Real help for more speed.

[Martin Levac]

Greetings,

My first post and I have some info that will help you get more speed out of your torrents with utorrent.

Thanks to Ludvig Strigeus for such a great BT client.

This may help those with fast connections more than those with dial-up and slower connections but you can still give it a try and see if you can extract more speed from your connection.

Alright, first things first. You must determine how much hardware upload capacity you have and then how much true upload capacity you have. The easiest way to do that is by setting the number of upload slots to at least 10, then set your upload limit to your maximum hardware capacity (check with your ISP for that info). Then, lower it until your download speed doesn't change and your upload speed doesn't change.

For example, my hardware upload capacity is 900kb/s or about 112.5kB/s (note the small b and the capital . I first set it to about 80 but it was still affecting and being affected by the actual download so I finally set it to 70kB/s. This resulted in my upload speed going flatline, i.e. it wasn't affected nor was it affecting my download speed, no matter what speed I was downloading at. You can also test it by starting a torrent then by downloading something else with other apps such as IE or some other download app.

You have already set upload slots to 10. Next, set the "maximum number of connected peers per torrent" to at least 10 times that of the number of upload slots. I set mine at 200/10. If you get problems, reduce the number of connected peers and/or upload slots until you don't have a problem. Otherwise, you can increase max peers to whatever you want up to the maximum number of peers in the swarm but not the upload slots, keep that at 10 or close to 10. The number of peers in the swarm is about 185 and I'm downloading from at least 10 of those plus whatever other unchoked peers sends me something when I'm telling them I'm starving.

How this works.

Since you set more upload slots than normal, you are saturating your upload connection but what that means is that it is always uploading at maximum capacity which is then regulated and normalized by utorrent so that it always uploads at the same speed. Setting less upload slots will have your upload speed fluctuate wildly so that you won't get the maximum upload (and tit-for-tat that comes with it) consistently.

You may think that it will slow things down but remember that you also set your upload speed limit to less than your actual upload capacity and utorrent takes care of that quite nicely, thank you.

From the upload slots, you get tit-for-tat upload/download at a regular 70kB/s (or whatever UL speed you actually get) all the time until the torrent is done. You get what you give at almost exactly the same rate you set for your max upload speed.

From the other 90 or 250 connections you get the law of averages which is a way of saying you get a very small amount of data from a huge pool of choked peers once every 60 seconds or so when they unchoke you. What that does is fill up whatever download capacity you have with any data above your upload speed.

My connection is cable with 6.5mb/s down and 900 kb/s up, many of you have asynchronous connections like me and you obviously want to get as much speed from it as possible.

So, in short. Set upload slots to 10, set upload speed to about 70% of your actual upload capacity, set max peers to at least 10 times upload slots, watch it fly.

Fool around with those numbers until you get a consistent upload and higher download. The key here is consistent upload speed below your hardware upload capacity so that the download ACKs (acknowledge and requests and whatnots) can get through without affecting your upload and your upload can get through without affecting your download. When one affects the other, it affects the other back and so forth.

Right now I'm getting 100kB/s down (or more, sometimes as much as 175) for my 70kB/s up and it keeps going. You may think I'm a leech but would you be satisfied with 70kB/s from me? Would you prefer I set it back to 4kB/s? Would you prefer seeing your upload going higher than your download?

This method works for reasonably fast torrents but I haven't tested yet on slow torrents. I have such a torrent just waiting for me and I'll report back my findings when I'm done with this one. It shouldn't take too long, it says I have 15m to go.

I hope this helps you get the most speed out of your connection with utorrent.

ML

[Martin Levac]

Here's the update for a veeeeery slow torrent I'm currently downloading.

I stopped it for about an hour so I had some catching up to do on it when I restarted it. The catching up part went fine but as soon as I did catch up, the download speed went back down to whatever upload speed the original has set it at. That's about 5 kB/s, what a biotch. ROTFL!, feeding over 400 peers at 5k, that's ridiculous. The file is 3.2GB and I'm at 62%! Upload speed is still at 70kB/s because I didn't change anything. Anyways, that's it for the update on slow torrents.

ML

[randumbum]

Thank you very much for this post. Out of the several posts I've read on this download speed issue-- this is the one that worked the magic.

Thank you again for enabling by new favorite torrent client to rock the casbah.

[froggieman420]

Thanks very much this has helped out alot with 2 very slow downloads I was havein trouble with.

[madascheese]

soo what settings i.e. upload slots, global con, per con, upload speed

would u recommend for a very slow upload line like mine?

its a 1mb cable connection, my isp say its a 128k upload speed, soo i guess 16 with overheads?

[Martin Levac]

Well, I figure to give at least 2.5-10kB/s each upload slot to maintain a regular number of upload slots and to keep the same peers on upload slots as long as possible.

In my case: 70kB/s / 10 = 7kB/s per upload slot peer. Or 70kB/s / 16 = 4kB/s per upload slot peer. In between those two extremes works about as well but 10 upload slots works a little better for some reason. It works better when it's closer to about 5-6k per peer. Anyways, one peer is bound to have a much higher upload limit than I do and when that happens, I sometimes get (and give) 20-40k just from that one but I keep that peer right to the end.

You see, my connection can support quite a lot of connections and the TCP traffic that comes with that many connections. Your connection would work best if you adjusted upload slots, upload speed and connections in proportions.

Look at it this way, you want the maximum number of connections without affecting your upload and download speeds. You want the maximum number of upload slots without affecting upload and download. You also want to upload at the highest speed considering your hardware connection and all the TCP traffic for all those upload slots and connections that you set. All that without affecting your upload and download.

So, in your case, 1mb down/128k up. I suggest you start with upload speed 12-14, upload slots 4-6, max peers per torrent 25-100. Adjust accordingly to find the right combination that will result in your upload speed going flatline at the limit. If you set 16 upload slots on your 128k connection, you'll only be sending less than 1k to each peer. This can cause frequent disconnects depending on the other peers' settings regarding minimum speed to keep the connection active.

Remember, what you give is what you get. You also get more from the other seeds/peers not connected to upload slots. Sometimes you'll get lucky and get an excellent connection to a seed that has no limit on upload and no limit on share ratio.

You see, people look mostly at download speed only and that's not a good indicator of performance. You should look at upload speed and your goal should be to get a high regular upload speed that fluctuates very little, i.e. flatline without it affecting your download speed and results in a higher download than upload speed.

ML

[dudeboyz]

Just stick with the standard Utorrent defaults, except limit your uploads to 80% of your capacity and leave download at 0. I have 1.5m/384k ADSL and have the thing set to 30kB on upload limit so it doesn't saturate my bandwidth completely and I get between 80-180kB downloads, depending on the number of seeders.

[madascheese]

Just stick with the standard Utorrent defaults, except limit your uploads to 80% of your capacity and leave download at 0. I have 1.5m/384k ADSL and have the thing set to 30kB on upload limit so it doesn't saturate my bandwidth completely and I get between 80-180kB downloads, depending on the number of seeders.

are u talking about 80% of ur max speed including overhead (i.e. in my case 16) or the max of what ur isp advertise? (i.e. in my case 128k)

am gonna try these settings for now:

glob ul speed : 10 (80% of 128)

glob con : 128

per tor : 77

slots : 4 (each will get 2.5)

more if 90% : unticked

active seed or dl : 1

active dl : 1

[Firon]

80% excluding overhead.

[dudeboyz]

Sounds good cheese! Enjoy!