VPN Issue With Qbittorrent

Posted by AntoxicDWA

I am using Surfshark as my VPN on the spark box setup. I am using a private tracker and almost all of the torrents except for a couple here and there are getting blocked from connecting to peers so all of my torrents are getting stuck in “stalled” status. Using Claude it was suggesting that the issue is the VPN not supporting port forwarding so I tried one of the same torrent files off the vpn on my laptop and it instantly started downloading no problem. Is there a work around to get this going in qbittorrent and Surfshark since I already paid for Surfshark or is it inevitable I need to switch to proton or something as a VPN provider

1 replies

tomspark wrote:

Claude got it right on this one — Surfshark just doesn't offer port forwarding at all, and there's no qBittorrent setting that can work around it. Without it, other people can't start connections to your box, so on a private tracker (where lots of seeders are in the same boat) torrents sit stalled. Your laptop test off the VPN proves it. So if the private tracker matters to you, switching is honestly the answer — Proton works well with SparkBox and does support port forwarding. One gotcha when you set it up: when you generate the WireGuard config on Proton's site, turn ON "NAT-PMP (Port Forwarding)" and pick a P2P server (the double-arrow icon), or forwarding won't work. Happy to walk you through it if you make the jump.