Very inconsistent download speed. Pls help!!

[wetwet]

Dear members,

I am experiencing very inconsistent download speed. In a minute, I can see the speed ranging from 80kB/s to 200 kB/s. However my upload speed seems to be very consistent hovering around 20kB/s to 21 KB/s. What could be wrong?

Wetwet

[Switeck]

You probably can't upload faster than 21 KiloBYTES/second...but uTorrent's max upload speed is set higher, which constantly slams against your ISP's upload limit...causing random upload packets to be lost.

SOME of those lost upload packets are important things like telling those uploading to you...to continue uploading to you.

2nd link in my signature...you probably need to choose the 192 kilobits/second max upload settings.

[wetwet]

Dear Switeck,

Thanks for your help. Does lack of harddisk space affect the download speed as well? My harddisk space now left only about 3GB. Now my download speed now hovers around 50kB/s.

Wetwet

[Switeck]

Yes and no...hard drive speeds are generally faster by a couple magnitudes to your download/upload speeds.

BUT...if you have a very fast internet connection that can download and/or upload 1+ MegaBYTE/second, then the random access nature of uTorrent will overload a hard drive because it's busy trying to load/save possibly 20 places at once!

As a hard drive gets full, a large file may be saved in different places on the hard drive...wherever there was empty space. So the beginning of the file may be on 1 part of the hard drive but the end on another...so the hard drive runs much slower.

Then, even potentially downloading/uploading at 100 KiloBYTES/second could overload it!

I doubt that's your problem...what's your ISP's monthly bandwidth limits?

Are there peak hours (weekdays in the evening typically) usage limits?

[wetwet]

Dear Switeck,

No, my internet line is a leased line with 2MBPS bandwidth. To be frank I had not done any setting to my uTorrent software since I started using it one month back. I was confused and do not know what to set. Until now, I do not know what is my max dl and upl speed is. I tried using the speed test web-site but different web-site produces different results. That confuses me as what is ACTUALLY my dl and upl speed should be like? Any recommended site to test with reliable result? Once I get the test result, how do it intepret it and read the table provided in your signature link. Hope you can help me out. Thanks in advance.

Wetwet.

[Switeck]

If you're far away from the test site, then the speeds you get may be well below your line's real speeds. But that just means the speed results can be taken as "at least" values.

If I read you correctly, "a leased line with 2MBPS bandwidth" means 2 megabits/second download max. That's about 200 KiloBYTES/second usable download speed. (figuring 10 bits of bandwidth to download 1 BYTE of a file)

However your upload speed max is what you set most everything in uTorrent for. And by your own statement: "my upload speed seems to be very consistent hovering around 20kB/s to 21 KB/s."

This is consistent with ~192 kilobits/second upload bandwidth...maybe 256 kilobits/second upload bandwidth if the line's a little noisy or being used for other things at the same time.

So, once again I suggest the 192 kilobits/second max upload settings from the 2nd link in my signature.

It does no good in uTorrent to try to upload faster than your line lets it...and actually reduces the upload speeds actually reached.

[wetwet]

Dear Switeck,

Thanks once again for your advice. I am now reading your 2nd link signature document. Just to be clear on the settings, hope you can be patient with me.

Reference to 192 kbits/sec setting

1) Upload limit - 17 kbytes/sec. so I must set it to 17 kbytes/sec instead of 20kbytes/sec (current setting)?

2) What do you mean by slots? Does it mean that by setting it to 3 slots, I only allow 3 slots at any one time to be opened/active for other users to seed from me?

3) Connection torrent =30. What does it mean by "maximum connections allowed per active torrent"? Where can I set this parameter?

4) Max Active Torrent=2. Does it mean that I can only download 2 torrent at any one time?

5) What do you mean by "max active download"?

[Switeck]

1.Yes, set regular upload speed max to only 17 KiloBYTES/second. If you want, you can set the alternate upload speed while not downloading (meaning seeding only) to 20 KiloBYTES/second.

2.UPLOAD slots, another setting in uTorrent. That's how many peers you're uploading to PER torrent at any given time.

3.That's "Maximum number of connected peers per torrent"...more is not always better, as your connection may get overloaded just trying to stay connected if set too high.

4.Max active torrents = TOTAL number of torrents, both seeding AND downloading.

5.Max active download = That's how many downloading torrents you have at once. Yes, with your connection I really only recommend 1 downloading torrent at a time. You can try setting that to 2 (your max active total torrents), but that means you'll probably need to seed later if you care about maintaining a ratio.

Your connection is rather slow on the upload side, so the settings SHOULD seem a little low.

[wetwet]

Hi,

I am experiencing jumpy download speed which range from 100kbytes/sec to 220kbytes/sec. In a matter of 20 seconds, I can see speeds from 200kbps dropping to 180kbps then going up to 190kbps then dropping to 150kbps then going up to 170kbps. It had never been consistent in the range of like 180kbps to 200kbps. Is this behavior normal?

[Switeck]

Yes, different peers and seeds are uploading to you...not every one of them is probably uploading to you at the same moment and EACH of them may vary their upload rate a bit even while uploading to you.

Some may be on bad ISPs that disconnect them from other peers from time-to-time...so you may see a download spike then drop-off when they get disconnected from you by their ISP.

[wetwet]

Hi Switeck,

Thanks for your reply.

Cheers!

wetwet.