VIA and HTTP_PROXY_CONNECTION headers are not sent; the server doesn't see your IP and doesn't even know you're using a proxy.) |
| Public |
|
(Self explanatory) |
A transparent proxy may or may not be anonymous, and there are several levels of anonymity.
How do I find out if I'm behind a (transparent/anonymous) proxy?
Try ProxyJudge. It lists the HTTP headers that the server where it is running
received from you. The relevant ones are HTTP_CLIENT_IP, HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR and REMOTE_ADDR.
Why is my port listed as "---" even though I'm not NAT/Firewalled?
The TorrentBits tracker is quite smart at finding your real IP, but it does need the proxy to send the HTTP header
HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR. If your ISP's proxy does not then what happens is that the tracker will interpret the proxy's IP
address as the client's IP address. So when you login and the tracker tries to connect to your client to see if you are
NAT/firewalled it will actually try to connect to the proxy on the port your client reports to be using for
incoming connections. Naturally the proxy will not be listening on that port, the connection will fail and the
tracker will think you are NAT/firewalled.
Can I bypass my ISP's proxy?
If your ISP only allows HTTP traffic through port 80 or blocks the usual proxy ports then you would need to use something
like socks and that is outside the scope of this FAQ.
The site accepts connections on port 81 besides the usual 80, and using them may be enough to fool some proxies. So the first
thing to try should be connecting to www.goem.org:81. Note that even if this works your bt client will still try
to connect to port 80 unless you edit the announce url in the .torrent file.
Otherwise you may try the following:
- Choose any public non-anonymous proxy that does not use port 80
(e.g. from this,
this or
this list).
- Configure your computer to use that proxy. For Windows XP, do Start, Control Panel, Internet Options,
Connections, LAN Settings, Use a Proxy server, Advanced and type in the IP and port of your chosen
proxy. Or from Internet Explorer use Tools, Internet Options, ...
- (Facultative) Visit ProxyJudge. If you see an HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR in
the list followed by your IP then everything should be ok, otherwise choose another proxy and try again.
- Visit TorrentBits. Hopefully the tracker will now pickup your real IP (check your profile to make sure).
Notice that now you will be doing all your browsing through a public proxy, which are typically quite slow.
Communications between peers do not use port 80 so their speed will not be affected by this, and should be better than when
you were "unconnectable".
How do I make my bittorrent client use a proxy?
Just configure Windows XP as above. When you configure a proxy for Internet Explorer you're actually configuring a proxy for
all HTTP traffic (thank Microsoft and their "IE as part of the OS policy" ). On the other hand if you use another
browser (Opera/Mozilla/Firefox) and configure a proxy there you'll be configuring a proxy just for that browser. We don't
know of any BT client that allows a proxy to be specified explicitly.
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Why can't I connect? Is the site blocking me? - Top
Maybe my address is blacklisted?
The site does not block addresses listed in the (former) PeerGuardian
database, but does block addresses of banned users. This works at Apache/PHP level, it's just a script that
blocks logins from those addresses. It should not stop you from reaching the site. In particular
it does not block lower level protocols, you should be able to ping/traceroute the server even if your
address is blacklisted. If you cannot then the reason for the problem lies elsewhere.
Your ISP blocks the site's address
(In first place, it's unlikely your ISP is doing so. DNS name resolution and/or network problems are the usual culprits.)
There's nothing we can do.
You should contact your ISP (or get a new one). Note that you can still visit the site via a proxy, follow the instructions
in the relevant section. In this case it doesn't matter if the proxy is anonymous or not, or which port it listens to.
Notice that you will always be listed as an "unconnectable" client because the tracker will be unable to
check that you're capable of accepting incoming connections.
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What if I can't find the answer to my problem here? - Top
You can try these:
Post in the Forums, by all means. You'll find they
are usually a friendly and helpful place,
provided you follow a few basic guidelines:
- Make sure your problem is not really in this FAQ. There's no point in posting just to be sent
back here.
- Before posting read the sticky topics (the ones at the top). Many times new information that
still hasn't been incorporated in the FAQ can be found there.
- Help us in helping you. Do not just say "it doesn't work!". Provide details so that we don't
have to guess or waste time asking. What client do you use? What's your OS? What's your network setup? What's the exact
error message you get, if any? What are the torrents you are having problems with? The more
you tell the easiest it will be for us, and the more probable your post will get a reply.
- And needless to say: be polite. Demanding help rarely works, asking for it usually does
the trick.
- For more immediate help, you could ask for help on the IRC channel. Other users or the staff may be able to help there.
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