Odd problem: Can only connect to same ISP

[Switeck]

Only way I know to do that is to block all ips not on your ISP with uTorrent's ipfilter.dat ...but that might cause issues with connecting to trackers -- which are likely NOT running on your ISP!

You'd probably have to allow tracker ips too.

[ady4um]

Morey, I think the important thing would be to connect "to the right peers". We, 012 users, won't know if that is the same as users in our region, or just from 012, or just from HOT (all this groups are not the same).

We could get lists of IP's, which probably could help us (and we should have to update once in a while), but I think that by not-letting other ranges of IP's connect to us (by using ipfilter.dat) we actually are making the possible swarm smaller. This is not always a good way to go, and probably the devs won't add anything to ut to automate or ease this selection process.

On the other hand, we could let ut connect to all the IP's we can, get the peers' list (see some previous posts above), sort this list by ip, and try to add the potential "right" peers to our list of connected peers. I would like to add to this that even if a real currently active peer is being add manually to the list, ut not always add it right away. When I try to add a peer manually, I often have to try this several times. Maybe someone could point us how to make this action happen in a more effective way?

This manual process is not so user-friendly, and it could take a while to get connected to those peers. Moreover, the list of peers ut gets is not 100% correct all the time. And even then, maybe those peers are not having free bandwidth to ul to us "forever".

So, if some of the mods or the devs are having any kind of suggestion how to ease this manual process, or maybe a feature suggestion for near-future versions of ut, we will really appreciate it.

What I still can't understand is, if ut already tries to connect to the most suitable peers to max the swarm's speeds, why is it so hard for us to get connected to those "right" peers? I understand that "local" peers are not always the most suitable ones for every peer in the swarm, but in our (morey's, myself, and most users in our region) condition, it seems to be like "local" peers *are* the best to connect to.

Maybe there should be some kind of advanced option in ut to try to connect *first* to "local" peers, and just then try the others. By this, according to some previous post (by Switeck, I think), the first peers ut tries could be local, and then the rest ones, in case they are not really the best for us to connect to. I don't know if this is the way "local peer discovery" works.

[morey]

***Maybe there should be some kind of advanced option in ut to try to connect *first* to "local" peers, and just then try the others. By this, according to some previous post (by Switeck, I think), the first peers ut tries could be local, and then the rest ones, in case they are not really the best for us to connect to. I don't know if this is the way "local peer discovery" works.***

This would be a very useful function for many of us. I suppose the problem is, from a technical standpoint, can UTorrent identify 'local' peers? How does it know this without a list of IP ranges?

I've been keeping track for a week of the peers I'm connecting to and I'm getting a sense of the range. There's definitely a few ranges that are useless. I also have the list that I provided a link for. If I could tell UTorrent to only look at IP's that started with 212 or 84, that would help. btw, if I connect to peer 212.199.248.70:2048, what is the 2048 - is that a port number?

CKD

[ady4um]

morey, in ut you will see IPv4:PORT, including in the "add to peer list" option. But do not get confused with an IPv6 address, which has several ":" in its format (not xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:port format).

Also, Switeck already said ut doesn't know if it is a local peer or not. But that's the thing I don't understand. First, there is such a "local peer discovery" thing. Second, if ut is capable of display some flag and resolve IP (I unchecked those so I can use my bandwidth more effectively), then it should be able at least in most cases to say whether the peer is "around" or near or local or sth like that. If not in a perfect 100% situation, at least in most cases. To be clear, I'm not saying ut actually can tell if a peer is local. I'm saying I don't know about this, but it seems it could be somehow possible. But, also according to Switeck's posts, this is no such an important issue, since ut already searches for those best suitable peers to connect to. The problem for us seems to be how to make ut to build the list of potential peers in such a way that ut could try first the one neer us, and if eventually they are no the best suited, they will be replaced by others (local or not). That is the advanced option we should be requesting from the devs to develp and add to ut.

(BTW, whether local peers are the best or not, is already been discused, still without a definitive answer. I think we are not requesting to connect just to local peers, or to avoid not-local ones, or to *always* prefer the local ones. We are requesting that, according to an advanced option setting, ut could start building the peers list in a torrent by trying first the local ones, and continue then as usual, without setting "forever" specific preferences or categorized peers, since this would make the swarms more disperse.)

In any case, Switeck post previously that if we could get ALL the IP's ranges, maybe we could do better (a strong maybe, possibly not sth so great). So let's asume we can't get ALL of them, but just good partial ranges. So, Switeck, what we can do with this info?

I know this is not a Feature request thread, but maybe it should be? To add one more request or suggestion, maybe the devs could add some keyboard shortcut to the "add a new peer" option? This could be part of making this process easy for us.

[Switeck]

uTorrent doesn't have a good way of determining whether a peer/seed is local to you.

Being on the same ISP certainly doesn't guarantee it, nor does ip address, nor does even physical proximity. 2 people can be on the same ISP and on the same street...and just due to being on a different cablemodem sub/trunk line or different DSLAM for ADSL, not considered on the same LAN and so might not qualify as technically local by the weak test that uTorrent currently does.

ISPs generally seem unwilling or unable to help. Their ip ranges are spread around like shotgun patterns, so even somewhat similar ips might be different ISPs. Some even consider their ip ranges as confidential information.

[ady4um]

@Switeck, still I think we are making some kind of feature request. We are not experts, and we don't know what ut can or can't do. We can resume this by asking if there is something those people that do know could add to ut that maybe could make our ut experiences easier/better considering our situation ("our" meaning most of torrent users in our region).

I ask you again about your post: "Now if you happened to know ALL your ISP's ip ranges, then maybe you could accomplish a little more...but that'd be quite a stretch even then."

So, let's say we can get several IP's ranges that might be somehow the "right" peers for us (nost probably not ALL the ranges). Is there anything we can do with that info?

And, again, is there anything the devs could do? (this last question is not really such, but the same request as before - please try to come up with some little things that maybe could help us with our situation.)

[Switeck]

The problem with the feature request is at this time there is really no way to do what you ask.

If ISPs can be described as "reluctant" to give out ip ranges, they can better be described as "extremely hostile" about giving out local network topography.

ISPs go to great efforts to intentionally make their networks "transparent" or rather invisible to their customers. This way, customers "just connect to the internet" without needing to know all the inner workings of everything in-between. ...Or customers needing any special configuration from 1 ISP to the next.

[morey]

Here's an FYI Update:

After much tinkering things have improved slightly but not significantly. I decided the best solution was to go back to square one. I reset and re-booted everything, uninstalled a patch, went through my router instructions with a fine tooth comb. In doing so, I realized something I had missed: in setting port forwarding I neglected to select "computer" to my specific computer. I'm not sure whether or not this was a problem, or reseting everything was the key, but in any event, I now have a green icon all the time.

Unfortunately, this hasn't really helped my dl's. They still fly if I can connect to another 012 peer but otherwise I barely connect with anyone. I've spoken to both my ISP (012) and the modem supplier HOT (in Israel for some idiotic reason, you MUST use a modem from Hot regardless of the ISP.) 012 believes the problem is the modem, but offered to check some things at their end and get back to me - I'm still waiting; HOT is blaming 012 and says the modem is fine. Frankly, I think their both providing crappy service and a lousy modem. I've adjusted my own settings in case I'm overloading the modem but that's made no difference. So I'll be calling them both today again. Sigh.