what if you use cable without a router?

[vistavictim]

If you use cable with a cable modem will this affect your d/l speed?

[Switeck]

If you have a good enough software firewall that doesn't block µTorrent's in and out traffic, yes you should get good speeds...possibly even slightly better than with a router, due to many routers not handling 100+ connections at once without minor slowdowns. (By 'minor slowdowns' I mean either increased ms/latency or they start crashing/dropping connections.)

[vistavictim]

seems to work farely well, but the speeds suck on more popular/larger torrents. is there any reason for this? Ive tried everything to remedy that but just seems im stuck with it.

[Switeck]

On really large torrents, people are generally unwilling to upload as much as they've downloaded...unless "forced" because they're downloading slower than they're uploading. So the end result on large torrents tends to be download and upload speeds are about equal...barring LOTS of seeds remaining for days on end.