Local Peer Discovery not working - what am I doing wrong?

[Casper42]

So I have Time Warner Road Runner and been using it for months.

I am debating on switching however to ATT U'Verse and they had a promo to try it for 30 days satisfaction guaranteed. So I figured I would sign up and in a few weeks pick which service I like better.

During these few weeks though, I am running both concurrently.

I had been reading about the "Local Peer Discovery" option and always thought for a single household behind a router, a well tuned single machine would do just as good as 2 machines with LPD turned on.

But since I have 2 Internet connections and I am TCP/IP Literate, I figured I would try both at the same time. I have both Routers setup on the same subnet but have each configured on a different IP.

First Question:

I have PC1 setup to use the TW connection (Default Gateway = TW Router)

I have PC2 setup to use the ATT connection (Gateway = 2Wire Home Portal / Router)

I tested each machine using the "Is my Port forwarded correctly" option before starting and both reported green and working fine.

I kicked off a popular torrent on both machines and waited 5 minutes.

Neither machine was showing the other as a Peer even though I can ping each other and they are on the same subnet internally.

I force added each machine to the other using internal ip:port combination and then after 30 seconds or so, each of the other machines showed up and it even properly resolved their NetBios names. They also had the L flag showing Local Peer.

They traded what peices they each had from each other, but after that initial transfer, they didnt seem to talk to each other anymore (Uploaded / Downloaded in Peers would not increment)

Then I ran off to my inlaws house.

I came home and checked both machines.

They both started around 1:30pm

PC1 says "Completed on" 4:29pm

PC2 says "Completed on" 2:31 pm

I would expect if LPD was working properly, at the very least they should have the same End time because they would be sharing the peices on the back end network.

PS: The back end network is a multiple gig switches with both of these machines on the same switch.

So can anyone explain what I did wrong here?

Second question:

Is there anyway to somehow tell UT to use both connections from the same machine?

I understand the nature of IP says I can only have 1 Default Gateway and all non local packets go there, but perhaps I could add 2 IPs (or 2 seperate NICs) to the same machine and have each one configured to use a diff gateway. But is uT smart enough to use both NICs at the same time? I figure I could effectively double my download and upload rate if the internet connections are giving me similar UL/DL speeds.

Thanks

[Firon]

Even when discovered, it may not necessarily USE local peers (and it might choke them or other things). That could probably be improved somewhat to have more cooperation.

And no, there's no way to use two NICs with utorrent.

[Casper42]

So then if they saw each other at all and showed L flags then it was working, but the Bt protocol isnt smart enough to understand these would be preferred peers?

Basically are you saying I'm SOL based on the stuff I originally posted?

I kind of thought the whole LPD feature was so that it would force the torrent to use the other Local Peer as much as possible. Otherwise why not treat LPDs just like any other Peer?

[Ultima]

LPD has nothing to do with the protocol itself, so it's not a problem with the BitTorrent protocol not handling the situation intelligently enough. The point of LPD wasn't to give local peers priority; the point was to obtain additional peers through means other than DHT or PEX. Should it give them priority though? Maybe, but peer preferencing might not be a good thing for the swarm.

The only difference in the way µTorrent handles local peers is that it gives them unlimited speed if you don't check "Limit local peer bandwidth" in Preferences > BitTorrent.

[Casper42]

I see what your saying about not being good for the swam, but the use of LPD can also be good in the same way.

If I can download from 2 ISPs and double my download rate, and I am a "good seeder", then by nature I will upload twice as fast as well to others by still using 2 ISPs.

But I guess due to the nature of the protocol, I'm not going to be able to get this to work the way I want. Unless I wait till each machine is 30-60 percent done and then force them to see each other hoping they will exhcnage their peices

[Switeck]

You'd want them to see each other early on so they don't double-download the same parts.

[Linuxgirl]

Casper42,

You might want to look into inbound/outbound load balancing routers that have dual WAN inputs. I don't know if it'll be able to use the combined pipe on torrents, so you should check with manufactures to see what kind of rules can be set to maximize your bandwidth on a single PC. You can use WAN #1 on one port, and WAN #2 on a different port so if you're downloading several torrents a time then you might be able to get maximum bandwidth on two instances of utorrent using different ports. Since it is the router handling the two WANs, you don't need an addtional NIC.

I'm no expert so you should do some research before buying anything. I myself am considering such a setup in a month or two.