DL rates lag (heavily) after running UT for short time.

[diomedes64]

Currently running ver 1.6

Just resolved router/problems by buying a new router and comparing the performance by plugging pc directly into router vs modem. There is no difference, as i have observed behaviour in both closely. The both act as described below.

My connection is highspeed, and dling from upload sites, servers and dl managers is phenomenal ( reaching 1, 000 kb/s on particularly strong connections).

Ports are forwarded with a green checkmark in the bottom of screen.

Protocol encryption is enabled.

peer.lazy_bitfield is set to "true"

Firewall (default windows xp) is shut OFF

Symptoms:

Lately (for no apparent reason) my downloads rates crash very low (10 kb/s globally in UT) when the utorrent program runs after pc start up and/or modem reset (or even utorrent restat) (an estimated 10 minutes would pass and the performance of the downloads drops from high (300 kb/S) to low as mentioned above. I noticed this when i compared performance with router or plugged directly into modem as connections had to be reset as well as pc. Also, readig through the troubleshooting stickies i experimented, and changed a couple settings : I disabled DHT network and brought global max # of conenctions down to 200. The download speeds instantly skyrocketed only to crash and remain grounded after about 10 minutes.

The download rates occasionally (maybe 1ce a day for about 30 minutes) do revive and run smoothly and very well (i'm thrilled to see a 100 kb/s), but generally remain dormant (i run about 6 to 9 downloads at once, and 3 uploads on average). There are times when it may run for a sluggish 30-40 kb/s but these are infrequent.

Help in this matter is very deeply appreciated. I find the symptoms quite unusual/erratic, but i have been monitoning the performance very very closely for about 5 days.

[Switeck]

What's µTorrent's half open limit set to?

Have you tried lowering µTorrent's global and per-torrent connections max to below 60?

Did you also try disabling Resolve IPs (in peers window)?

What about UPnP?

What's your brand of modem and router?

[diomedes]

My router is "4 port broadband router - Airlink 101" UPnP appears under the list of protocols there. It's a new router i just bought. I'm almost positive that it's not the problem. I might try a test again and plug the pc into the modem sometime soon. My modem is a Motorola provided by rogers to me as a bundle with the service etc.

When i go into the peers tab in the main utorrent page and right click an address there is a check mark beside the resolve IPs. There are frequently many addresses that appear there, should i be rightclicking each and every one and disabling the Resolve IPs?

advanced > net max halfopen is set to *85

connection > enable UPnP portmapping is checked off.

my Bittorrent > global max # of connected peers per torrent was set to 150 until your reply, now i have put it down to 60 to observe further.

Thank you for your reply and help, i hope things manage to get fixed.

[Coolio10]

half open 85???? It is recommended to not even go over 8.

[diomedes]

oh really? because the things under the advanced directory don't make any sense to me at all, so this is a surprise. I will change that now to 7, and watch what happens.

thanks!

setting:

advanced > net max halfopen is now set to *7

[Coolio10]

Well? Did it work? The default is 8 if you did not know. Also there is the reset button. The small star means it is not the default value.

[diomedes]

hey coolio, i put it to 7, it *does* work better, but marginally(nevertheless, i am thrilled). By that i mean it frequently wakes itself up (many times a day) and cruises at about 100 kb/s but alwyas stops after about 10 minutes or so, usually less, maybe even half a minute. It slows down to about the average 20 - 30 kb/s when it "stops". I'd say it's downloading the way i like it to only about 20% of the time. It's frustrating, because i have enormous bandwidth and these torrents are phenomenally well seeded. There must be something wrong, since these spurts can't possibly be the way things are intended.

More feedback please, every bit is appreciated.

2 more settings under >advanced> i found to have a "*" beside them, meaning they were tampered with:

peer disconnect active *false

peer connect inactive interval *600

are those reasonable?

[Switeck]

Resolve IPs is all-or-nothing.

Just right-click in the Peers Window and uncheck Resolve IPs ...and that turns it off for ALL ips.

Your upload speed is probably 1/10th or less of your download speed, so did you make sure to NOT use a Speed Guide (CTRL+G) setting faster than xx/1mbit?

[diomedes]

I have now altered the "resolve IPs" setting to disabled.

Switeck, i'm not sure i understand the 2nd part of what you said. Are you referring to connection type in the ctrl + G window? When i open that window and look into that space it appears to be waiting to be set (i see no value in there). Should i set it to something like xx/768k?. Maybe i am looking in the wrong spot. Sorry about the lack of understanding, could you explain it differently?

Also, should i be resetting the utorrent program (or even rebooting completely) after each setting change?

[Switeck]

If you're telling µTorrent to upload faster than your connection allows (the default speed of 0 = unlimited!) then Download Rates will lag heavily after running µTorrent for a short time.

You *NEED* to know your connection's real, SUSTAINABLE upload rate and use settings in µTorrent below that.

My connection for instance is 6 megabits/sec down and ~380 kilobits/sec up.

So in Speed Guide (CTRL+G) I choose the xx/384k setting...and reduce the max number of connections further because I have marginal networking software and hardware here that doesn't like having more than 100 connections at once.

Usually, I get really good download speeds even with fewer than 30 total connections...if I can find at least 1-4 fast peers or seeds.

[diomedes]

ok, i ran the test on dslreports and i got the following:

2463 kb/s for download

241 kb/s for upload

(latency 129)

i did not shut off utorrent while running that test, should i have shut it off? I figured not to since it didn't tell me to.

I tested it again w/ utorrent paused and the upload rate was 445kb/s (although a little window showed up with the following: ISP compresion was detected. your upload speeds may be inaccurate).

I'll try lowering my total connections and pushing that connection setting to maybe 384k too.

[Switeck]

The speed tests should be run when NOTHING else is going on with your internet connection.

[diomedes]

Well, i checked out the behaviour this morning again and did the speed test with utorrent shut off completely, and i'm honestly baffled:

The speed test gave me totally different values this time

1755 kb/s for dl

5 kb/s (?!?!?!?!) for upload

latency 102

On top of that, after i configured my settings like i mentioned in the prev post yesterday, things worked wonderfully. Over night nothing downloaded, and the rates are pathetic this morning. After i restarted utorrent just now (i had it off for a little while, about 15 minutes, after i did the speed test) it works *very* significantly better then when i found it this morning. How is this possible? This makes no sense.

[Switeck]

Some marginal networking software and hardware don't fail completely all at once...they may just slow (WAY!) down as time goes on. So a simple reset just magically fixes things...for a while!

Try retesting the speeds again, especially the upload.

As it stands, you have at least 2.5 probably 3 megabits/sec down and at least 256 kilobits/sec up -- the test where you got 445 kilobits/sec upload could be due entirely to ISP compressing the data sent...so it arrived faster than it would sending it uncompressed. Most internet traffic is a little bit compressible, but speed tests often use very compressible data instead of random hard-to-compress data.

So, in Speed Guide (CTRL+G) either xx/256k or xx/384k or even xx/512k will probably work ok for you.

You just have to watch what your upload speed is doing...is it reaching and sustaining the max limit you told it to run at? µTorrent has a speed graph to make this easy to check -- check also the 5minute version of the graph for long-term problems.

[diomedes]

Well, i tested it yet again, this time shutting off utorrent completely and turning off msn etc...result:

1490 D

9 U

still getting that ISP upload compression warning. So, from what i understand, you making a recommendation because the compression is getting in the way.

I use an always on top internet traffic graph/meter to visially let me see whats happening in utorrent. Generally, uploads are unobtrusive and don't reach more than 30 or so, usually lower. I frequently create and seed my own new torrents, so there is activity from that end, but never great.

So you suggested some settings just now, but i set it to xx/384 k just yesterday and it stopped functioning in the morning. I don't see a solution. I'm pretty confused and the behavior of the ap is still as positively unimpressive as before, there is improvement but the same problems still persist.

EDIT:

More experiments and observation:

ctrl + G > connection type > xx/96 k connection has proven to not only be very impressive (slower torrents are consistently average in speed, but very healthy ones prove to be incredibly fast). This setting also proves to be very consistent, it has been running non-stop for about 7 hours and the speeds are always great (within context). Any idea what to make of that? Only problem is that i can only have 3 active torrents running at once, anything beyond that simply goes in a gray shaded cue list for download. If it means great speeds, i can happily live with that.

Also, i noticed (this could be simply coincidence) but new downloads that are very high in dl traffic tend to influence for example other running torrents and actually speed them up. Coincidence, or does this usually happen?