Transmission & Private Internet Access (VPN)

[moomoo]

I am signed up to a VPN (PrivateInternetAccess or "PIA") which works great apart from when I use Transmission.

I am on a Mac using the latest Mavericks 10.9 OS X and Transmission 2.82. When I activate Transmission all of a sudden my VPN connection will drop out every 20-30 seconds constantly. I have it set so that if the VPN disconnects it does not continue to allow traffic ("Internet Kill Switch"). Other than when using Transmission the PIA application works just fine and has decent speeds. Private Internet Access support has been really thorough and found nothing wrong with the set up. They suggested I post here.

Has anyone else had this trouble and found a solution? It only ever disconnects constantly when I am using Transmission, is there a setting or something I am missing?

Any help would be really appreciated as at the moment using Transmission and PIA together is practically impossible.

[mark143]

Try to lower the MTU under the PIA app to 1300

[moomoo]

Thanks for your replies. I believe my MTU is at 1400 currently but I will try amending it.

I have limited my upload speeds and it seems to have somewhat remedied the situation. It stills happens but not as frequently.

Thanks for your replies.

[moomoo]

I believe the problem could be multiple active transfers? Would this make sense?

It seems to behave (most of the time) when one transfer is active, but when multiple transfers are going at the same time it starts to disconnect all the time.

[Doepfer]

I'm having the same problem:
PIA works fine with browsing etc. but as soon as I open Transmission and start downloading a torrent, my internet connection "dies" within 30 secs (I don't have the "killswitch" activated). When this happens, not only does the download stop: I cant even browse or anything - I have to disconnect the PIA app to use the internet again. I tried the PIA support suggestions and the suggestions in this post - they don't work for me.
BUT all these problems started after I updated the PIA app two days ago. I think this is rather a PIA issue....

Macbook Pro 2.6GHz Intel Core i7
OSX 10.9
Transmission 2.82

[stacymichal]

I have used PIA and i didn't find any help in this regards. There are many pissed off users on Reddit that have been badly affected and irritated by PIA internet kill switch option. I choose disconnect manually and after that my internet drops. I tried many things to reset it like rebooting, settings etc and it seems that every attempt was useless. I was suggested by a user here on reddit to reinstall the setup. On other hand i recently bought PUREVPN services with Free Internet Kill switch VPN feature and it’s very easy to activate and deactivate as per requirement.

[doiknowu]

I use Transmission 2.84 on my Mac with PIA with no problems, so I'll tell you how it works for me.

First, connect through a country that supports torrenting. The USA servers do NOT. I'll leave that part up to you.

Second, on PIA you MUST enable port forwarding.

Third, once the first two steps have been completed, hover your mouse pointer over the PIA icon in the menu tray. After a few seconds you should see something like: "Connected - Whatever country [ port xxxxx]" Either write that port down or just commit it to memory for a few seconds.

Fourth, open Transmission.

Fifth, in the Transmission preferences, click the Network icon. In the Peer Listening Port box erase the existing port and enter the port you got from PIA. Give it a few seconds as Transmission makes the connection (maybe 20-30 seconds should do it). The traffic light will turn green, and Transmission is now operating within the port opened by PIA.

I've had Transmission run for hours this way, without a dropped connection. I do NOT activate the PIA Internet Kill Switch.

This works on both my Macs, OS X 10.6.x and 10.9.x, so no reason it shouldn't work for you.

[darmok]

This thread was started in 2013. If you're having difficulties, please start a new thread and provide details as to your problem.

[fuga]

No issues here - Transmission v3.0 (lazy bastard I am) & macOS v13.5.1 (Ventura). Perhaps it's the location you have set in PIA? There is much variance.