What's the best way to set up a SOCKS proxy for secure browsing? or Can a SOCKS proxy improve my onli

Weird that it’s intermittent. Could be a MTU issue. Try lowering it:
`sudo ifconfig eth0 mtu 1400`

Also, test with `nc -zv localhost 1080` to see if the socks proxy port is actually listening.

For torrents, socks5 + bind IP in client settings might help.