Q about the tcp patch and utorrent

[noosey]

ok basically do i still need the tcp patch from lvlords for win xp, because i believe that the reason for using the patch is to allow you to connect to more peers, but when i have not used the tcp patch and i down a torrent from one of my private sites and it has 131 seeds and 28 leechers i still connect to like 66 seeds and 10 leechers

so does utorrent somehow open up more ports because i didnt think you could connect to that many peers without the tcp patch

my connection speed is 7meg

thanks

[Lord Alderaan]

First the OS half_open limit mainly limits how fast you can make a lot of connections. It doesn't limit how many connections you can have total.

FYI: half_open is a status of a connection. Every conn is half_open for at least a few milliseconds. By limiting the maximum of half_open conns you prevent new conns from being made when x conns are still in the half_open stadium. As soon as a conn moves to fully open another conn can be started. Also see wikipedia

Under normal circumstances you don't need to make connections very fast. And the low OS limit is there to reduce the effect of malicious applications (virusses) and traffic. It hardly hinders µtorrent and it won't effect your download/upload speed.

So you do not NEED it. It is just that some people consider the imposed half_open limit by windows XP and Vista a bit on the low side. From time to time µtorrent makes a lot of connections so increasing the OS limit a bit makes some more room for other applications when µtorrent goes on a connecting spree. Usually though the effect is hardly noticeable but sometimes software borks if it tries to make connections faster then the OS allows and then it might help.

Raising the µtorrent half_open limit in it's preferences might cause problems. You shouldn't really increase it but if you really want to for some reason make sure you have patched windows first. And it should be the first thing to decrease when problems occur.

[noosey]

cheers for a detailed answer much appreciated.. never gunna use it again me thinks