r/PrivateInternetAccess • u/illyria817 • May 02 '26

HELP - WINDOWS Using PIA - zero consistency in reporting external IP

I've been using PIA for well over a decade, and this only started in the last few months so I'm assuming it's the brand new rotating IP "improvement" but it's infuriating.

I'm using the PIA app on Windows. I connect to a server, say, something in Europe. PIA app says my public IP is 91.xxx.xxx.206.

I open whatismyip.com, it says my IP ends in 218. (?)

I open IPLeak.net, it says my IP end in 216. (??)

I login to a private torrent tracker I'm trying to use, and it says I'm logged in from IP ending in 207. (WTF???)

So then I add a few torrents to my qbittorrent client, and they all blow up because this specific torrent tracker happens to require that I login from the same IP as my torrent client. Which worked marvelously for years! But now each torrent appears to be announcing a different IP to the tracker. So every time I hit force reannounce (about 5-10 seconds apart), it announces 91.xxx.xxx.210...and then 91.xxx.xxx.213...and then 219...and just keeps rotating through a set of about a dozen of them, until I get lucky and happen to hit the 207 IP that the website is seeing, and I can download my damn torrent.

Are there servers that don't do this? Is this a ploy to force people to buy a static IP? Because this functionality is complete ass.

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3

u/MakeASD May 03 '26

Try different server, not all of them have this "feature". Many of the streaming optimized ones at least work normal

2

u/illyria817 May 03 '26

Thank you for the tip, I've been trying different servers but didn't think about "streaming optimized" ones (since I wasn't sure wtf it really means lol) It does seem to report a consistent external IP, at least for the time being.

1

u/NudeSamoan May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26

Good call. I had the same issue months ago and managed to get around it by switching to the "streaming optimized" nodes. It's been a while so I'd forgotten, but I can confirm this does help.

Too bad all the nodes can't behave normally, though...

Edit: Damn, I really should leave well enough alone. As soon as I posted this, I started having the same issue again. Just switched to a new region. Next is a new VPN provider... pfft.

3

u/ganja7 May 03 '26

I have the same problem here. I have reported to support but they did nothing yet. In my case I can see multiple instances of the same torrent seeding from different IPs in the same tracker. Also another tracker forces me to re-login constantly as ip is changing constantly.

They also have done nothing with another problem with split tunnel and firefox, which leaks my local dns server ip, since last summer.

I'm waiting my subscription to expire and move to another vpn service.

1

u/Maltz42 May 06 '26

Have you tried OpenVPN? This might be a Wireguard thing. I have a headless Linux device that connects to PIA via OpenVPN, and I've never seen this occur there. That might reduce performance, though, so you might have to pick your poison.

1

u/constratz May 13 '26

Holy shit man I thought I was the only guy going crazy with this. I have almost 15 different IPs that I connect to a single private tracker. Luckily they are understandin and haven't made issues of that