Utorrent kills my web browsers

[lefty]

Whenever I use Utorrent it is almost impossible to browse. I have tried both Opera and IE but just as slow on both of them. It is really weird because I have no speed problem with my torrents and when I ping the sites I am trying to visit they are pretty low. Even when I log onto my router it is slow. Anyone know why this is happening?

[Ultima]

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=196194#p196194

So many threads about this already :<

[Switeck]

Disable DHT and UPnP...and lower half-open connections to 8 or even as low as 4.

If it's still slow, it's probably because upload speed is set too high.

[jeps1lon]

I don't know if people are still having problems with uTorrent killing the whole internet connection, but here goes my personal solution.

For about a month past now, uTorrent suddenly began killing my internet connection after leaving it uploading/downloading for about 30 minutes to an hour (solely on my computer, I have a router, my dad's connection remained intact, mine died). I tried everything I read on these forums, nothing helped at all. That tcpip patch ended up being bs on my side, the half-open connections idea was the same result, lowering global connections was the same thing, disabling DHT and UPNP is a must do, but regardless of whether they were enabled or not, the connection would still die.

So I looked at my router's (d-link 524a, isp = sbc yahoo dsl) log and I kept seeing a bunch of dropped udp/tcp packets, and even a "ping of death" once. I think these are pretty self-explanatory. The pinging, or overloading of, by other people trying to connect to me through utorrent was causing my router to go all kinds of crazy.

Well, to put this simply, I had no firewall whatsoever active or installed, xp firewall was disabled, I had no software firewall, the router and modem firewalls were disabled; all I had running for security was nod32. So I decided "man wtf, let me install a firewall, maybe windows and my router aren't handling utorrent's connection well". I installed zonealarm free edition and now my connection is stable, I still see some dropped packets in the log, but I imagine this is just because of the internet traffic getting slightly bottlenecked.

So there you have my personal solution, install zonealarm free. Haha. Funny how installing a firewall would fix this. Also, one thing to note is that, I DO have my port forwarded on my tcp/ip settings, maybe this helps, maybe it doesn't, I haven't taken the time to determine either or, I don't think I care though, you'd be well off to forward the utorrent port regardless.

[DreadWingKnight]

We don't recommend zonealarm, as it causes other problems with p2p applications.

It sounds like the firewall system in your router is being overprotective.

[jeps1lon]

How would it be overprotective?

It's working just fine. I haven't seen any problems with the p2p applications i've used.

Are you sure you don't have a personal thing against zonealarm?

[DreadWingKnight]

If you're disconnecting specifically, your router is probably blocking traffic.

As for ZA:

http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=16248

Other versions outside of the one mentioned have reported problems.

Additionally, its blocking code has thrown shitfits when upgrading programs.

[ralphac]

iv'e just removed zone alarm and disabled dht and I,ve seen a tenfold increase in performance. Not sure which of my two actions did it but I,m leaving it alone now. I was getting a ridiculous amount of peer disconnects, and now i get none.

I also found the utorrents optimizer extremely helpfull. I have a 4mbits connection I reduced my upload to 32kBs and can browse and email easily now while getting reasonable download speeds.

[Ultima]

@jeps1lon: It isn't anything against ZoneAlarm when we say it's no good around here. I've used ZoneAlarm for years (well, I uninstalled it in the previous months), and it didn't turn against me, but it's tempermental, and works for some people, but not others. As such, I can't recommend it to other people, and have to recommend that they uninstall it because of the problems it causes for some people.

[sowhatu]

i was having the same problem on my: celeron 733 w/ 128MB sdram....

then i upgraded to a amd athlon 64 3500 , 512 ddr...

no problems at all now.

i suggest u think of getting some more ram or a new processor.

[Ultima]

No, you don't need to upgrade your RAM...

[lefty]

Thanks for the replies. It helped a bit to lower half-open connections to 4. One thing Ive noticed is that if Im only seeding there is no problem, only if Im leeching.

[silverfire]

@sowhatu: What you need to do is stop hijacking threads.

[Ultima]

@lefty: That's probably because connections are more actively being made when downloading than when seeding. Patching TCPIP.sys really didn't help at all? It's odd, as doing so is *essentially* the same thing as lowering the net.max_halfopen (comes to the same conclusion anyway -- more halfopen connections available for other internet-enabled applications).