Speed Problems....Please urgent help !

[alpesh]

i have done everything that has been mentioned above. It doesnot help. ( I think my ISP is manipulating it. Is it possible?)

My connection is 512 kbps. it gives around 20kbps only,which is supposed to be around 50kbps+.

Here is the info that you have asked for :

Software : uTorrent 1.7.5

OS- windows xp sp2

Hardware : asus p5ld2-vm

1 gb ddrII 667 mhz ram

intel 945G chipset

intel 3.0 ghz cpu dual core.

fat 32 file system

Color of the network status light : green

port checker : OK

Speed Guide settings :

upload limit : o

upload slot : 4

connections: 50

connections(global): 200

current port :18151

max active : 8

max download: 5

net.max_halfopen : 8 (also checked with 4, doesnot work)

Security software installed: firewall - No(Windows XP disabled)

antivirus-avg 7.5

antispyware-avg 7.5

router : no (direct connected to modem)

modem : motorola SB5101 SurfBoard Cable Modem

ISP: Hathway (India)

Connection type : cable

results obtained from the speed test :

19 of 20 in use

8 of 10 in use

15 of 20 in use

No other activity was going on while testing. No other computer connected in network.

Processes active :

iexplorer.exe

RTHDCPL.exe

utorrent.exe

hkcmd.exe

igfxpers.exe

rundll32.exe

svchost.exe

avgupsvc.exe

avgamsvr.exe

guard.exe

ASFagent.exe

spoolsv.exe

svchost.exe

explorer.exe

svchost.exe

lsass.exe

services.exe

winlogon.exe

csrss.exe

smss.exe

alg.exe

avgas.exe

avgcc.exe

system

system idle process

[jewelisheaven]

I'm hoping by speed you are mentioning upload.

uT is NEVER recommended to run with unlimited upload.

WIth a speed test you want to use the download/upload numbers and put them into Ctrl-G drop-down at very base setup.

It is true with .5 Mbit upload that is ~ 64 KiBps. However due to the way the protocol works you usually cannot get over 80-90% of that MAXIMUM speed up. On my ISP for example, they start dropping my internet when I hit over 30 KiBps. Needless to say this is not desirable during normal waking hours as it interferes with other normal running operations.

[alpesh]

Thanks for replying.But,

I did try puting upload speed = 50 to 55 kbps (90% of 64kbps) it doesnot work.

i had another version of utorrent before this. Don't remember properly but may be, 1.7.1 or 1.7.2.

Does it matter?

Max download speed=30kbps.

In morning around 9am my speed goes upto 45kbps. I have free downloading from ISP from 11 pm to 9 am only.

Can ISP manipulate the speed?

[Switeck]

Yes, you are probably NEVER getting 512 kilobits/sec either down or up!

You need to find out what you're really getting and how badly your ISP is lying to you and robbing you blind doing it!

Run online speed tests for both DOWN and UP.

[alpesh]

Thx for reply.

I some times get the speed of 50+ kbps for normal downloading (no torrent, direct from web site).

But that to sometimes. When i complained to my ISP they said, download more that one at the same time you will get more speed. While downloading attachment from Gmail speed was 200 bytes/ sec.

I even tried other torrent downloders than uTorrent. But speed does not go more than 30kbps.

Hey i tried speed test via the links given here in the forum, but i could not get the reults.

The results are something like :

19 of 20 in use

8 of 10 in use

15 of 20 in use

If those are correct results then can somebody interpret those for me?

Or Provide me some links which perform such tests.

[jewelisheaven]

I don't know what those numbers are for.

Please test the OpenOffice torrent @ http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/ and see if that reaches your peak HTTP downloading speed.

If not, your ISP shapes bittorrent traffic.

[alpesh]

Hey I checked the link(openoffice) that was provided by you. It always gives me speed around 50kbps (connection of 512kbps), which is I guess is descent.

My free downloading hours are from 11 pm to 9 am.

I checked the torrent speed for hours other than free hours, i got 50+ downloading speed.

At 11 pm it was around 45kbps.

at 12pm it goes to 20 kbps.

At mornig at 9 am the speed goes around 34 kbps again, whereas the link(openoffice) that you provided gives the constant speed at any time.

The links are good. The seeds/peers are always good. How can this happen?

Please guys help me, I am finding for the answer for around a month.

[tcharp]

Reading through these posts, I can't help but think that you are having some confusion between kBps and kbps. The difference is pronounced. Most ISP advertise their speed in kilobits per second (kbps) because the number is larger. uTorrent reports speeds in kilobytes per second (kBps). You will find this number is always substancially less than the download/upload speed advertised by your ISP.

Your download speed depends upon many things besides your ISP or your computers configuration. Seeders with decent upload speed are required for you to get fast downloads.

For your reference, my ISP gives me max upload speed of 512kbps, this is one half megabit per second. The max upload speed I ever get is around 60kBps and this is pretty good as 512/8 = 64 meaning I'm uploading at the cap my ISP puts on my connection.

Good Luck,

TC Harp

[Switeck]

Also, most ISPs give less than 1/4 as much upload speed than download.

Mine is actually about 16:1 download-to-upload.

[jewelisheaven]

My cable modem tells me I have a 6 Mbit/.5 Mbit connection (which is 12:1) but I usually only get 2Mbit/.25Mbit (8:1) due to shaping.

If OpenOffice works like you'd expect, it is the peers on the swarm. Your best bet is to make ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY SURE you are able to put out at the VERY MINIMUM 5 KiBps PER PEER (30 KiBps up = 6 slots divided however you like between torrents and upload slots).

[alpesh]

Hey like I said my problem still remains unsolved.

I checked the link (OpenOffice) provided by you. It gives full download speed (~50kbps) at any point of time. But other links don't give me descent download speed(~20kbps) at any time in the day(I have limited free downloading hours). I have even tested this with good links having good peers & seeds.

Torrents having around 20 seeds connected gives speed less that 1 kbps.

I tested my net upload & download speed on www.speedtest.net which gives results like :

for hours when I don't have free downloading:

download : 450kbps

upload : 30kbps

ping : 20ms

for hours when I have free downloading:

download : 170kbps

upload : 20kbps

ping : 80ms

Please help me.

Is it my upload speed? Can I claim to increase the speed to my ISP as he had not informed me about upload speed?

[jewelisheaven]

Hmm where to start, ok.. how about here. If your figures are indeed directly from speedtest.net you won't be seeing speeds near those numbers. why? Because of units. Programs and.. well windows, uses KiB and KiBps for measuring. The speedtest and your ISP reports their numbers as Kbps. The difference is only 'b' vs "B" but it is a HUGE difference. There are 8 bits in one Byte, so if that download is correct then you will only expect to see maximum of ~ 60 KiBps in uT. Similarly you can only upload @ 5 KiBps.

Can I ask if you utilize the scheduler to help you with this, so you know what speeds you can expect / tell uT to not overload your connection to get as close to the speeds as possible.

So, to be clear your ISP tells you you have what kind of connection? It looks like from your post and your speeds that you have a 4 Mbit / .5Mbit connection. If that is your ISP's advertised speed for your line, it may also be that they shape traffic. You should ask a technician specifically about this. If they deny it, tell them your experienced differences in speed for your free / non-free hours. Truthfully, if they tell you limitations on service they are above 50% of the ISPs out there right now, especially considering they tell you what to expect speedwise when using their services.

I'm sorry about the lagtime / no-solution .. it seems I was misunderstanding you before.

[alpesh]

Hey thanks for the reply, no need to be sorry.

I do understand the difference of kBps & kbps.

My ISP told me the download speed is 512kbps (so I should get download speed of about 64 kBps.)

I don't know upload speed. But the test shows it is around 18kBps.

I did tell the technician about the varying speed of the connection, he refused of having any problems with connections. He said it must be the torrent (which i don't believe as i have told you the reason above).

And, No. I don't use scheduler for downloading.

What is the openoffice link? How is it possible that the link gives the max speed all the time & other torrents don't at the same time. I think that means ISP is not shaping the traffic. Is it really possible to differentiate between the OpenOffice link & other torrent links.

Thanks for looking out in the matter once again.

[jewelisheaven]

Unless you are on a highly crippled / highly international connection from the server homing Ooo uses, it will max your connection. Because of the ease of use, and (I think) the ability for easy insertion of mirrors (dynamic instead of always on a root folder structure as is with ftp/http) it's relatively painless to make their ~ 100 MB files available in this way.

It's not the fact that the torrent is different, it's the PEERS (read as: their seed computers on fast upload connections) that shows the significant ability to prove your forwarding problems and the maximum sustained speed while torrenting. There are cases where ISP shaping of traffic may be based on IP ranges thoughs, in which case you can also try http://www.slackware.com/torrents/ for a minute or two for additional independent verification.

[alpesh]

hey what you said about "ISP shaping of traffic may be based on IP ranges" I didn't get it. Can you please make it clear by explaining it.

What i got from the explaination is that OpenOffice link the link where peers are responsible for higher speeds. & my slower speed might be because of "ISP shaping of traffic may be based on IP ranges". What does that mean?

Idid try SlackWare link that you provided. Its download speed remains around 30KBps(for almost 10 minutes). Just after that I tried OpenOffice link that gives 45KBps+ speed.

& at the same time my torrents give speed about <20KBps.

I even did an experiment. I put 2 torrent links, kept them for half hour, max speed 15KBps.

I added two more links to them watched them for half an hour, max speed around 15kBps.

(The single link when added gives speed upto 12KBps. But if we add another links to it, it's downloading speed drops to make total downloading speed of around 15 KBps.)

I kept adding two links each time till the total of 8, max speed goes upto 20 KBps, not maintained for along time. I think that should explain that my connection is being monitered.

Does Max. number of global connections,max number of connected peers per torrent or max number of upload slots matter while downloading more than one link simultaneously?

If yes, please tell me what value should I put in there. I download sometimes 1 to 8 links simultaneously.

Can you please explain everything in the simple language.

[jewelisheaven]

Surely, what I meant by IP-based shaping was that... some people experience slow speeds on ALL torrents until they try OpenOffice. Some people experience slow speeds on torrents and only marginally better speeds on OpenOffice (like you). And the last group of people experience slow speeds on all torrents, increased speeds on OpenOffice and no change for an alternative known good working swarm (Slackware). What this says, is that unfortunately there probably is no gain to be made on your current connection/ISP. The caveat? Are you currently running Ctrl-P -> BitTorrent -> Protocol Encryption -> Outgoing "Forced" and no tick next to legacy?

Yeah, thank you for testing multiple torrents simultaneously, but it enforces the probability you cannot reach your total throughput due to shaping I mentioned above (shaping is what ISPs regularly do to those who use too much bandwidth, or those who use too much peak bandwidth -- downloading or uploading too fast, or those who are using the established bittorrent protocol).

Does that answer your question?

Edit: Whoops I forgot to mention.. those testing swarms, while housed on good servers and connections, may be automatically shaped due to them coming out of the USA. If you can find a local or closer mirror / swarm for something similar... are there any LUGs near you (Linux User Group) or can you find a mirror at http://www.tlm-project.org/public/distributions/ of any of the major ones which is within your country?

[alpesh]

Thanks for the explaination.

correction*

I am in the category- "the last group of people experience slow speeds on all torrents, increased speeds on OpenOffice and no change for an alternative known good working swarm (Slackware)".

Does that have a solution?

I did try the link(http://www.tlm-project.org/public/distributions/). It gives download speed of about 30 KBps even in the hours when i don't have free downloading hours.

About Protocol Encryption-> I tried all the three options, No change. So now I have set it to ENABLED. Legacy is ticked.

When you said that i might be facing ISP shaping problem, can I claim on my ISP about that? & ask them to provide me the speed that they have advertised (512 kbps)?

One more thing, while not downloading through torrent, I mean using normal downloader of Internet Explorer what difference does it make while downloading more that two links at the same time. First I started one link two download, that gives speed upto 30kBps. Then started another simulatneously which also gave 30kBps speed.

Does that mean I am getting 60 kBps speed or just 30kBps? My friend said its 30kBps as only one port is open while downloading. But a technician from my ISP said that you should check your downloading speed with multiple downloadings going on & add up the speed. Please explain it so that I can explain to my ISP. I think they are making stupid out of me.

[jewelisheaven]

It appears they are actively shaping (read as: controlling the speed what you can download) torrenting traffic. To confirm if it is global or only from the USA you should try swarms you'd expect primarily indian IPs to be on. Unfortunately I don't know if you have any legal recourse for the shaping, or if you even want to become an irate customer... are there ISP alternatives in your area? Since they are not blocking your traffic, only keeping it to a specific speed, which is perfectly legal in the U.S. currently, I don't think you don't have much you can do.

Since you already have them on the phone and ask specific questions, you may also want to ask about quotas and if you have a set but un-told quota... You don't really want to have to pay huge overages since you're already being limited. I don't know why you wouldn't be able to reach ~ 60 downloading on HTTP / FTP unless the ISP is screwing you overall for all traffic. Before you said that you could hit 50 down, have you hit that again since? If they will not give you > 30 on ANY specific connection, you may want to "bypass" this by running two general torrent swarms at once. Limit the upload slots to 1 each and untick <90%. That should allow you to keep your theoretical max unless I understood your earlier explanation incorrectly, where it was STAYING at 15 no matter how many you were running.

Yes you are correct in that due to your location, or the ISPs monopoly you are being fleeced for money, but unless you have an alternative, any internet is better than no internet to my mind.

[alpesh]

Well, I don't want to go legal over the matter, just want to be an irate customer. Have ISP options but not feasible several reasons.

About hitting the 50kBps mark, i might hit it at 9am, thats when my free downloading hours end.

About HTTP/FTP, is it necessary that for any link from any website you should reach max. speed?

My ISP's technician said that thhe speed depends on the website from which you are downloading.

& I asked you about more that two HTTP/FTP downloading. Only one HTTP/FTP downloading gives around 30 KBps & when two HTTP/FTP both gives around 30 KBps speed. Does that I can get more speed for multiple HTTP/FTP downloading? Or is it just 30 KBps.

About torrent, Ctrl+P->BitTorrent-> Global Max. Connections--- ?

Max. No. of connected peers per torrent --- ?

No. of upload slots per torrent--- ?

What values should I put in here?

Generally I download about 5 to 8 torrent links simultaneously. If its not desirable to download so many torrents at the same time how many can I, simultaneously?

I have already untick "<90%".

You have understood the explanation correctly that the speed always stays at 15 kBps, no matter how many I download simultaneously.

* p.s. : I was just checking start->run->cmd-> ipconfig /all. I found something in the results, that i think should matter:

Win IP config :

IP routing enabled : NO

WINS proxy enabled : NO

Ethernet LAN :

physical add : xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx (some HexaDeciamal figures.)

Dhcp Enabled : NO

Is there anything that you can figure out?

Hey one more thing: when i changed the settings of uTorrent ctrl+G-> xx/64 kBps, my downloading speed is sustained at 25 kBps. But the maximum downloading speed is automatically limited to 30kBps. I couldn't find where the settings are changed. It shows 'Download Limited' in the lowest bar of uTorrent near DHT column.

I checked ctrl+P -> connection -> download -> max. download rate= 0 (max.)

Max. number of active of downloads & max. no. of active torrents? What values should be set?