Bittorrent question (uTorrent)

[shmokes]

I was downloading a couple of torrents, getting quite good speeds -- 50-80 kB/s -- when I had to restart my computer.  They are large files -- >5gb a piece with tons of seeders and I had been getting high download speeds non-stop for a couple of days straight.  I exited uTorrent and restarted, and now, even though uTorrent has been running for about a day and a half non-stop, my download speeds haven't gone above 1-2 kB/s.  My up speed has slowed to a crawl too.  What gives?  A guy's gotta restart his PC now and then.  I tried rebooting my router as a long-shot effort, but that didn't make a difference. 

[massive88]

Have you changed the default uTorrent port for torrents?  Some providers ---fudgesicle--- with torrent traffic on default ports.  Also make sure you have made a tunnel for uTorrent port through your router firewall.

Who is your internet provider?

50-80 kB/s isnt a whole lot for torrents, in fact thats pretty small.  Its quite possible that the bulk of that came from one peer that you were connected to that is now gone, or you aren't connecting to him again.  If the files have tons of seeders and peers (how many is tons?) then try upping your max number of connections to 1.5x-3x what its set at now.

[shmokes]

Yeah . . . I changed the port (well prior to rebooting my computer) and it's open on my firewall.  I don't think my internet provider (Atlantic Broadband) is throttling torrents, but surely they didn't decide to start throttling at exactly the same moment I rebooted my computer.  I already upped my max number of connections by like a factor of 10 (I'm not at home right now so I can't say exactly what it is).  I've never been exactly sure how to read the number of seeders (the number outside or the one inside the parenthesis).  Anyway, each of these files have over 50 outside the parenthesis and then a much larger number inside (in the hundreds, maybe even over 1000).  So at least 50 seeders. 

[massive88]

50 Seeders isnt that many depending on how many leechers there are.  My home connection for instance, only allows for about 60 kB/s upstream.  If Im seeding 2-3 torrents, that could be as little as 10 kB/s.  Then if theres a bunch of people sharing that 10, well you get the picture.  My guess is that you had a decent seeder the first time, then when you reconnected, you hit a bunch of duds.

I've heard, but not experienced, that too many connections can choke your speed as well.  I don't think this is the case here, but thats why Id only scale it as suggested.

Have you tried another torrent to make sure its something in your local setup?  I would suggest hitting up the latest Lost episode on isohunt, and see if that downloads fast or slow.  If it goes fast, then its probably just a problem with your specific torrent or seeders.  If its slow, then you know for sure something needs fixing on your machine.

[SNAAKE]

maybe your isp is capping speed? disable "DHT". latest utorrent should have that under "bittorrent" setting.

lol@ your speed. here is my average download speed..YOU MAD!?

[Flip_Willie]

maybe your isp is capping speed? disable "DHT". latest utorrent should have that under "bittorrent" setting.

lol@ your speed. here is my average download speed..YOU MAD!?

Wow, that is nice for an average speed.

If I get really good torrents, I can get up to 900 kB/s. Normally, I only average 120 kB/s though.

[Edgedamage]

Use PeerGuardian 2, when my ISP starts throttling I use it and my speeds go back up.
http://phoenixlabs.org/pg2/

[ark_ader]

Update your tracker.

PG2 is really good, Utorrent keeps records of users, so maybe it is moot.

[shmokes]

I have never in my life, ever, on any torrent come anywhere near those kind of speeds.  Fastest I've ever got was maybe 150 kB/s.  My average speed is more like maybe 10 Kbps.  I've downloaded files directly from good commercial servers at speeds around 1 Mbps, but never over bit torrent.  For reference, the fastest ISP I've ever had was 12 Mbps down, and I'm currently paying for 3 Mbps, but I tested the other day at dslreports.com at like 7 Mbps.  So I kind of suspect that local settings could be tweaked to significantly increase my speed, but I don't have time to sit down and really learn the ins and outs of bittorrent. 

[ChadTower]

It really depends on what peers you got when you connected.  If nothing else changed that's what did - you just got peers with less upload.  Upping your max connections probably isn't a good idea if you're already using the default.  I think I remember the router shmokes uses and it crashes regularly when a torrent client has too many connections established.  The practical limit for that router is actually low enough in the default firmware that you'd have to flash it with an alternate to up your limits.

shmokes, you could sit on a T1 and probably never get 3Mbps on a torrent.  I have a standard cable connection and get wildly varying speeds, upper limit is usually 400k but occasionally 700.  More often it's under 100, though, as it is 100% dependent on the peers you get.

[shmokes]

I am running Tomato on the router, FWIW.

[ChadTower]

Oh good, so if it's a bug in the firmware only, then you should be okay.  I still run the default and uTorrent causes it to drop for 45-60 seconds fairly often.

[Red]

Update your tracker.

PG2 is really good, Utorrent keeps records of users, so maybe it is moot.

What tracker do you recommend?

[AtomSmasher]

I had an odd torrent problem a while ago where it would download fast for a 5-10 seconds, then not download at all for 30-45 seconds, then repeat.  The problem ended up being my torrent client was using an old version of java, even though I had the latest version installed.  I went through the add/remove program list and uninstalled every version of java except the latest one and it fixed my problem.