multi-files torrent, skipped files, UL steady but bad DL speed

[ady4um]

I'm trying to download a 25 GB multi-file torrent. I don't have enough HDD space, so I have choose to skip files. My ISP's DL is "just" 16 kB/s, so I'm using 9 kB/s UL in ut speed guide.

1.7.7 ut version. Vista SP1. No router. Windows Firewall, port OK. Avast 4.8, Windows Defender.

For this torrent, The General tab shows Time elapsed 9 days. The "avg." info (also in General tab) is not changing since the very beginning, so I'm not expecting it to change unless I do something about it.

For this specific torrent, in General Tab:

DL avg. speed: 3.6 kB/s

UL avg. speed: 5.7 kB/s

Share Ratio: 1.741

There are no so much seeders, and the avail. is usually between 2 and 6, with 15 to 25 peers in the Peers tab. This is the only active torrent.

I've been trying several things to get better steady speeds. Although I've set 9 kB/s in the global max UL, I have set 8 kB/s max Ul speed in this torrent. I found this to have a positive impact in ul speed stability, at least for this torrent (but maybe I'm not being objective? )

I understand this particular torrent could be problematic to download. But still I see the ratio going up, UL speed steady, but DL speed almost always slower than the UL speed. Let's say I could live with this UL speed. I have 2 questions.

1) Is there anything I can do, in ut or in my system, to speed up the UL speed, still steady but closer to my max?

2) Utorrent should help me get an avg. DL speed closer to my UL, at least in the long term. But this is not the situation after 9 days. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

[jewelisheaven]

Can you download any faster than that on http://www.slackware.com/torrents/

[ady4um]

Thank you for your help. Yes, I tried dl xubuntu for test. I got 39 kB/s avg. dl speed (my ISP's max dl speed is 1.5 mb/s, 187.5 MB/s ) using the ut beta. Back to the stable 1.7.7 and the specific torrent, I'm not sure this is a dl speed issue. As I said, I can understand the speed problem is specific for this particular torrent. But what I don't understand is why I am *always* uploading more than downloading in this torrent, in the long term. If this was happening partially, that's ok. In the long term, my ul and dl speeds should be more or less in the same order. Sometimes, I get connected to a peer that lets me download faster, 20 or 25 kB/s, while I am also giving him, and my ul is at max and steady. When the relevance (ut peers tab) gets to 0, my dl speed does down again. This is always talking about particular torrents. There *are* torrents with better behaviour, but a good percent of the torrents are not so "good" as I would like them to be.

Let's assume this torrent is not a "good" torrent. It is full of leechers trying to dl but limiting the ul. Moreover, let's assume most leechers are "cheating" somehow, and they are actively trying to dl without giving in return. The "anti-leeching" methods in utorrent (and in the protocol) should help me. Am I right?

Anyway, I've tried changing ut parameters, and I can't get a permanent steady ul. The ul speed is steady for some minutes, and slows down, then up again. I already tried lowring the max ul speed in ut. This is not always the case, but I think maybe this is why the ul *avg.* is not even higher. Could this be the reason for getting constantly lower dl speed than my ul? I emphasize the *avg* speed after 10 days of downloading, and the share ratio of 70% more than my dl (1.7 ratio) in this particular torrent.

I can't base on a "test" torrent in this case, simply because in a test torrent my ul speed is quite useless for the swarm (my ul speed is too slow comparing to other seeders in a "test" torrent), so even when I'm just trying to seed to the test torrent - and doing nothing else in ut, and using no other internet software either - the "test swarm" is not taking advantage of my ul bandwith. At least, this is what I see each time I try to seed a good test torrent, during and after downloading it.

Please correct me if I am wrong on anything I posted here. Help and suggestions are very much appreciated.