the forums at degreez.net

I currently download a lot of files using bittorrent, most of which other people in the house (6 students) want access to.

The way I see it (correct me if I'm wrong), the only options are to:
1) Wait for files to download, then share them across the network using any sharing protocol.
2)Set up a tracker on the LAN. If I then external announce to it, will it save my IP & port for the next person to get it when they external announce?

(1) Is what I currently do, but is not ideal as I can't share until bittorrent is finished. (2) I tried using BNBT with fairly crappy results.

What I'd prefer to do is to force a manual connect from one client to another using a local IP and port (much like the external announce in bittornado except to a client rather than a tracker). This then avoids requiring any other software to run at all. The question is, is there a client that can do this (I'm pretty sure the answer is "no", but I'm a glass is half full kind of guy)?

Yes, doing an external announce to an open tracker on your LAN will cause the clients to cross-connect, but only if they don't already have a full slate of peers. There's really no benefit to using BitTorrent multiply behind a LAN, and I recommend you simply have one person download the file and then stick it in a shared directory for the other people to access. That way they don't even need to xfer it to their own computer, they can just watch it over the intranet.

I believe Azureus now has a plugin that will let you manually add a peer to a torrent. Don't think that it's very integrated into the gui though.