Maximum number of connections box not working! D:

[Winnameade]

So I share a network with my family, and on this network is a firewall that chokes off my internal ip address whenever my computer exceeds the global maximum number of connections per host. This really shouldn't be a problem, because the limit for a single computer is 512 connections, and I do not need that many.

But after torrenting a few days on reduced (10) connections, my father approached me and said the firewall keeps sending him emails every few minutes reporting that it keeps having to choke the connections on my computer from connection overkill.

Upon digging further, Dad brought up a table of current connections to other computers, and utorrent is making HUNDREDS of connections through hundreds of ports that I do not want it to.

I am so confused. I have the maximum connections set to freaking 10 in my preferences. Is this just not how it works and I'm making a tiny huge mistake? Is it just not working? Is there a second step that I am missing?

Is there something I can do to stop this?

Any help is appreciated!

[Firon]

It's probably DHT, though your firewall shouldn't treat UDP packet as a connection (as it is a connectionless protocol).

[jewelisheaven]

What firewall are you using? If it's zonealarm uninstall it.

[Switeck]

Try the first AND second link in my signature.

[Winnameade]

Firon: That looks to be what is happening. There are a ton of UDP "sussions" being reported. Although I am of the opinion that UDP messages SHOULD go into the session table and be remembered. Otherwise, UDP response messages couldn't be directed back through the NAT to the computer on the local network that originated them. They time out eventually, after a minute.

The network administrator (aka Dad) has said that he COULD reduce it, but that risks breaking other protocols by having the response packets get discarded because they can't be routed tot he right computer.

Is there any setting in Utorrent to limit the number of DHT connection attempts in a given period of time?

Also, jewelisheaven: We use a ZyXel ZyWall2

Thanks for your help, guys :\

[jewelisheaven]

DHT is... negligible really. UDP is connectionless so either it works or it doesn't. It doesn't require a tunnel/connection ACK to function. Zyxel isn't known for being stellar when filesharing is concerned but as long as the problem is in your firewall and not hardware locking up you're doing just fine

DHT only announces every 12-16 minutes when enabled. There can be negligible activity 24/7 though if you're part of a popular DHT node cluster. . . meaning you get lots of announces due to the block of the infohash database you keep.

Here's half a month of DHT usage (man converting the bytes makes these smaller--the aggregate data transfer between () used to just be bytes)

[00:52:37] Received: 1185284 requests (103 MB), 506566 replies (125 MB), 54638 invalid (12.6 MB)

[00:52:37] Sent: 1129407 requests (111 MB), 1185284 replies (263 MB)

Supposedly Ctrl-P -> Advanced -> dht.rate scales up/down based upon your connection speed. The default of -1 means use UP LIMIT / 8 for max throughput, but I notice not much difference whether it's 512 (.5 KiB) or 10240 (10 KiB).

[Winnameade]

The problem seems to be the number of DHT messages sent out to other machines within a 3-minute period. The total volume over time doesn't matter as much as the "peaks." The problem is that it sends out so many that it uses up all my available connections, and apparently continues doing that for hours on end.

So am I understanding correctly that there is no way of regulating DHT through Utorrent?

[Firon]

You can control the bandwidth it uses, but you can't really control the number of nodes it contacts.

[Winnameade]

Alright, thanks for your help

[Switeck]

You can also disable DHT in uTorrent.

DHT is helpful if you do lots of torrent searches or are trying to complete a poorly-seeded torrent, so you may want to leave it enabled.