Jump to content

utorrent connection drops


CadaverTriple6

Recommended Posts

hey whats goin' on,

im a bit of a hacking novice but i know just enough to really f*ck things up. i've been using utorrent for a bout a year now and i've mastered the options for my connection, but recently i've been having connection drop problems. when i say connection drop i mean that the local area connection system tray icon pops up with a bubble stating "a network cable is unplugged" but then immeadiatly fixes itself, this happens once every 1-2 minutes but still maintains download speeds of > 150kbs. occasionally (less than once a week) i get a message stating "limited or no connectivity" and i must repair the connection using the local area connection built in troubleshooter.

i use windows xp sp2, comcast 4mb connection, linksys befsr41 v4.1 - firmware 1.04.09(yea i know it sux - limited global connection to < 200 because of it) , utorrent 1.7.7, zonealarm, avg anti virus

what i really need is a good settings configuration that would stop the drop of connection, it seems its the router that is the problem, but i also got a letter from my isp today about distributing some copywritten material(they caught me seeding), so of course i switched to forced encryption and turned of legacy connections for the time being.

but if anybody has a good tut laying around could you link me to it, or copy/paste it in here, also if you just know of a tweak that may help let me know, im willing to try almost anything (thats not stupid) because its really annoying that i can either use utorrent or my xbox live but not both, because of the connection drop signing me out once every 1-2 minutes

UPDATE: after disable-ing DHT i get an average connection time of 5 minutes before drop, but download and upload speeds have equaled out and both hover around 50 kb/s

UPDATE:using all the above mentioned settings, i limited the UL speed to 25kb/s and left the download limit unlimited. DL speeds average greater than 200kbs peak 259 kbs and has been connected for over ten minutes without drop

Link to comment
Share on other sites

the following message was written while jewelish was posting, no disrespect to him.(and no i didnt read the sticky i just started usin me brain grunt, grunt)

i guess this is where i thank myself for the help and say how im my god and im forever in my own debt, you know like everybody else does once they get help, but instead im gonna list my ssettings for anyone else with a similar set up

preffrences CONNECTION:

randomize port each time utorrent starts: UNCHECKED

enable UPnP port mapping: UNCHECKED

enable NAT-PMP port mapping: Checked

add utorrent to windows firewall exceptions: Checked

proxy server : none

max. upload rate automatic: Checked; 25kb/s

max download rate : 0 (unlimited)

Preffrences BITTORRENT:

global max. # of connections: 190 (because router max is 200)

max # of connected peers per torrent: 80

# of upload slotsper torrent: 4

use additional upload slots if speed <90%: Checked

enable dht network: UNCHECKED

enable dht for new torrents: UNCHECKED

enable local peer discovery: Checked

ask tracker for scrape info: Checked

enable peer exchange:Checked

limit local peer bandwidth: UNCHECKED

ip/host name to report to tracker: blank

outgoing protocol encryption : FORCED

allow incoming legacy connection: UNCHECKED

preffrences QUEUEING

max. # of active torrents: 3

max # of active downloads 2

everything else is: UNCHECKED

my DL speed is currently 235 kbs, UL 25 kbs at the time of this posting, however i have had 1 connection drop/reaquire in the past 20 minutes.

so using these settings i have an average connection drop of once per hour, i'll check back if i manage to improve anything, but for the most part im happy with this setting, if only i could go on line with my xbox while DL'n with utorrent.

i may play around lowering the max # of global connections until i get no drops but the DL speed will probably suffer if i go any lower.

If anybody out there has any input it would be greatly appreiciated, because as of now im answering my own posts, how pathetic is that?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you constantly see the network connection icon in the system try popping up, then it's your router dying and restarting periodically. Make sure you've disabled resolving of IPs in the Peers tab context menu, and lower the global number of connections to something like 100 or 50 just to see if the problem persists.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

thanks ultima i appreaciate the advice, i have stableized my connection useing the settings from the post above, but i will definatly try those tweakn' tips if i have anymore problems the reason i came back though is because i found another setting tweak that i had backwards before:

preffrences CONNECTION:

randomize port each time utorrent starts: UNCHECKED

enable UPnP port mapping: UNCHECKED

enable NAT-PMP port mapping: Checked

add utorrent to windows firewall exceptions: Checked

proxy server : none

*max. upload rate automatic: Checked; 25kb/s*

max download rate : 0 (unlimited)

CORRECTION:

max.upload rate automatic : UNCHECKED; 25 kbs

alternate UL rate when not DL: 10kbs

the preceding correction improved DL traffic when very few seeds were available, having automatic Checked was counter productive to limiting the upload, which i believe was neccessary because of ip restrictions (atleast i think)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm unsure what Xbox requires to get online... I know finagling the wifi to work for the Wii was interesting. It needed originally 8 KiBps overhead to do it's synching, but then had no disconnection issues when upload in uT was set to 90% of theoretical maximum for my connection (leaving 2 KiBps available-- and most of that taken up my bittorrent overhead).

You may try lowering the global connections to 50 or below... presumably with .25Mbit upload you have a cable or equivalent connection with up to 4 Mbit download. With you @ 4 slots per torrent, 3 torrents active and estimating 20% uploading connectivity that's 60 connections total. Double that for moderate seed connections and you only get to 120 which is 2/3 of your current global #. That may eliminate your connection dropping.. or it may not. If it doesn't you can be confident your ISP interrupts the connection not based upon connections but based upon some download/bandwidth metric and essentially can't avoid it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

jewelish, i think you hit right on the head, when downloading i have no problems at all but as soon as the upload speed surpasses the download speed (ie: DL switches to seed) i get a drop-a-minute, my 360 got the red rings so i guess i'll just deal with the drops till i get it back. my router doesnt help anything either, cant wait until they fix the N band routers then i'll get a new one but im holdn out for N-band to get all ironed out

*Why set the upload speed so low when not downloading?

the upload speed is low because comcast limits seeding*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was just making sure you didn't have defective hardware like I did :P. Side note, don't buy a wireless adapter for it if for whatever reason you have to in the future, buying a certain router and making it a bridge is actually cheaper.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i took my router out of the picture and im having DL speeds of >250kbs, but i havent been on long enough to figure out the drop rate, but i can say that the bandwidth usage is sporadic, i get a large spike that tapers off once per minute.

i think the drops were due to a faulty router (linksys befsr41 has known compatibility issues) but i cant seem to permenatly iron out the spikes.

perhaps it is being throttled back, and i guess there isnt anything else i can do except change providers, but comcast is the best in my area, so im boned.

thanks for helping anyway

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:( I still think it may be wise to lower your connected peers to see if that can limit the interference even more. Great call isolating the router, but yeah, without any of the new proposals taking effect to eliminate some of the overt connection tracking there's not much else you can do. . .

So wait, with the same settings you can connect with the xbox and uT without that router in the middle?

As far as providers.. yeah the cable co's are sitting pretty though their lack of updating infrastructure is showing with the somparable prices --in the 50 metropolitan areas at least-- of FIOS, and this xDSL has even more comparable speeds and doesn't require extra wiring in areas built in the last 10-15 years iirc. I'd recommend even trying really really low settings like 5 connections 1 halfopen 2 upload slot 1 torrent on your current bandwidth settings to see if you can sneak around that. You're already limiting the unencrypted traffic best you can and if not, you're lucky enough to be in the areas they are still enforcing this interruption. Time will tell if Comcast makes good on their PR doubletalk about using more bandwidth friendly means to control their network.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

with posted settings, and direct connection to modem i haven't had any drops. but what i do have is a spike in bandwidth once per minute. My max DL speed was 300kbs with the listed settings

i'll try those changes tommorow once my DL's finish - i mean no point messin with it now that its pretty good.

just for the record my goal is to stabilize the bandwidth usage the best that i can, to have a steady DL rate without massive spikes once per minute.

i know that a perfectly steady rate is impossible due to availibility of peices, but i would like to eliminate the spiking if i can, because i believe the spikes are precursors to connection drops

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wouldn't worry about the INCREASE of the downloads... but if it start to signal a dropping of throughput or coinciding with the dropping of peers you may worry.

I can only presume this throttling countermeasure the ISP is doing allows temporarily boosting your speed before the hardware catches up. I will say this, you may find you can completely keep that download speed by using uT 1.8. It's out of alpha now and is generally stable but you should always test for yourself prior to rolling everything over. You can start by downloading it from the Announcements forum, and then configuring it for self-encapsulated running.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've got ComCast as well, and I guess it's just not as bad some places as others...

There's some competition here, but it's mostly low-end ADSL...with maybe 6 megabits/sec tops.

At my house, I can only get maybe 3 megabits/sec down ADSL due to distance from exchange.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

speed test results:

DL: 4.19 mb/s or 524 kBps

UL: 363 kb/s or 45.4 kBps

so im well under the max capacity, my peak DL speed was 300kbs and the average speed when working properly is between 150 - 250 kbs

i want to do more testing but there isnt really anything else i want to DL right now.

i might just go find the torrent with the most seeds and just grab it for testing.

i'll check back later, and oh yea let me say thank you to you three, jewelish, gthk, and switech for continueing to help me with my above average but still total noob questions.

thanks

UPDATE:

i grabbed a 700mb file with over 300 seeds once in utorrent it connected to 15(17) seeds/8(29) leaches, which is fine no prob there

my speeds are: DL 514kbs peak, 462.2kbs avg. UL 19.4kbs peak, 12.7 avg.

im using all the same settings as i have been, i havent tried any thing from jewelish's post yet, because its not broken (yet)

so obviously the router was limiting me back by half because once i removed it my peak DL speed went from 300 to 514, as for drops i havent had any with this DL yet

UPDATE II: okay its done DL'n total time 24 min. no drops at all the largest fluxuation was from 400 kbs to 500 kbs which did not occur until i reached 64% completion and continued until the DL finished at a rate of once a minute.

so it seems that all is fine for know, perhaps comcast is limiting bandwidth at peak hours (even though they claim they dont), all i can do is try again and again to isolate this little drop glitch, but with so many variables in play i think i should just suck it up and be happy with what i got

UPDATE III: i started a new thread for an unrelated issue, but i would appreaciate if you guys gave it a read and let me know if im just being paranoid or not

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=319979#p319979

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I actually happen to use an ancient Linksys befsr41 v2 router both with computers on Win 98SE and Win XP Pro. Bad things happen when I allow uTorrent to make more than 100 connections at once, though this may be as minor as internet slowdowns not occurring for hours...or complete network connection loss -- even pc-to-pc file copies become impossible.

I typically have to keep DHT disabled and half open rate in uTorrent low (such as 1-4) as well. Because uTorrent's port is forwarded correctly (TCP only since DHT isn't used), I get lots of incoming connections and typically don't have a problem outside of ComCast's extreme connection breaking while seeding.

Sometimes ComCast does mass kill-offs of connections when I'm seeding, I'll drop from ~20-30 peers to less than 5 in less than 20 seconds.

For the most part, my upload speed remains maxed at 40-43 KB/sec where I set it in uTorrent. (Even 5 active broadband peers is enough to max out that trivial amount of upload speed.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...