My Peer-to-Peer foray and first 'Seedbox' experience
Up until recently I had a 'Usenet' account which for many of the younger generation will not mean much but suffice to say it was very popular in early years of the internet.
Source Wikipedia:
Usenet is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979, and it was established in 1980. Users read and post messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups. There are literally thousands of these newsgroups to chose from.
More at Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet.
However it was difficult to find out what was available on the Usenet servers and I had to pay out some extra cash for a search service that I could use within the Usenet Client which I was running on windows 7. As I was using Usenet less and less I decided it was not really cost effective and decided to cancel my subscription to my Usenet and search provider saving myself $35 per-month.
Around two years ago (I was still using Usenet/Newsgroups) I downloaded a free Torrent client called uTorrent found here http://www.utorrent.com/ which is a very popular torrent client and quite easy to use, has lots of options to tune to your internet specifications. Thus started my first dive into Peer-To-Peer file sharing. I was using uTorrent on my home account off and on realizing that it was prone to being spied upon by your very own ISP and other interested parties in the video and film industry so as I did not want to be caught downloading copyrighted material I would only use it when absolutely necessary. Because I was downloading and not uploading (sharing) my download speed suffered greatly, more of that later.
When I started to use uTorrent my home account was very slow 50 Mbps download and 4 Mbps upload therefore I upgraded the account to 250 Mbps down and 14 Mbps up which was much better but still slow for torrents because the most important flow of information on torrents is believe it or not 'Up-Load' speed because to become a good torrent citizen you need to Seed your freshly downloaded torrent to help out others who are downloading for this you need a very good upload and download speed. If you just download the file and delete the torrent right away you get a reputation as a 'Leech' and as a leech your connection is throttled and you could wait days and weeks before your much sought after file is downloaded so best to avoid this situation and do the right thing, share your download and become a 'Seeder' where upon your bandwidth will be made much better, the greater the ratio between 'uploading and downloading' the better your bandwidth will become and the quicker you will get that file you're after. To be safe I needed a Proxy so that my IP was hidden from whomever wanted it.
Here is some information on uTorrent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9CTorrent
Eventually I got myself a very good VPN (Virtual Private Network) service after reading quite a number of reviews and talking to a couple people who are using the service I signed up for an account.
The VPN I chose is a British Virgin Islands-based VPN provider that has always led the way when it comes to offering a customer-focused service. Ease of use, a responsive 24/7 customer service team, an industry-leading, no questions asked, 30-day money-back guarantee which ensures them place at the top of the VPN industry.
Their experience staff keep their customers very happy and is matched by their superb technical excellence. They use an almost flawless encryption with very fast connections.
This Company is Based in the British Virgin Islands, and keep very minimal aggregated logs, I am very happy with their service which is very easy to use and is available for Windows, Apple, and Linux Operating Systems. In Linux you have to use the terminal to access the VPN but it's easy to learn. I have their VPN on a Windows 7 Ultimate Machine and all it takes to switch the VPN on or off is one click of the mouse and it's done. The other computer is a dual booted Win 7/Linux Mint 17.3 rosa distribution and believe me I am a complete noob to Linux and yet I managed very well with a few calls to VPN the support staff.
Now to be totally secure using P2P I need a Seedbox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seedbox*
This was the answer to my problem of remaining anonymous and being able to download and upload with safety provided I used a VPN between myself and the Seedbox.
Simply put a seedbox is a dedicated service that seeds your torrent(s) day and night totally unconnected to you, the seedbox does it's work while you sleep, eat, go to lunch or go on holiday. You would connect to your seedbox to download new content or download files to your computer if required. On the other hand best to keep all your files on the seedbox and Stream all your movies etc from the seedbox, no need to clutter up your own hard-drive where you will leave a footprint of your activity.
The seedbox server is much faster compared to your home internet ISP account as they are located at high speed data centers with 1 Gbps port to the internet which is many times faster than my 250/14 Mbps ISP connection.
Up-loaders who have a decent fan-base across popular torrent sites all use seedboxes 24/7 due to high speeds and storage, they just keep seeding and adding content getting their upload/download ration high so that they can be among the first to download and seed a new file getting their ratio up quicker than the competition.
Even if you are not interested in becoming a top seeder on p2p it's still a good move to have your very own seedbox as it keeps content from your computer which means it cannot be tied back to you as there will be no trace of anything which breaches copyright on your machine.
A seedbox's only job is to keep your torrent(s) up and running. Thus it can focus on doing just that and nothing else.
Generally, seedboxes assure very hight net seed speeds, depending on the plan you select. As far as I have seen, most uploaders who use seedboxes, go for the 1Gbps plan. That more or less is enough to afford decent speeds to downloaders.
Note:
If you are using Windows or a Mac then a VPN will be included with the Seedbox and can be installed by following the instructions that will be provided. If you me you are on a Linux distro then you have to get your own VPN (I could be incorrect here so don't quote me as I need to do more research on that) which is an extra cost. As most users will be using Windows there should not be a problem. Because I have a great VPN I don't use the seedbox VPN for Windows just to keep it simple.