When the world’s largest private torrent tracker makes a drastic change to their ratio system, it’s always big news in the BitTorrent community. RuTracker.org (formerly Torrents.ru) has rolled out a new feature called the Time Bonus system which pretty much makes the whole site freeleech or ‘almost’ ratio free. Up until now, Torrents.Ru required users to maintain a minimum global share ratio if they were to survive a ban. However under the new system, all ratio based warnings and accounts bans will cease to exist. Ratio will essentially be replaced by time bonus points. Time bonus points are automatically gained when you seed downloaded torrents, regardless of the actual amount of data you upload back. This should be good news for low bandwidth users and those who struggled to maintain a healthy global ratio on this tracker.

FYI : By popular demand, we have put together a short guide for English speaking users on how to download torrents from RuTracker – continue reading for more information.

Following is a translated version of the Time Bonus explanation thread on RuTracker forums – we used Google Translate to translate the Russian version and then re-wrote it so that it made more sense – the automated translation was a little confusing:

Friends

On April 10, 2010, we introduce a Time Bonus system. Created it in order to encourage users to support the distribution, leaving them seeding for as long as possible.

The system works very simply - for 3 continuous hours of seeding the same torrent you acquire 1 Time Bonus (TB) points. If you seed a torrent for 6 hours you will gain 2 TB, if you seed it for 24 hours you will gain 8 TB. The more torrents you have seeding on your computer, the more points you will gain.

You can utilize time bonus points to download additional torrents. The more Time Bonus points you have - the greater the number of torrents you can download daily.

The rules are very simple - if you do not have any Time Bonus points - you can only download 3 torrents per day.

If you have a 5 TB - you can download one additional torrent. If 10 – you can download 2 torrents. 15 TB means you can download three torrents.

You can see the number of Time Bonus points in your profile.



Little FAQ

1) How often are Time Bonus statistics updated? - Once a day.

2) What is the maximum number of torrents you can download per day? - 100. For this you have to have 500 TB.

3) What is the maximum number of time bonus points you can have allocated to your account ? 50 000. The maximum number of TB points you can earn per day is limited to 1000.

4) Can I buy, sell, exchange TB? NO.

5) What about the ratio? RATIO CONTINUES TO BE, but limitations associated with it, will cease to exist after 18 February 2010.

6) I have a lot TB, how did I get them? We have converted your ratio to TB points

7) Can you return to the ratio system and leave everything as it was? NOT BECAUSE RATIO IS EASILY cheated.

Bear with us if there are any mistakes in the article – no one in our team speaks Russian and Google translate was the only help we had. If there are any corrections to be made, please post them as comments.

If you still don’t understand the time bonus (taymbonusov?) , here’s a brief summary of how the new system works:

You can download three torrents per day for free. Yes, the first three torrents you download each day are not bound by time bonus points requirements or ratio requirements.

bound by time bonus points requirements or ratio requirements. If you are to download more than three torrents a day, you will need to have Time Bonus points allocated to your account.

Time bonus points are obtained by seeding downloaded torrents – you gain 1 TB for every three hours you keep a torrent seeding. If you seed two torrents for a total of 24 hours, you will gain (24/3) * 2 = 16 Time Bonus points.

Time Bonus points. A new torrent (in addition to the free 3 torrents allowed per day) will cost you 5 TB.

By looking at the explanation given by RuTracker administrators, it looks as if ratio cheating had a lot to do with the new changes. RuTracker has nearly 5 million registered users and I’m sure there are plenty of ratio cheaters among this user base. But are the new changes the best way to combat ratio cheating? The site tracks over 800000 torrents and the removal of the ratio system may affect the health of these already indexed uploads, some of which are pretty huge. Anyways it’s too early to predict the success or failure of the time bonus system - hopefully, it will be a win-win situation for both end users as well as site staff.

Despite the recent changes, RuTracker continues to be an excellent BitTorrent tracker. It has a huge collection of torrents ranging from latest scene releases to rare gems found only in the darkest corners of the internet. And plenty of these releases are in English. Don’t believe us? Have a look at their torrent categories section below (translated version):

However one of the main drawbacks with this site (and one of the reasons it’s relatively unpopular with international users) is the Russian interface. The site is completely in Russian and there is no built in option to change the language to English. If you don’t know Russian, you can still browse RuTracker with the help of a translation service – the section below should help international users download torrents from this awesome tracker.

Tips for English speaking users

Even if you use a translation service such as Google translate, it is likely give you trouble when it comes to logging in or downloading the .torrent file (as these types of services seem to reset form data upon submit). There are several workarounds for this problem.

Use the tracker search

Although not many are aware, RuTracker’s BitTorrent tracker has a built in search functionality. You can use this to your advantage and easily search for torrents you need.

Visit http://rutracker.org/forum/tracker.php. If you are not logged in, you will be asked to log in. Enter a search term in one of the fields and hit search. Scroll down to find a list of results associated with the search term. You will be able to identify most of these search results even without the help of a translator.

You will even be able to sort results by number of seeders/leechers, etc as the search is linked to the tracker. Alternatively, you can use http://rutracker.org/forum/search.php to directly search the forums.

Browse and find the torrents

You can browse the forums through a translation service just fine – issues only arise when you try to log in. First, you can browse a translated version of forums and find the torrent you want downloaded (we mean the link to forum thread where torrent description is found)). You can then paste this link on a new browser window and download the torrent normally. This way you will avoid login issues that are attributed with most translation services out there. Step by step guide below:

Visit Yahoo! Babelfish translation service at http://babelfish.yahoo.com In the ‘Translate a web page’ field, paste http://rutracker.org/forum/index.php. From the drop down menu choose ‘Russian to English’ and press translate. Translated version RuTracker main index will load. Do not login at this point. Browse the threads and find the torrent you are looking for. When you have found the correct thread, right click thread name and copy the link location. This URL will be something like http://66.196.80.202/babelfish/translate_url_content?.intl=us&lp=ru_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2frutracker.org%2fforum%2f.%2fviewtopic.php%3ft%3d1465304 Paste the URL in a new browser window, delete the translation related part from the link (highlighted in bold in above link) and press enter. You will be prompted to login – this page will be in Russian. When you log in, you will be taken to the torrent download page. You can now download the torrent without issues.

How to register

If you still aren’t a member of this site, you can easily create a new account for free. Signups for RuTracker are currently open. Both translated and original versions of homepages and signup URLs are linked-to below.

Site Name: RuTracker (http://rutracker.org/forum/index.php)

Translated Version of Homepage: http://bit.ly/a5TBGc

Signup URL: http://rutracker.org/forum/profile.php?mode=register

Translated Version of Signup URL: http://bit.ly/clKnFg

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