[HELP] Maxing out my connection

[iLaVaBoY]

Hi i'm not much of a techie guy, so im not the expert at this.. i thought someone here could give me a hand and help me out with my µTorrent.

The problem is i don't know my maximum connection speeds i'm suppose to be receiving. This is the results from my speedtest: Download:17644 kb/s Upload: 650 kb/s

The speeds for my ADSL connection is as high as 5 mbit/s DL and 800 kb/s UL.

I understand that BT is all dependant on the # of peers, but i'm just curious on what the average expectant speeds are suppose to be for my current connection.

And just one more thing, what are the best recommended settings for me right now? ( i'm really bad when it gets to this part ...)

Thanks for all, much appreciated

[DreadWingKnight]

Your upload setup needs to be based on the xxx/512kbit speed guide settings. After that you should expect to POTENTIALLY max your connection out with torrents.

[iLaVaBoY]

ok so i will use the xx/512k speed guide settings just as you proposed for now:) Thanks alot for the fast reply. If you can explain to me the reason behind it, why i should use these settings that would be awesome Thanks ..just in case i run into this problem in the future..

If anyone has any other comments or suggestings, feel free to reply any help is greatly appreciated

[DreadWingKnight]

The reasoning is simple, they are the settings best suited for your connection's rated upload speed (since upload speed dictates settings more than download speed.

[iLaVaBoY]

thanks

[Switeck]

Even the xx/640k setting should be ok, as your measured upload speed was 650 kilobits/sec.

[iLaVaBoY]

ya i was thinking of the same thing thanks a lot for the help

Since the Max UL speed is 60 kB/s, does that mean my DL speed would be lowered ?

Just curious, what is the expectant max speed usually for a 5 mbit DL 800 kb/s UL connection ? in general ?

[Ultima]

Divide the numbers by 8 to get the theoretical max in *bytes/s, or perhaps 9-10 to get a rough estimate of the real-world maximum (counting overhead and stuff).

[iLaVaBoY]

@ Ultima I just checked it out, its downstream/upstream in kb/s is 5056/768 So .. for the download 5056 kb/s is 632 kB/s and upload is 96 kB/s

I was just wondering is it ok if i have my net.max_halfopen to 58* ? what effect does this have on my BT speeds? i heard if you increase the net.max_halfopen value to something higher it will generate better BT speeds...

[Switeck]

On many torrents, you'll only get download speeds that are maybe 1.5-4 times faster than how fast you're uploading on them. So don't be surprised if you don't break 300 KiloBYTES/sec download speed while only uploading at 60 KiloBYTES/sec. Most people can't even upload at 32 KiloBYTES/sec and they're probably trying to download as well!

On VERY large torrents with very low (like 1) seeds, your download and upload speeds can become nearly equal or even enter all-or-nothing conditions, where you'll be downloading+uploading really fast for a couple minutes and then get 0 speed for many minutes.

[iLaVaBoY]

i see, im getting more to understand it now thanks

Are there tips or tutorials on how i can obtain the best settings for my µTorrent client. I know that settings affect speeds a lot. Basically all i want is to use up my full bandwidth capabilities in both downloading and uploading.

Is having the settings 58* for the net.max_halfopen a vulnerable thing? what do you experts recommend ?

thanks again for the help, much appreciated

[Switeck]

If you are not firewalled in µTorrent (got the green light at bottom?), then a high net.max_halfopen isn't necessary and probably hurts your speeds.

net.max_halfopen is how many NEW, outgoing connections µTorrent makes at once. Trying 58 more ips at once is pretty excessive unless you're looking to stay connected to 100's at once. I usually lower mine from the default of 8 to 0-4 after my torrents have been running for 15+ minutes, since by then they SHOULD have connected to almost every ip that's connectible. A high number only helps you start a torrent a little bit faster (maybe 10 seconds) than normal. Once you've got lots of connections, the attempts to connect to more continues eating bandwidth that could instead be devoted to download+upload speed.

Weak/marginal networking hardware and software will likely slowly overload or have a memory leak with a high net.max_halfopen value. Even having more than 100 connections at once can be too much for them. Belkin and D-Link routers as well as Zone Alarm firewall are notorious for this.

[iLaVaBoY]

i have the green light below i've lowered it to 4 now.

Yea i was wondering about hardware issues that could arise .. my firewall is kaspersky internet security, modem is a ADSL LYNX320.

Main problem i have with my µTorrent is the fact that, i barely connect to any seeds at all ..like 10 out of 60 seeds only. But i always connect to a lot of leechers...

I'm not sure if my settings for µTorrent are wrong, because it never seems to reach a reasonable download limit, yet the upload is extremely high ..I've followed the xx/512k speed settings, yet it still seems to not help.

Once again my connection is a 5mbit DL & 800 kb UL ...when it comes to torrenting ..speeds are never that great ..

I also got a few questions:

1) Does setting a higher Max UL speed increase your DL speeds ?

2) How do i connect to more seeds ? usually i only connect to 1 out of 20 seeds

3) Does setting a High Priority on the files im downloading help ? ( what exactly does that do?)

4) Resolve IPs? , Add Peer, Copy Peerlist, Copy Selected Hosts, ? What do these mean?

Thanks again ..if there is a tutorial on how to get the settings best suitable for my connection that would be really appreciated

[ajones81]

There're a lot of definitions in the uTorrent help file and guides - have you had a look at them yet?

[iLaVaBoY]

thanks i just read it

Another thing .. is it possible on uTorrent to ban peers/leechers from downloading from you if they're not uploading at all and just downloading ?

[DreadWingKnight]

No.

And just because they aren't uploading to you, it doesn't mean they aren't uploading at all.

[iLaVaBoY]

k i guess it's just me then ..im unlucky

[Switeck]

If you're uploading faster than most others are uploading to them, then they most likely will upload back to you. But if you're uploading less than 1 KiloBYTE/sec to them, they may just ignore you. This is why having too many upload slots (which is per torrent TIMES total torrents) is bad.

[iLaVaBoY]

i know for a fact that you can manually add peers to connect to you..

when you they "say may just ignore you" is this automatic in µTorrent or do you have an option to ignore the peers manually...because i can always increase my max upload if it helps my download ...

[Switeck]

It's automatic to the BitTorrent protocol itself, which µTorrent mostly abides to.

Have you watched the peers window to see how much you're uploading and downloading with various ips?

[iLaVaBoY]

ya i've watched the peers list, some people are just leechers ...they dont upload at all ..i wonder if i can just ban those peers ..

[DreadWingKnight]

the upload totals you're seeing there are the upload to you

just because they don't upload to you, it doesn't mean they don't upload.

[iLaVaBoY]

ya i understand ..still pretty lame .. for a 5mbit DL 800 kb/s UL connection .. BT is as slow as hell ...just can't understand why ..other things seem perfectly fine ..

even though i connect to a lot of seedsi still get very slow speeds ..my settings are probably not the best i suppose .. Any recommended custom settings for my µTorrent ? aside from the one on the speed guide ..(it doesn't really help lol...)

thanks again guys, really appreciate your efforts

[Switeck]

Are there any peers you download from that you never upload to?

After all, if you've got upload slots set at 5 or less and connect to 40+ peers on a single torrent it is VERY likely that there are numerous peers you upload to seldom or not at all!

[iLaVaBoY]

i never connect to 40+ peers, ya my upload slot is 4. I recon the max number of peers i've ever connected to was around 20-25..should i increase my upload slot ?

My current settings:

net.max_halfopen: *50 - seems that the higher this is the better speeds i get ..i should probably lower it right ? to what would be good for my connection ?

And again .. my speeds provided by my ISP is : 5056/768 kbit/s

Also.. i just tested a download from Rapidshare, it seems that my speeds can reach 1600 kB/s when downloading there .. thats a lot more than what my ISP offers .. how is this possible?