XunLei English – Thunder 5

I’m not sure how many of you out there actually uses XunLei or Thunder 5 as your download manager. Well, i have to say, it’s not just any download manager. It’s definitely super fast, both for direct leeching and torrent downloading. While i’ve been a loyal user of uTorrent, i do reckon that XunLei can be super fast when downloading torrent files from international sites like Mininova, Isohunt or Demonoid. And of course, XunLei’s portal (powered by Gougou) also provide links to various torrent files (particularly for chinese-related content, music, TV series, movies).

Below are my personal reviews on XunLei:

The speed is amazingly fast.
If you’re downloading a torrent with a list of files, especially full episodes from a TV Series, you’ll notice that XunLei will always make sure it download the files according to the rank or sequence. Meaning you get to watch Episode 1 when Episode 2 is still downloading.
Always disable UPNP and use the default TCP port (80) to achieve better download speed.
XunLei is only in Chinese. Despite that, English translation file is available thanks for the effort of HeHehunter. Do visit his site for the file.
Despite its speed, XunLei only work on public trackers as it functions as a "spoof" HTTP reader. Some private trackers will not allow this for security purposes.
If you’re downloading from a tracker with ratio limit, XunLei is not recommended as the seeding (uploading) speed can be very slow, hence lower your sharing ratio.
XunLei can consume a lot of memory when you’re downloading too many files and it doesn’t integrate well with other download manager.

Go to this page to download the XunLei English translation pack now!

Tags:review, Thunder 5, Xunlei

57 Comments

snayit, November 12, 2007 @ 5:51 pm Reply

Few questions regarding Thunder5, maybe you’ll know:
– What is the maximum upload speed that i can give with Thunder given a business bandwidth limit? I saw in the options that the upload can be 1-2048KB but i can change this text. Can it reach 2MB or more?
– The current speed in the Thunder is only the download? Can i see the upload speed too somewhere in the GUI?
– Where can i find links to download, except the search in GouGou? Is there some place with an English links?
keemanxp, November 13, 2007 @ 4:06 pm Reply

1. There should be no limit for thunder max upload speed. It all depends on your connection speed.

2. The “shown” speed is for download, upload speed can be seen in the TaskInfo panel at the bottom.

3. Links to download….if you’re referring to torrent files, you can always try international torrent sites like isohunt.com, mininova.org or torrentreactor.com XunLei works well with “international” torrents as well.
snayit, November 13, 2007 @ 5:55 pm Reply

Thanks for your response!

I’ve noticed how fast this thing works, but since i do not understand Chinese i am missing on some important stuff and not sure how to get the max of it.

Do you know of any user-manual i can find in English? And also, do you know what does the lock next to the file name mean?! Sometimes i see a lock and sometimes a v sign and the column name is ??? (which means nothing to me, of course).

I know i can use it with torrents but maybe you know where i can find more links suck as in xunlei’s site, but in english? If not i’ll keep using the Chinese links which are also great.
keemanxp, November 14, 2007 @ 10:53 am Reply

At the moment Xunlei doesn’t have any official English manual or English version. I guess, it’s on purpose as they want to retain the “Chinese Identity”.

You can always go to http://blog.scuforum.net/ (Hehehunter’s blog) for more English FAQ.

As for the XunLei’s site…well, sadly no English yet. And i have not seen any international sites as well-organised as the Xunlei’s portal.
HeHeHunter, May 13, 2008 @ 3:50 pm Reply

I changed my blog address already. It is not http://hehehunter.blogspot.com
nijin, May 21, 2008 @ 3:24 pm Reply

im havg a problem wth web thunder nw a days .. it gets stopped all of a sudden showing exception stack overflow follwing an address
Type: EXCEPTION_STACK_OVERFLOW
Address: 0x2121E5FB
after that i have to strat it again….
i dont know wht to do.. also pls tell me can i get a english version of web thunder……
Ra$hiD, June 15, 2008 @ 5:26 pm Reply

Can anybody include some ways to change the SETTINGS of Thunder so that it can be tweaked to Max performance.
sky3vil, June 20, 2008 @ 10:31 pm Reply

thunder’s setting? hmm old word lo:
1 forward port
2 cap upload speed
3 dun surf net when download
4 hack half open connection(xp)
5 tweak computer(registry cleaner?)
6 clean up hard disk space
7 defrag
8 download 1 task at a time
9 install latest hotfixes
10 dun use windows firewall change to another one(comodo is a good choice and its free)
10 last but least: buy a faster connection…
majokuan, August 30, 2008 @ 6:42 pm Reply

hi,,,thank for the info on thunder engliah pack,,i a new user,,,,still no idea how to use download files yet,,,,any cool website for movie or anime (english subtitle) thanks,,,try at http://www.demonoid.com/ but User
Registrations are closed. How? Thanks
Kevin, September 22, 2008 @ 6:43 am Reply

Hi, I’m having a problem with Thunder 5.8.5.576. In the beginning I could double click on a torrent file in Windows Explorer, then it will download immediately in Thunder. But suddenly it doesn’t work anymore. I have to drag and drop the torrent file to Thunder, then the download begins. Also when I download a torrent file with Firefox, then I choose to “open with Thunder”, it should begin the download immediately, but this also doesn’t work anymore. I’ve tried some filetypes settings under Windows Vista, but the problem can’t be helped. Can you help me please?
ct9660, October 4, 2008 @ 12:16 am Reply

xunlei english?ok…..
shawn, October 4, 2008 @ 9:51 pm Reply

hi

any mac version on this?
thx
Espada, December 11, 2008 @ 10:12 pm Reply

does anyone know where to download thunder 5 for free ?
Jantzen, January 3, 2009 @ 7:36 am Reply

Why after Thunder 5 running awhile, my entire internet become not working, so as Thunder 5. I force to reboot my system, restart or shutdown my system will hang the system. Pls help.
timy, January 8, 2009 @ 10:00 am Reply

this thunder got a lot of spyware..dont you know it?
damian, February 3, 2009 @ 2:27 pm Reply

supposedly the version put out by this dude is cleaned up…

can anybody that’s used thunder confirm this?

and is there really any benefit to using it over utorrent …speed wise i mean
rush4ufc, February 12, 2009 @ 1:38 pm Reply

i just downloaded thunder (the english one from hehehunter) & WOW, it’s insanely fast. utorrent i got like 60k at the most, thunder im getting like 200k. So yea.. it is as good as people say.
Chiily, February 13, 2009 @ 2:44 am Reply

hey, xunlei has English version named gigaget, you could download english version from here:http://www.gigaget.com/download.htm

there is a little different from Version 5, less advertisement on this english version

resource:
http://www.6aoo.cn/bbs/thread-6268-1-1.html
Canaworm, February 21, 2009 @ 2:16 am Reply

Sure, Xunlei is very attractive, but:
-Can’t limit upload(even if you do, the software does not really care about this)
-Can’t keep any files private, as Xunlei scans all your computer, and shares ALL your files. So you should hope you don’t have confidential files.
-Installs spyware, trojans, the whole works.
-Can never remove completely, some hidden .dll remain.
So, while it is the fastest, does speed up both P2P and ftps downloads, and their website does get 50 M hits/day, it’s not exactly perfect.
HeHeHunter, February 21, 2009 @ 3:18 pm Reply

@Canaworm
Do you mind to answer these questions?
1. May I know which version are you using?
2. Are you using any of my versions?

Besides, I’ll answer your questions.

1. You can limit the upload by going to Tools > Options > Connection. See the speed section and un-tick the third option. That will disable the overwrite of settings if speed too slow.
2. The new version of Thunder, especially those released by me, HeHeHunter, they will no longer scan your files. This is an old story. Please show me the latest proof if you do see that they scan your files.
3. Installation of spywares and trojans only exist when you are using certain older versions and those version with ads. Newer version, especially those from me are certified clean and tested. However, certain anti-virus may detect spywares and trojan on latest version, but it's just false positives.
4. You can uninstall completely if you are using my version. The method is easy and painless. All you need to do is just delete the directory where you unzip the files to. However, I couldn't help if you're using official version.
5. No software is perfect. Even Microsoft Operating System is not perfect.

I hope that you are clear about my version of Thunder. I hope you’ll download the latest portable edition of Thunder from my website.

Thank you.

Regards,
HeHeHunter
hen, March 25, 2009 @ 12:06 am Reply

i’m behind router. my question is do i really need to port forward port 80 on my router? thanks
LOL, March 31, 2009 @ 6:34 pm Reply

I wan xunlei in mac version!!!! 🙁
satanisme, April 3, 2009 @ 6:20 pm Reply

Anyone facing thunder 5 being very slow. <10kBps. I’m a loyal user of thunder 5 since last year and the perfomance was superb. But since early this year, the performance has dropped. Guess TMNuts has found out a way to cap thunder 5.
Jerrey, June 9, 2009 @ 1:34 pm Reply

can i know how to download thx 🙂
Draculito, June 29, 2009 @ 2:30 pm Reply

i cant seem to able to download movie from the internet. it always save in my folder in .swf file. how can i burn this file into DVD format?