Slow speed, despite portforwarding

[sniperelite7]

My download speed is usually below 20 kB/s. I thought that my router would be the problem but since then I have forwarded the port and have a green connection. Little to no improvement. I have been following alot of the tips on the net and still see no improvement. I honestly don't know what else to do.

I took a speed test and usually average around 710 KB download and 119 upload. I use Verizon DSL so I do not think that they throttle torrents.

Color of network status: Green

Port Checker: Ok

settings: Upload limit 72 kB, Connections 100, Max active torrents 5, upload slots 5, connections(global) 5, Max active downloads 4

net.max_halfopen *50

Operating System: Windows Vista

Security Mcafee Internet security

Router: westell Versalink Model 327 w

ISP: Verizon

Speed: D/l:720 Up:133

[Switeck]

"net.max_halfopen *50"

DEFINITELY too high!

This value probably needs to be reduced to 1/10th that (to 5-8)!

I am not sure you're showing the speed units for your connection correctly.

Is it a low-end DSL line with only 710 kilobits/second download and 119 kilobits/second upload?

Or middle-to-high-end DSL line with 710 KiloBYTES/second download and 119 KiloBYTES/second upload? (This would be ~6 megabits/second down and ~1 megabit/second up -- very near the fastest possible on the upload side.)

"settings: Upload limit 72 kB, Connections 100, Max active torrents 5, upload slots 5, connections(global) 5, Max active downloads 4"

Heh, not very often I get to tell people their setting/s may be a bit too low. But Global connections max needs to be equal or greater than connections max per torrent. There's probably no need to make Global connections max 500, but it might be just fine to make it 200...if you know your networking hardware and software is top-notch. Mine can't handle much over 100.

[sniperelite7]

kilobits Kb/s sorry for that. Still with the adjusted settings I get nothing. Right now there is about (930) seeds and (5233) peers..

Is there anymor einfo I can give out the might help?

[Switeck]

Yes, sanity-check your settings further.

"settings: Upload limit 72 kB, Connections 100, Max active torrents 5, upload slots 5, connections(global) 5, Max active downloads 4"

Your TOP upload speed for your connection cannot be higher than 16 KiloBYTES/second and effectively may be as little as 12 KiloBYTES/second. So telling uTorrent to try to upload at 72 KiloBYTES/second...will probably cripple the connection, causing high pingtimes, packet loss, and ironically far lower download speeds -- as the peers you're uploading to are going to be "disappointed" that your reported speeds and actual speeds are far apart...and upload slowly if at all back to you in retaliation.

Looks like you chose the xx/768k upload speed settings in Speed Guide (CTRL+G).

But instead you're probably needing to choose the xx/128k (128 kilobits/second) upload speed setting.

[sniperelite7]

Wow, that was a much better improvement. I set it to xx/128 setting and it shot up to 50 kB/s then settled down between 25-35 kB/s and varies in between those two. My max upload speed is at 9 kB/s now. If thats all I can do I guess. Its much better seeing 2-3 days ETA rather than a week. If there is anything else I can do let me know. I'm kind of confused as to why it went up to 50 kB/s then went down...but thanks so far for the help.

[Switeck]

Initial bursts of download traffic -- the peers/seeds suddenly are able to upload to you faster because your upload side is no longer completely overloaded. But then peers back off because you're not returning the favor. And seeds quit because they round-robin upload to almost everyone they're connected to. If they have 4 upload slots per torrent, and are connected to 20 peers on that torrent, then they're only uploading to a given peer on that torrent roughly 1/5th of the time.

Time to play with some of uTorrent's settings manually then...

Are you actually hitting max connections per torrent?

(Presumably you're only running 1 torrent at a time now.)

If you raise upload speed 1 KiloBYTE/second at a time and let it run at the new upload speed for a minute:

1.Does the upload speed actually reach and sustain the new upload rate?

2.Does the download speed increase?

If both 1 and 2 are true, keep raising the upload speed till both aren't true.

Then reduce upload speed a bit till you find the best fit.

This is probably going to be 12-15 KiloBYTES/second total upload speed...but may cause some lag while web surfing while running so close to upload max.

[sniperelite7]

Sorry, what would my maximum connections be(where would I find it)? Would that be the seeds/peers columns? If so then. No. Seeds 8(585) Peers 38(4755).

I'll try adjusting the upload speed as well.

I adjusted the upload speed and it shot up pretty fast, varying between 50-70 and stayed there for awhile. I noticed now. A funny thing happens the settings 128/xxx for speed. when I go back the setting is "current settings" like the setting just won't stay. this happens when I change the upload speed.

[Switeck]

8 seeds plus 38 peers = 46 connections on that torrent.

55 is max when using Speed Guide's xx/128k settings.

You shouldn't need any more connections. In fact, you may sustain a faster download speed with 30.

Global and per-torrent max connections can be set under CTRL+P (Preferences in the Options window at top) and Bandwidth.

Yes, if you change anything Speed Guide will show "current settings".

To reset to a standard setting, you have to select a new setting from the drop-down box (xx/128k again for instance) and then select "Use Selected Settings" at the bottom right of the window.

[sniperelite7]

hmmm, the speed jumps up sometimes to around 50 but then sinks back down. I was reading another thread. And I am wondering is hashfails have anything to do with it? because so far it says "wasted 266 MB (1004 Hashfails)".

Generally I am averaging about 26 kB/s

But as of late its been going pretty slow no matter hwat I do. Down to the 10 kB/s...

[Switeck]

YES, You have hostile peers and seeds sending you bad data, so the pieces of the torrent fail hash check.

You'll need to locate what ips these hostiles are on and block them using uTorrent's ipfilter.dat file.

http://www.utorrent.com/faq.php#What_is_ipfilter.dat.3F

To show the "bare" ip addresses of seeds and peers, you may need to click in the PEERS window of uTorrent, RIGHT-CLICK in that window and disable Resolve IPs.

It wouldn't surprise me to see that you have lots of ips in the 38.x.x.x range and maybe 208.x.x.x range as well. (They're notorious hostile corporations dedicated to sabotaging file sharing.)

[sniperelite7]

Alright, thanks for all your help. Its not as slow as before, but still gets way down there sometimes and dips down and up even when there are no hostile peers. I assume its because of the file size(7 GB) or the file itself. I've been playing around with the settings and get no improvement unfortunately.

[Switeck]

Look in the PEERS window.

Sometimes peers and seeds are uploading to you, other times they are not. So you see download speed dips and spikes.

[huskies]

"net.max_halfopen *50"

I just saw this suggested by a private tracker to config utorrent. (I'm not sure how old it is though)

I will still pass on the net.max_halfopen (5-8) and suggest the utorrent forums for set up details (is that OK). I haven't gone too far wrong yet searching through these forums - just about to re-install Vista, again! LOL

Keep up the good work1

[Switeck]

net.max_halfopen tells uTorrent how many new outgoing connection attempts to be making at the same INSTANT. Really, really nasty on most networking hardware and software if it's set higher than single-digit. Especially once you've already gotten 100+ established connections...because that rate continues until global connection max is reached.

If you're not firewalled in uTorrent (green light at bottom), then you get incoming connections which don't count against the net.max_halfopen limit. You could even in theory be DDoSed by too-rapid of incoming connections...and even setting net.max_halfopen to 0 wouldn't help.

Win XP SP2 set a max limit for half open connections of 10 at once.

Some Vista Home versions sets half open connections max to 5 or less from what I've heard.

That OS limitation really causes problems when uTorrent's trying to make connections faster than that.

More on the peers/seeds not sending to you:

It has to do with the ratio of max connections PER torrent versus upload slots per torrent. Upload slots is how many peers it's uploading to PER torrent...which is generally a lot less than max connections per torrent. So if it's got 20 connections on a torrent but upload slot max is set to 4...that means 16 connections aren't getting uploaded to at any given moment. And which 16 that is...usually changes from minute to minute so that most if not all get something every hour. However that can change if upload speed is <90% max and "use additional upload slots" is checked.

[sniperelite7]

Ok, I have checked it. ipfilter is up and works. And my net.max is set to 5. Its been shooting up higher now but varies between 60 and 20 usually hanging between 30kB/s. I fiddle around a bit and see nothing improve sadly, the speed usually decreases, is about it. Is there any info I can provide that might help?

[Switeck]

Just remember even while you may only be getting 20 KiloBYTES/second...you're only giving out <15 KiloBYTES/second yourself. Somebody has to make up for that deficiency.

It's still possible your ISP is throttling/disrupting/crippling BitTorrent traffic slightly.

Does disabling LPD, UPnP, DHT, and Resolve IPs seem to make download and/or upload speed a tiny bit faster?