Interesting article for developers ans any utorrent user

[shinkigami10]

Found an interesting article about latency created by torrents, games and P2P's it has some important info and its not to large, hope it helps.

http://www.formortals.com/Home/tabid/36/EntryID/57/Default.aspx

[Firon]

Yeah, we've seen it and it makes at least one wrong assumption about fixing the problem.

[HeeZy01]

what was the wrong assumptions in the article, btw?

from that article, it says that if the BT packets were smaller, then it would reduce latency.? someone clear this up for me.

i didn't know much about latency before i read it. i do have VoIP and when downloading with utorrent, i get drops when i am using the phone. i either have to lower the upload/download speeds/connected peers, or just stop the torrent to get a clean dial tone. then again, my router doesn't have QoS and i have no access to my modem because my ISP locked it.

[jewelisheaven]

irrelevant to a client. It's rarely the only thing on the line, so at best you get QoS when you're the only comp in a LAN, but at worst you get false prioritization which b0rks other systems on the same LAN. QoS MUST BE DONE at the POP if anywhere.

[Firon]

Smaller packet sizes will not solve anything.

[shinkigami10]

Well it was just a comment, if it doesn't help, sorry, btw, uTorrent Rules, Best torrent manager, shame in my country UL is so slow

[Switeck]

That article really left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

Worthy of hours of reading and composing my thoughts to come up with a worthy reply, because my initial one was pure shock.

The way the article handled the subject, one might get the impression that BitTorrent is a network...and when you connect to it, everyone on your shared internet connection (even yourself!) suffers regardless of your settings in BitTorrent!

I don't believe this is a fair conclusion.

We do not know from the article alone:

1.What BitTorrent client is used in testing.

...although in reading the 100+ replies, about the 100th reply in:

"I set BitTorrent (official client) to use 10, 28, and 47 KB/sec upstream out of a peak sustainable upstream of 52 KB/sec."

2.What settings are used in the BitTorrent client, BESIDES upload and download limits!

3.What torrent/s are the tests run on, specifically how many peers and seeds are there...and if the torrents are new, old, or even POISONED!

4.Firewalled conditions in BitTorrent?

5."Clean Line" tests...we don't know if the tests were done on an internet connection that is not also being hammered by spyware/viruses both incoming and outgoing...or old BitTorrent traffic (DHT and peers/seeds retrying torrents you long-ago stopped).

6.If the tests' computer/s is also running networking software and hardware known to interfere with BitTorrent traffic or the internet connection in general. (Zone Alarm, I choose you!)

7.What ISP service is being used? (We know ALL too well that some are real lemons who cripple the WHOLE line when BitTorrent traffic is detected!)

8.Even how testing was done between upload speed changes can have a huge effect on the outcome. A short "cooldown" time between each upload speed reduction might make the latency temporarily worse, as both the line and the BitTorrent client hasn't adapted to the new conditions.

So barring that, we can only assume the worst...which leads to the obvious conclusion:

BitTorrent is BAD!

I think the article can best be summed up by yet another (old) article:

"It's the Latency, Stupid"

http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/Latency.html

...and I liked that one a LOT better.

[shinkigami10]

Thaks, now i'm gonna read the article you posted...