What is port forwarding for a VPN while torrenting and does it make torrenting safer?
I don’t think port forwarding makes it any extra safer. It basing opens your session to the peers so that you could potentially get more leechers to seed from you. In single word you will be more ‘connectable’ to those looking for downloading file
It’s not any safer. It’s done with torrenting to allow more peers and seeders to connect to you because you have a reliable port that can be used. Instead of both ends trying to poke around until they make a connection that might change or break at any moment, it sets one port as a reliable path from your machine to the VPN that other nodes can see and send to you. It gives your connections more reliability which allows more people to connect to you since you aren’t dropping the connection every 5 min.
Most of the private trackers strong recommend to have port forwarding enabled due to earlier said reasons…
It’s not required. You can torrent using a VPN that doesn’t have port forwarding and you will still be protected (if you’re binding properly.)
The benefit of port forwarding is that you’ll be more able to connect to other people who are torrenting the same file. This is most helpful for torrents that have a small number of seeds and peers.
Port forwarding makes your torrent activity more efficient and reliable and it has no bearing (good or bad) on your security.
Yes, you. But as I said earlier, if you are into private trackers, most of them strongly recommend to have port forwarding enabled. I am not into so many trackers but just 2 and both of them suggested to check my port forwarding as soon as I joined.