Introduction

This is a guide to installing the Mainline DHT plugin in your Vuze.  For most users this will help your download speed, particularly on smaller torrent swarms. 

For those of you who do not know what DHT is, I will give the simple explanation that it is a way of connecting to more seed and peers active on the content you are downloading.  Vuze made the decision to use their own version of DHT, while the vast majority of users utilize the Mainline DHT created by µTorrent. 

With this plugin installed, you will now be able to connect, through DHT, to the clients that utitlize only the µTorrent (or Mainline) DHT and to the clients that utilize the Vuze version of DHT.  In many cases you would end up connecting to the Mainline DHT users either through the tracker(s) and Peer Exchange (PEX).   However, there are some situations where this plugin will be very helpful and installing it will not harm your speed or connections. 

Vuze is one of the suggested clients in my Best Free Bittorrent Client Review.  here at Gizmo's Freeware.

If you do not have Vuze, you can get it from the

• Vuze Home Page (32 bit version only)
• Sourceforge (all versions).

Installation

The first step is to open Vuze and go to Tools>Plugins>Installation Wizard

You will then be presented with a screen asking for you to choose the installation method.  The method to choose is By list from Sourceforge.  This means that you will be downloading from the Vuze repository at Sourceforge (a site for open source software develpment).  Then press Next.

You will then be shown the Installable Plugin List.  The plugins are listed in alphabetical order and you need to scroll down to the plugin named Mainline DHT (now version 1.5.0) and select by putting a check mark in the box next to it.  Then press Next.

You will then be prompted to choose the Installation Type.  The decision here is whether to install for all users or only yourself.  The vast majority of users will want to install for all users.  I can not imagine why you would want other users to not be able to have the benefit of this plugin.  Press Finish.  

NOTE:  Two users of this guide have had an issue installing for all users.  This was resolved when they switched to install for you only.  So, if you run into an issue installing for all, try the other option.  Both users were on Windows 7.  Another user on Windows 7 was able to install after opening Vuze with "run as administrator" option.

You will then be presented with the Plugin Installer screen to confirm your choice.  It should look like the image below and if it does, then press Install.

The download of the plugin will take a very short time and when it is done you should see the following screen and under that the original screen for installation.  If you see this screen, which shows the installation was successful, prress Close on both.

You can check to see if the installation is presenting itself correctly by going to Tools>Options>Plugins (expand))Mainline DHT in Vuze.

The settings should look as in the image below and there is no reason to change these settings.

Port 49001 is the default port that Vuze uses for the Mainline DHT plugin and needs to be forwarded for UDP through any firewalls on your system.  I am not certain if there would be an issue if the DHT port was the same as your general port choice, so I am advising to keep this default port as your selection.   Note:  I recently tested this plugin using the port I had set for my general use and it never got past initializing on IPv4.  When I changed it back to 49001, the IPv4 began showing large numbers quickly. 

I have also changed my advice in the Optimizing Vuze For Speed guide to use UPnP if you have a router and to allow the Vuze program (as opposed to the general port you have chosen) through your software firewall.  If you have done as the previous sentence states, then there will be no additional forwarding for you to enable and your Mainline DHT plugin should be good to go.  If the plugin is working, then you should see something like the below image (you will only see numbers when you hover over the mIDHT icon).  The number of users you see may well be different, but the other parts of the image should be identical.  Note that you will only see these items when you have a torrent running that utilizes DHT (basically any torrent obatined from a public torrent site).

If your Vuze does not show similar to the above image, first make sure you have a torrent that supports DHT running.  If you have a torrent that supports DHT running and still do not see something similar, then use the Vuze NAT/Firewall test to test port 49001 (you only need to test UDP).  If that fails, then recheck your settings in anyy firewall exceptions.  If you still have a fail, then please post here with information on any software firewalls (make and version) and hardware (router/modem) make and model.

Conclusion

Hopefully this guide helped you to properly, and easily, install this plugin.  For very healthy torrents, this will most likely not make much of a difference.  However, with weaker torrents, this could provide a nice boost.

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask here or in our forums. 

If everything went well, a thank you is always appreciated as it is good for me to know this guide helped and this also helps new users to see that this guide works..  I do not respond to the thank yous as this spreads the comments out, but I do see them and I thank those who post them now.

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• Searching for Torrents Popular and unique torrent search sites, with comments.
• Finding Legal (and Free) Torrents sites that offer only legally downloadable and distributable content.
• Additional Vuze Settings some additional hints and help