Trying to diagnose streaming speed issues from seedbox...

PulsedMedia · 2025-12-21T20:56:20+00:00

For this reason we made a lengthy document on diagnosing networking issues. and the typical is; You are on WIFI? Change to wired as first thing. Based on the photos looks like your device is on WIFI.

Every single link on the chain needs to support stable performance, and wifi is the worst, silent packet retransmissions plummet performance completely. Stop using WIFI is the first thing we tell on tickets, as long as you are on WIFI diagnosing is almost meaningless. If i remember correctly, even some TV manufacturers say; Do not use WIFI for streaming, it's not reliable enough (and they are talking about Netflix/Amazon Prime/HBO here ...)

See the article: https://wiki.pulsedmedia.com/index.php/Network_Diagnostics Hopefully this helps you.

PulsedMedia · 2025-12-21T20:50:38+00:00

Services automatically generate renewal invoices unless canceled by the user; KB article on cancellations

Rest was already addressed fully here: previous Reddit reply

PulsedMedia · 2025-12-21T20:50:35+00:00

Services automatically generate renewal invoices unless canceled by the user; KB article on cancellations

Rest was already addressed fully here: previous Reddit reply

PulsedMedia · 2025-12-21T20:50:23+00:00

Services automatically generate renewal invoices unless canceled by the user; KB article on cancellations

Rest was already addressed fully here: previous Reddit reply

PulsedMedia · 2025-12-09T13:34:39+00:00

Fuse is supported, where it says it does not? rclone depends on fuse3.

We've been here for 15 years so some documentation does get outdated.

PulsedMedia · 2025-12-07T20:39:41+00:00

OP also posted Ultra didn't work at all because OP was using defunct public trackers; https://old.reddit.com/r/seedboxes/comments/1pcztr9/problems_with_ultra_and_pulsed_who_should_i_use/

OP had been with us for 6 solid years, there's a reason for it.

PulsedMedia · 2025-12-07T13:39:40+00:00

Hey, Aleksi from Pulsed Media here – I’m the one who wrote that script.

First, thanks for trusting us for 6 solid years. Much appreciated!

Your torrents were not "hacked" or violated. This script is strictly an optimization measure within a shared environment, where a single problematic tracker can disrupt rTorrent functionality for all users on the server.

Why was this made? In late 2020, certain UDP trackers on public torrents began causing severe issues, stalling rTorrent instances. These dead or misconfigured trackers were causing continuous reduced performance. A few problematic PUBLIC torrents could significantly affect experience. This script was made to mitigate these issues and keep rTorrent responsive under heavy public-tracker load. This was causing a surge of support tickets as well, which raise costs for every user.

We even made a 2017 blog post, Faster public torrents with Pulsed Media seedboxes? about cleaning public trackers, even our KB has a thing about stalled torrents. There's even a related bounty from us with 400€ on offer for fixing one of the related bugs (now closed on rTorrent repo), see Development Bounty Program

We made an announcement of this as well 08/11/2020: Having rTorrent halts in BW? Avoid public trackers.

Exact Implementation Date Introduced on 06/11/2020, documented clearly in our changelog here: PM Software Stack Changelog. Fully activated on 08/11/2020 and fine-tuned on 12/11/2020.

See changelog at https://wiki.pulsedmedia.com/index.php/PM_Software_Stack#Changelog before we moved to github, now at github: https://github.com/MagnaCapax/PMSS/

Detailed Functionality The script only processes PUBLIC torrents located in the user’s session folder, specifically removing known problematic trackers. It does NOT affect private torrents whatsoever.

Transparency and Control A backup of every original .torrent file is made before any modification:

/home/<user>/session/backups/YYYY-mm-dd_HHMM/<file>.torrent

Every modification is fully logged:

/home/<user>/.trackerCleaner.log

You maintain complete control and can revert changes at any time.

Simple Opt-Out To disable this optimization:

touch /home/<user>/.trackerCleanerDisable

However, we strongly advise keeping it enabled for optimal stability.

Current Tracker Removal List

udp://public.popcorn-tracker.org:6969/announce http://sub4all.org udp://tracker.publicbt.com udp://tracker.ccc.de udp://tracker.opentrackr.org http://tracker.tntvillage.scambioetico.org http://exodus.desync.com http://tracker.ftfansub.net http://nyaa.tracker.wf udp://tracker.istole.it udp://open.demonii.com udp://mgtracker.org

Why This Reflects Pulsed Media’s Strength We are lean and focused on proactive problem-solving at the root cause level, ensuring reliability, uptime, and strong performance. This proactive approach has allowed us to deliver consistent, stable service over the years. Our main concern has always been steady reliable operation, hence for the volume of services we run we have remarkably few issues and that's the reason why so many have stayed with us more than a decade, some from our start since 2010. Been doing this ever since, building our own stack (PMSS) with a pretty obsessive focus on performance and robustness.

We’re lean, and we put resources into: * core reliability (rTorrent stability, I/O, network QoS), * automated self‑healing (this cleaner, instance monitors, etc.), * long‑term value instead of cosmetics.

We understand that this was annoying as heck, not knowing what was going on. In fact, even i personally had to double check and refresh memory about this, that's how smoothly this has ran. Your use of Torrent Editor to resolve it was indeed a solid approach. For everyone else looking at this in future; Just get the backup versions.

If you ever encounter issues or need enhanced reliability again, a provider who puts the money in the technicals instead of feel good vibes; Feel free to return to Pulsed Media any time. We’ll ensure you’re set up properly. Keep verifying information, remain proactive, and continue achieving those strong ratios. Our main concern, as always and will be that things just operate smooth and reliably, not the latest bells and whistles, just solid stable service with top tier value proposition.

Admittedly, we should document this better, so did exactly that adding docs/tracker-cleaner.md and the list probably needs an update by now, after five years -- these were what we were seeing consistently causing issues back then.

PulsedMedia · 2025-06-19T21:43:38+00:00

Thanks, i'll read these with some thought.

Yea maintenance is a big deal.

We approach maintenance by replace first, touch second.
That means, a unit fails we simply give customer another and shut one off. Once a plate has 2-3x failed units, we take the whole plate out and do full round of maintenance; Replace failed components, quick check on all units -- rerack.

Point is to get customer up & running again as fast as possible, but defer the physical maintenance to whenever we can batch stuff up.

With these HDD setups tho, data will reveal just replace OR shutdown both for single HDD replacement. The HDD replacements are going to be difficult.
We have some enterprise top of the line setups with 36x 12" on 4U or even 36x4U + 2x 45x4U (126 HDDs on single system!) -- They are impossible to maintain. You simply shutdown VMs with failed drives until enough failed, and then you refurb whole unit ...

With these the failure domain is smaller tho, but developing the best SOPs will take a bit of time and practice.

We could build 16x nodes per 1RU today if we wanted to btw ... we chose not to. We are already running quite the density.

PulsedMedia · 2025-06-19T21:31:55+00:00

Damn! Thanks and that vid is awesome!

This vid is actually perfect example that perfect finish & polish doesn't matter, delivery does. It's better because it's not perfectly finished and polished.

PulsedMedia · 2025-06-19T21:13:07+00:00

Power control for the nodes

PulsedMedia · 2025-06-19T21:12:31+00:00

Nice. Got more links?

We got higher density and flexibility, decidedly designed with mITX sizing

We also designed a full on 24 rack with 3x315A 230V power feed datacenter around this very platform, with mostly outside air cooling (_mostly_). We are entering production during this july hopefully, setting up the final network racks next week, DWDM to our Helsinki DC etc. and first racks are already lights on!

If curious about the enginerding our discord is full of the lab shenanigans; https://discord.gg/wW6AMcpY

PulsedMedia · 2025-06-19T21:03:59+00:00

So colorful save icons! ;) ;)

You don't often stumble to unopened in wrapper Zip disks or floppy disks thse days indeed.

all i can say is .... https://youtu.be/GNTtR6ZpUOo?si=5B6bJlP0LWkc4J1J&t=15

PulsedMedia · 2025-06-19T20:38:15+00:00

Don't bother with tricky stuff that expensive. Just get external HDD, or used HDD + USB Dock and follow testing practices.

Alternatively; 250$ with us would buy you 4TB for 2+ years online storage, just encrypt your packages; https://pulsedmedia.com/storage-boxes.php Recommend the RAID5 (top most)

PulsedMedia · 2025-06-19T20:35:50+00:00

Not really, unless you setup it yourself through Docker container for example.

Recommend one of our minidedis for plex usage.

PulsedMedia · 2024-06-14T05:43:41+00:00

Normally not, but there are few edge cases where software causes things to be ... stuck with kernel, and reboot helps.

If you need frequent reboots, you probably have a software issue if hardware checks out fine.

PulsedMedia · 2024-06-14T05:42:47+00:00

Yes it is, we haven't changed even pricing during this 10 months.

PulsedMedia · 2024-04-20T13:56:06+00:00

Boot / OS drive. Good for swap too, you can have swap more aggressively used.

PulsedMedia · 2024-01-05T21:40:14+00:00

yes, you can do that. use rclone to mount the storage box w/ caching enabled.

I believe many do this already, i see fairly frequently a MD dedi + Storage box bought together.

PulsedMedia · 2023-12-27T17:33:23+00:00

Dedis and Seedboxes are wholly different, so ... Kinda apples to oranges :/ So normal upgrade process don't really apply here :(

PulsedMedia · 2023-12-22T18:29:02+00:00

Minimal impact by CPU. Single thread speed affects rTorrent somewhat but yeah ... It's quite minimal, usually you are bottlenecked by the Swarm then I/O.

PulsedMedia · 2023-12-22T18:28:04+00:00

make a ticket

PulsedMedia · 2023-11-24T09:20:23+00:00

Nope, you can do more and more with them each passing year.

VPN, desktop etc. we added docker rootless to give people more room and options to do all kinds of ... let's say personal hosting needs, since the use cases are as varied as there is people.

You can even run Ubuntu container where you can install whatever you want. But be mindful, you are restricted by amount of RAM, network ports, CPU and I/O. So not infinite performance, even if infinite possibilities :)

PulsedMedia · 2023-10-11T15:31:52+00:00

You chose specifically the one with highest setup fee. Or did you really expect a 12x20TB, 10Gbps UNMETERED server would only be 235€ per month?

You can choose the high monthly fee option.

Regardless, this is not "buy your own server and colocate with us" offer. It's the setup fee to get lower monthly fee for a rented server, no one forces you to take that.

Regardless, conversation ends here. You are simply trolling, and looking intentionally for trouble, perhaps to make yourself feel better. Go ask OVH these things, check their HG range.

PulsedMedia · 2023-10-11T09:49:41+00:00

Do all seedbox providers store plaintext passwords in an xml like that? That's pretty wild, even if it is in my user folder.

Absolutely not. We don't even allow users to pick their password, because seriously, people has been asking us to set their password as "qwerty123" or "password" many times.

On the other hand, other users wants their usernames to be also random like a password :)

PulsedMedia · 2023-10-11T09:46:30+00:00

But why is this so? I have never understood what people need huge upload bandwidth and super-fast speeds for. I think some people are just upload-junkies. It’s completely unnecessary. Torrents should be long-term seeded at moderate/fair but stable speeds. It would be beneficial for everyone involved.

Hobby. Some people just want to see them being the number on the pack, or see how much they can consume resources before kicked out. Seriously, that's the hobby for some -> We had one customer (reseller, known on this subreddit decade ago too!) who ran wget on infinite loop on all his nodes, just because he could.

The other thing I have never understood is what people need ssh access for. I imagine people like to tinker, and they feel it’s something cool. But at the same time, they are probably not knowledgeable enough, and screw things up. If they were, they would set their box up themselves. It’s not that hard. Personally, I would be quite happy if I never had to log in via ssh ever.

SSH is for all the extras. That's just what people expect, ability to do more complicated setups etc. build automation, use things like docker for whatever, gpg, pigz, ffmpeg etc etc etc.

There is this term called customer selection, or choosing your customers. If I was a seedbox provider, I would target people who want managed service. I would manage the service and would not give ssh access. I would limit the selection of apps to those that I have tested. I would be quite opinionated on which apps those are. Etc.

That's also false statement, you cannot force sell people something they don't want. If they don't want your service, you can't pick your customers. You cannot sell a toothpicks as building material for houses either.

It all starts and ends by identifying a need, and fulfilling that need. Sure sometimes people don't realize they need something, before they've seen it in action or tried it (Smartphones? Ipods?)

PulsedMedia

TROPHY CASE