uTorrent strangles my connection, somewhat slow speeds as well

[Kinseek]

I`ve followed the Speed Guide and made sure both windows firewall and my Belkin router allows utorrent. I`ve tested (and know...) that my connection is 10 000 kbit/s. If I have just say about one torrent running (the linux distro that was linked here somewhere for instance), I get great speeds, almost 1Mb a sec, and can surfe the net, play BF2 online etc. However, when I have more torrents, say 4 and above, my connection will be strangled, and utorrent will usually only run at about 2-300Kbs. How come?

[Switeck]

Your upload may not be 10000 kilobits/sec...it might be less than 1/20th that!

So if you told µTorrent that your upload is 10000 kilobits/sec, then you're strangling it possibly 20 times over.

[Kinseek]

No no. I know the difference between bits and bytes, though I might use the terms a little interchangeably without thought , but I know I`ve set the upload limit "correctly", which now stands at 500kB/sec, which is even less then half of my upload capacity.

What I did now though, was to remove my Belkin router from the equation, and go directly for the Gateway, which lo and behold made both utorrent and my browsing faster then ever was. I know I had set my firewall (or port forwarding or whatever name Belkin likes to call it) correctly, even had the nice green icon in utorrent. I assume it might have something to do with the max number of connections my Belkin router would like. Are there any settings for that or are Belkin routers just crappy, or have I missed the problem?

The way I have it now is perfect for me, but not ideal for my parents who like to use the internet to pay bills the odd day those come, and throw a fit if everything doesnt work perfectly the first time around. If my assumptions about the belkin router being crappy is correct, anyone knows of any decent wired router (I`ll just hook on the Belkin wireless router to that, even though I almost never use the wireless aspect) without any issues?

[Switeck]

Belkin routers are just crappy.

You can use extremely conservative settings with it till you get a new router though.

Just disable DHT, Resolve IPs, Local Peer Discovery, UPnP.

Then reduce total connections to 50, connections per torrent to 20, max active torrents to 3, and max downloading torrents to 2.

Lastly, in advanced settings, set net.max_halfopen to only 1.

You should be able to leave upload speed set to 500 KiloBYTES/sec, so set upload slots to 20 if you do.

Chances are, your upload speed should still be able to hit the max limit set (500 KiloBYTES/sec).

If not, then you REALLY need to replace the router now.

[Kinseek]

Great, so Belkin is to blame. /Blacklists Belkin forever

I`ll stick to using just the gateway till I bother to get a new one (and put up with frustrated parents once in a while). Got any particular routers or brands that are great with many connections? No need for wireless, firewall or any other niceties.

[Switeck]

Certain Linksys routers *WITH 3rd party firmwares!* are very good.

I can't say exactly which versions, as I'm still using an ancient 4-port Linksys router that isn't so great.

[Ultima]

Linksys WRT54GL w/ Tomato Firmware or Thibor's HyperWRT has my vote (and the vote of many others around here).