Relakks and Utorrent Problems

[temp2007]

Hi

(seems no one has asked this)

When using Utorrent alone(without Relakks VPN) all works ok (v1.6, port forwarding set, 24Mbline,fast HWrouter, Zonealarm, settings ok = eg NEVER had problems with Utorrent).

Now when using Relakks VPN, from start all is ok, but after some time(10min-1 h) the speed goes down to 0 kB/s BUT Im still connected to Relakks (Icon still active at Taskbar). (Looking in some Forums this seems to happen quite often to bittorrent-users)

When speed goes down to 0 all internet-activities are blocked, not even Internet Explorer works. IF I disconnect Relakks the speed start increasing rapidly and goes high again and all works normal again.

I saw somewhere that Relakks need MTU 1400 in PC and 1430 in HWrouter,Portforwarding port 1723 in Router etc. which I tried. I have set my firewall(Zonealarm) according to Relakks FAQ.

Still the speed goes down to 0KB/s when using Utorrent. If NOT using Utorrent the VPN-line works perfect and stable(no speed-decreasing to 0kB/s)

(This makes me suspect that Utorrent floods the Relakks VPN-line which eventially "blocks" all Internet-activities)

Does anybody know how to set Utorrent(MTU? /Connection-settings/Bittorent-settings/Advanced settings?) to work with Relakks VPN without problems above?

/Thanks

[Switeck]

What half open rates are you trying to use with this VPN?

How many total connections at once?

Are you noticing lots of connections in a state other than "Established" using connection-monitoring software (or hardware!) like TCP View?

Is your connection symmetric?

[temp2007]

Hi

Half Open ports 10 (default?)

Max Nr of connections: 200

Almost all connection are in Established Mode. When line drops I get Time_Wait

Symmetric connection?

Is VPN more sensitive to high bandwidth(eg do I have to "pretend" I have lower bandwidth and set Utorrent accordingly or is there optimal settings for VPN-lines?

[fkid]

I really feel it is important for this topic to be discussed since I'm having the exact same problem with uTorrent (latest Beta) and the Relakks VPN and I'm sure others are, and it seems it would be great to fix this problem (be it via some fix using uTorrent or something Relakks do themselves). I've sent them a long, detailed support e-mail and when they reply, I'll probably forward them to this page and hopefully then a good discussion can be had about this problem.

I've narrowed it down to NOT being a router problem or a problem with the amount of bandwidth being used since Relakks have no speed limit and I've downloaded using NNTP usenet servers at very high speeds for a long time and had 15 connections worth of downloads in a download manager as well with the very high speeds achieved too. This error seems to be directly related to uTorrent/probably other torrent clients.

I tried different settings and my current ones are:

Half Open Rate: 8 (down from 12)

Max # of Connections (per torrent): 60 (down from 100)

Practically all TCP connections are Established here as well and only 1 or 2 are TIME_WAIT or FIN_WAIT_1.

I'm also wondering how one tells if they have a Symmetric connection and what the significance of this is in relation to VPN problems?

Oh, and what ends up happening is packets are being sent/received but the speed drops fairly quickly from say 800KB/sec for a torrent down to 0, then all activity stops (no Internet connections are possible at all) and eventually packets stop being received (but not sent) the connection to the VPN server is "officially" disconnected/dropped, and a Windows popup comes up telling me so.

Thank you for time and help.

UPDATE: I just tried setting my connections in uTorrent all the way down to 10 and the half-open rate to 5, turning off the DHT network with one torrent running. The problem STILL PERSISTS which is illogical considering it's such a small amount of connections happening. This is very frustrating. I wonder what is happening. This VPN problem now seems almost certainly deeply rooted in uTorrent or other torrent clients/P2P applications of a similar structure/functionality, nevermind the connection/half-open rate settings and definitely not just too many internet connections in general (as I set it to only 10 and 5 half-open connections).

[Switeck]

Half open connections are only indirectly related to the number of connections you have. That's the RATE of new connections being made that are being tried but have gotten no reply yet. Most of the time, it's the number of 'half open' connections at any one time ...and tends to be the killer of marginal networking hardware and software.

You have an ultrafast connection if you can even briefly get 800 KiloBYTES/sec file or torrent download rate. (...Yet you don't know what symmetric means?)

Ok, Symmetric means a connection that is just as fast up as down. Not to be confused with half/full duplex, though most broadband connections now are full duplex...although some rate-adjusting ADSLs are not fully so if they saturate their download or upload.

My only guess is you haven't set limits in µTorrent appropriate for your connection through your VPN, something overloads, and speeds go from great to 0 either instantly or within a couple seconds.

So...what is the speed of your connection both down AND up?

And what settings are you using in µTorrent as shown by Speed Guide (CTRL+G) window?

Also what are the values of any advanced settings you've changed?

[fkid]

Oh, I was thinking the symmetric had to do with something more complex. My speed is 8megabits down and 800klbits up. The VPN is said to have no speed limits and I've tested it as I mentioned before with other internet downloads (usenet, direct http) and got up to around 82% of my maximum download speed (750KBs/sec with VPN and my actual maximum being 920KB/sec).

I've tried different settings, many different settings. Encryption on/off, various upload speed settings. Maximum connections from 100 -> 10. Half-open rate from 10 -> 5. As for advanced settings, the only thing I changed was the half-open rate and even if left at the default 8, this problem persists.

I think if you read my first, long post completely - you'll see that my options and settings almost can't be at fault. I'll post when I get a reply from the Relakks staff.

[Switeck]

For starters, choose the xx/768k upload bandwidth setting in Speed Guide...that's closest to your 800 kilobits/sec upload bandwidth maximum. However the VPN may not handle faster than xx/512k, so test again with slower Speed Guide settings.

Try half open rate set to 1 for testing.

Also, at the same time reduce max torrents to 1 (or just run 1 torrent at this time), reduce connections per torrent to 30, disable resolve ips, disable DHT, and disable show country flags.

These various settings also create more traffic either in the form of additional bandwidth consumed or additional connections/UDP packets. Your VPN may be extremely sensitive to UDP packets or overall packets-per-second.

[fkid]

Okay. Thanks. I'll try that soon and report back.

[temp2007]

Here is a (temporary;-) solution to the Disconnect-problem (eg. automatic reconnection)

http://forum.piratpartiet.se/Topic75482-164-1.aspx

BUT the solution above includes Disconnect and then Connect-procedure which takes some time(seconds). During this time, Utorrent tries to connect to internet thus bypassing the VPN-line(which is down). When the VPN line is up again Utorrent uses the new VPN-line again?

Does anyone know how to force Utorrent to ONLY use the VPN-line (eg stop, if VPN is down and then reconnect when it is up) or, make the VPN-line the only way to connect to internet.

Can Zonealarm be used or any other program?

[fkid]

Wow. What a find. Good job. This is my last (and only) resort right now.

Interesting development.

I just started Relakks for the first time today. Loaded up uTorrent with one torrent. I have about 40 connections right now but the speed is only around 100KB/sec. However, Relakks has yet to disconnect or exhibit signs of packet overflow etc. This leads me to believe that a part of the problem is when speeds get VERY HIGH, so even if you are only connected to 10 or 20 peers, packets are still flying! Secondly, I noticed that this may have to do with the IP address/server I am connected to with Relakks. They have dynamic IPs only right now and some I guess must be less loaded with users or traffic and whatnot and work better than others. I tried another torrent and it was working very well for quite some time (30min) at very high speeds and many peers, but eventually it died (still a great improvement for me over 5min) and then I reconnected and the problem came back. I got disconnected every 3-5min or so and it kept happening UNTIL suddenly one server/IP let my torrent work for about 20min. So, it seems it's a combination of things - packets, connections, peers, bandwidth AND the Relakks server you are connected to. Anyway, this fix temp posted should allow me to leave my computer and not worry.

[temp2007]

Glad to help

I belive the main issue is the speed. During some days now I have noticed that high speed (above 400 kB/s down and 60 kB/s up) makes the line drop frequently. When going down under that limits the line is "quite" ok.

I hope someone out there knows IF and HOW high speed can be compensated by "correct" setting in Utorrent.

Also since we have a solution for this "Drop to 0 kB/s"-problem hopefully someone knows how to secure the line during disconnect/reconnect-state.

[fkid]

temp, are you sure the small time between disconnect and reconnect actually makes your connection insecure? For me, my torrents don't even have time to connect to my regular internet line before Relakks reconnects after a drop. The status icon just stays red until everything goes back to normal in a couple minutes after the Relakks connection is re-established. You could also disablem, as I have, UPnP and the port forwarding for your regular line. That way, only when the VPN connection is made will uTorrent be able to use its assigned port to connect to torrents/peers (since you don't need port forwarding or UPnP for VPN torrent/internet connections).

[temp2007]

Good idea to block the port forwarding of the regular line.

But please correct me if Im wrong, UTorrent can still connect to the regular line (during disconnect/reconnect) although only with very low speed, even if port forwarding is disabled (Thats why some people complains about low download speeds when using Utorrent :-)?

Im not sure if Utorrent "manages" to connect to the regular line when the Script above does Disconnect/Reconnect.

[fkid]

You're right, it still can do some connecting and transfering of data without port forwarding but generally only if you have no proper firewall protection or have bad router settings (DMZ, UPnP or the hardware firewall off). If you think about it, if you have your router's firewall on and the uTorrent port NOT forwarded, how likely is it that you'll get a decent connection to any peers in the short time that it takes for the .bat script to reconnect to Relakks? Theoretically, it should be impossible - but technically I still think it can happen, although very rarely. I'm not sure why since uTorrent is supposed to only use that single port for all connections and routers are supposed to have good port blocking, but I'm guessing it comes down to either an imperfect router (or firmware/settings) or the way Windows reacts to/manages all uTorrent internet connections and reports them to the router as clean - meaning the router may allow some connections to go through since they aren't considered as needing port forwarding (kind of like you don't have to port-forward basic ports like 80). Ultimately, considering how small the time window is between the Relakks disconnection and reconnection and how low the percentages are for decent connections to peers (not to mention no connection to the tracker at all), there's no insecurity to worry about.

If for some reason you're still worried or maybe just curious, you could try port forwarding your uTorrent port to a non-existent IP on your LAN. So, if you have 2 computers hooked up to your router and they have the IPs 192.168.1.100 and 192.168.1.101 respectively, then just port forward your uTorrent port 5847 (for example) to 192.168.1.105 or another ghost IP. That is a good solution, although I'm not sure if that will interfere or break the Relakks VPN connection. Give it a shot if you want.

[Switeck]

Firewalls often only block in 1 direction -- incoming.

Even when they block both ways, the programs you're running have already been allowed internet access.

So µTorrent can connect to the internet according to your firewall.

So if your router isn't forwarded...that offers no real resistance at all. µTorrent in less than 5 seconds could make outgoing connections (trying to find unfirewalled peers/seeds) at the speed of your half open connection rate. Even assuming a timeout of 3 seconds for 'dead' ips, there's roughly time to double the number of connections as the half open value. So at a default half open rate of 8, potentially 16 connections could be attempted in 5 seconds...which represents a decent time window for the reestablishment to the Realakks VPN.

Your "real" ip address can end up contaminating the tracker's ip list as a result of this, and your VPN could even try connecting back to your real internet ip...which if it isn't forwarded, will never connect.

I have nothing this complex, but found better results when I added my OWN LAN and internet ip address to ipfilter.dat! Previously, I was getting dropped connections to self (or something to that effect) in Logger. After adding those ips, I expected to see my own LAN and internet ip blocked in Logger from time to time. Instead...NOTHING! Since it never attempts a blocked ip, naturally there would never be a connection to block/break.

[CeZaRiO]

I'm currently using that "stayrelakksed.bat" solution (thanks to the author, by the way), and it's amazing how many times it needs to reconect. So, i was wondering, no news about it? I really wish i could keep my connection stable.

This is a printscreen of my desktop, where you can see the bat file working:

http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=relakksbl7.jpg

I'm in Brazil, my isp (virtua) is terrible, when it comes to bit torrent. So, now, i can get (for brief periods of moments) high speeds, something like 250, 300k, and low upload speeds...always below 10k, but usually 4, 5k, and my upload is 1 mega (8 mega download). Virtua let us use our bandwidth for, maybe, one weekend per month, and in those days, i can get 45, 50k upload, and 600, 700k download. but i would be glad if this relakks thing i paid could give me 250, 300k, i just want it to be stable.

[Tonpa]

Has someone figured out how to fix this bug? I guess it has something to do with multiple connections or so – blame Microsoft?

[Tryndyl]

Use the script mentioned to reconnect if you are having problems. I am in Europe and rarely if ever get disconnected. If it does happen I just have my firewall (sygate) block all traffic on the local network card and allow everything going over the VPN connection. So if it does get dropped nothing is going to get out.

[bandgap]

just recently i have started having problems with relakks. it runs fine when utorrent is closed. but as soon as i start up utorrent and it starts connecting the VPN drops. all subsequent connection attempts while utorrent is running fail. i get error 619 almost as soon as it starts verifying user name and password. sometimes it connects though, only to drop a second later and then i get error 619 a bunch of times again. no clue what the problem is.... relakks' error 619 solution doesnt work. there is no point in using the provided batch file as the trackers will have to keep reconnecting and no data will be transferred.

any ideas?

[ShiroNeko]

To those using that workaround for dropps. If you dont have a firewall that is configurable for outgoing connections, or dont know how to do it, you can solve this by using the computers routing table

PS. Do this at your own risk

start -> run -> enter cmd and press ok.

write the following where [enter] means you should press enter/return

ipconfig | find /i "default gateway" [enter]

route print | find /i "0.0.0.0" [enter]

find the line in the last command looking like this

0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 xxx yyy zzz

where xxx is a adress found in the first commands output. (192.168.1.1 or similar) yyy and zzz may be ignored

write route delete 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 xxx

and press enter.

write route add 93.182.171.2 mask 255.255.255.255 xxx -p

and press enter.

93.182.171.2 was the ip-adress of the relakks server when I wrote this.

connect to relakks and profit

if you cant connect to the relakks network after this, then there might be a problem and you might wanna reverse this, this is done with the following [enter] means to press enter.

route delete 93.182.171.2 [enter]

route add 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 xxx [enter]

feel free to ask if there is a problem.

PS. after the route delete 0.0.0.0 mask 0.0.0.0 xxx has been performed, you will be unable to use the internet untill relakks is connected or you have reversed this guide.

Hope this helpes someone