How do I minimize bandwidth usage?

[freja]

Hi, I have been using utorrent for a few months and then last week my service provider shut off my internet connection because I had inadvertantly gone over my allotted bandwidth limit. I had no idea that there was a limit, or that I could be fined for going over it, or that I could be investigated because of it. The limit is a combined limit for both downloads and uploads and I had exceded my limit just in the uploads alone. So I need some advice on how to minimize my bandwidth usage, hopefully by changing my seeding settings so I don't have to sacrifice too many downloads.

I have read the faq and searched this forumn but I am still confused about the seeding settings. I'm pretty sure my settings are what they were by default. My 'seed while' ratio is set to 150% and "ignore" time. And my upload rate is set to 70kb/s. In the month I had uploaded 2/3 as much as I had downloaded (which included non-utorrent bandwidth downloads like watching streamed video or music, so I don't know what the utorrent-only breakdown is - but the uploading was pretty much only utorrent). How can I tweak my settings (these or any others I don't know about) to limit my bandwidth usage?

Thanks for any help,

freja

[Switeck]

Do the math to determine how much bandwidth usage in µTorrent is no more than 80% of your monthly max.

Then you can calculate what upload/download settings approximate that, split roughly equal.

You don't want your settings to even hit more than about 70% of your connection's real limits, or you will lose from your bandwidth quota by briefly exceeding immediate speed limits.

You can use Scheduler as well to limit/stop downloads during certain hours of the day.