Global upload speed violating limit

[Kimpire]

I have a 10K limit to my upload speed. I only have one torrent running, whose upload speed is respecting that limit. But my "global" upload speed as listed in the status bar is consistently 20-25K, and it's killing my download speed! I have no other torrents, and I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling, and it's doing the same thing over and over again!

Randomizing the port works -- for a short time. But even then the global speed is 11-15K, which is of course 1-5K more than what my torrent is actually using under the limit. Then after a couple of hours it goes back up to 20-25K.

What's going on?

[Switeck]

Under BitTorrent settings, disable Local Peer Discovery and enable Limit Local Peer Bandwidth.

You might also want to disable RESOLVE IPS in the Peers Window (right-click on window to do so).

With so little upload speed, I hope you're only downloading/uploading 2 torrents at most at a time with no more than 5 total upload slots. (either 2 x 2 or 1 x 5)

[Kimpire]

I actually already did all three of those things before I posted this, having seen them in a previous thread; I didn't mention it because I wasn't sure if I was actually having the same problem. In any case, it didn't help.

And yes, I only have one torrent, no more than 5 upload slots, 50 connections max.

[Switeck]

Any chance you have "automatic" upload speed enabled in uTorrent?

[Kimpire]

Heh. That would have been amusing, but nope...

EDIT:

What I don't get is WHAT is being uploaded. How can the global torrent speed be twice as much as my only torrent's upload speed? Any explanation?

Edit 2: I've discovered that pausing (but not stopping) the download leads to a global upload speed of 4-6K, even though the torrent itself reads (as it should) less than 0.5.

[Switeck]

RSS feeds can do weird things I've heard.

Never messed with them at all myself, but I've heard they can count against your download/upload speeds...even if there's no active torrent associated with them at that time.

I guess it's the search/download of .torrent files from wherever the RSS is searching.

Just so we're on the same page, what values does Speed Guide (CTRL+G) show for your current settings in uTorrent?

What you're saying sounds incredibly unlikely...except maybe 'background' DHT traffic or protocol overheads that you'd only likely have if downloading way beyond 100 KiloBYTES/second with 100's of peers/seeds connected at once.

Even a screenshot would be helpful at this point. The more information you can cram on it, the better. Like Speed tab shown at bottom, torrent at top (with name scrolled offscreen, as that doesn't much matter anyway), and maybe Speed Guide pop-up window shown as well.

[thelittlefire]

RSS doesn't do much to pump your upload. Downloads... sure, but not uploads. I'm guessing a high net.max_halfopen in the Advanced screen...

[Kimpire]

net.max_halfopen is 8. What does that mean?

And I don't have any RSSs. Just the one torrent.

I'll give a screenshot tomorrow.

[thelittlefire]

That feature controls how many connections uTorrent can/will try to connect to every second. It along with most of the questions I've seen on here relating to the GUI or interfacing with uTorrent are explained in the manual which I think Ultima does a GREAT job of keeping updated. You can get the 1.7 and 1.8 version manuals from http://utorrent.com/download.php by clicking on the correct link.

Consistent upload bandwidth means something is going on which you don't know about. Given no RSS, the next step I'd think is possibly some bad peer continually spamming requests or something. If you enable Verbose, Error logging in the Logger tab, do you see alot of "Sent ___" messages? I can't think of another which could be spammed in such a fashion, unless someone continually left and rejoined the swarm or connection with you asking for DHT or PEX lists.

Switeck asked for the numbers you see in the Speed Guide, which assuredly you can wait to provide a screenshot of the uTorrent window with that, or type them out. Those numbers are the main settings for setting up uTorrent hence their location in that window which most people only see for a second when installing uTorrent for the first time.

[Kimpire]

Okay, screenshot is up. http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a99/Kimpire/?action=view&current=Problem.jpg

As for the Verbose, Error logging (I assume you meant to check off "Log Errors" and "Verbose") everything is "Got Have" and Send Have" with a few rare exceptions. A sampling:

[22:02:13] 68.34.129.84 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Got Have 6353

[22:02:13] 68.34.129.84 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Got Have 14339

[22:02:13] 68.34.129.84 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Got Have 10742

[22:02:13] 83.249.121.55 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Sending 4 bytes of aggregated data

[22:02:13] 68.34.129.84 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Sending 7 bytes of aggregated data

[22:02:14] 72.172.90.131 : [Azureus/2.5.0.0]: Send Have 21231

[22:02:15] 72.39.102.58 : [µTorrent 1.7.5 ]: Got Have 35542

[22:02:15] 72.39.102.58 : [µTorrent 1.7.5 ]: Got Have 36013

[22:02:16] 72.172.90.180 : [Azureus/2.5.0.0]: Send Have 21865

[22:02:16] 72.172.90.180 : [Azureus/2.5.0.0]: Send Have 21116

[22:02:17] 81.232.70.250 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Got Have 20539

[22:02:17] 81.232.70.250 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Got Have 3844

[22:02:17] 81.232.70.250 : [µTorrent 1.7.7 ]: Got Have 34717

[22:02:17] 123.243.171.239 : [µTorrent 1.8 ]: Got Have 4145

[Switeck]

The screenshot confirms what you're saying but doesn't give many of the clues I was hoping for.

I can't see the speed graph and the logger section you have shown shows only 2 second's worth.

With potentially 11000+ peers+seeds to connect to, I'd expect the handshaking rate to be enormous...as new peers+seeds constantly trying to connect with you. With encrypted handshaking on, even quite a bit of upload bandwidth may be used up. Seems you're "stuck" at 50 peers connected, max allowed per torrent...so this confirms the "very active" torrent theory. You're at the mercy (or lack of) how high other people have their BitTorrent client's half open limit set to...ones which are set really high may be retrying your ip really fast. Early BitComet clients had no set limit in this regard, I've personally seen them hitting my ip more than 4 times per second. uTorrent on the other hand would only retry an ip once every 30+ seconds at most, even if half open limit is really high.

The next possible issue is DHT...it's active and scouring the internet trying to look for MORE seeds and peers for that torrent!

You may also have UPnP and Local Peer Discovery enabled in uTorrent. UPnP shouldn't propagate past your router or at worst your modem...so that shouldn't cost you any internet bandwidth. But Local Peer Discovery tries to find local peers...and I believe it uses multicast packets to do it!

Resolve IPs could even use a little more bandwidth if it's enabled.

[Kimpire]

Well, as I said, I already disabled Local Peer Discovery and Resolve IPs... I should disable "Enable UPnP port mapping"? What about "Enable NAT-PMP port mapping"?

When this problem got really bad I downloaded Vuze (nee Azureus) and tried that. It worked perfectly fine, but was too heavy and slowed down the computer. But at least that appears to show that the problem is uTorrent and not something in the peer pool.

[Switeck]

Yes, disable "Enable UPnP port mapping" and "Enable NAT-PMP port mapping".

DHT network is another bandwidth eater which may cause uploads to shoot past max limit.

Azureus may not be reporting how much bandwidth handshakes were taking.

So unless you had other bandwidth-intensive tasks running to confirm free bandwidth...even Azureus/Vuze may have been doing the same thing.

[Firon]

that, and make sure you disable automatic upload limiting in the preferences. Make sure limit local peer bandwidth is enabled.

[Kimpire]

No effect, when disabling UPnP and NAT-PMP. No effect when disabling the two DHT checkboxes under the Bittorrent tab as well. (Firon's suggestions had already been disabled earlier).

I've determined something else, though. When I change my utorrent port and do NOT enable port forwarding on my router for that port, the problem is considerably less pronounced -- even if ALL of the UPnP, NAT-PMP, Resolve IPs, and everything else are reenabled. My upload is still at 11-13K, 1-3 more than it should be, but it's at least not at 20. That's at least at manageable levels, and my download speed is back up to its usual 10-30, so I can live with that, but then of course I lose all of the port forwarding benefits. Which I begin to wonder if are even worth the hassle

[Switeck]

My guess was correct...overwhelming handshakes on uTorrent's incoming listening port. Your router is blocking the incoming when on another port...so uTorrent doesn't use any upload bandwidth replying and handshaking with those connections.

On overloaded torrents like that, you don't need to be port forwarded. But on torrents with fewer than 30 seeds+peers, being firewalled might cost you the ability to COMPLETE the torrent!

[Firon]

Well, if the router is blocking the connections, then you're still using tons of upload. It just won't show in the client.

[Switeck]

Firon, he's not having to do encrypted handshakes that way...just a quick "deadkill" of the connection attempt by the router. The upload by a router blocking surely must be a fraction of encrypted handshakes.

[Kimpire]

So it's because of the thousands of people on torrent -- and thousands of handshakes are giving me huge upload speeds?

Ouch. So I'll just disable port forwarding and be done with it, I guess. Unless I'm misunderstanding everything you're saying?

If I add other torrents that don't have this "advantage", is there any way to enable port forwarding for only some of them?

[Switeck]

Yes, it is my best guess that all the incoming connections + their handshakes is creating the inexplicable upload speeds higher than your uTorrent's set max.

That's the irony of file-sharing...if you're trying to download a file shared by a million people, they can then try to download from you! ...at once!

Disabling port forwarding may prevent the handshakes, but they're still attempting your ip...getting at least as far as your router, thus at least download bandwidth is used (probably in quantity similar to the upload drain you've seen)...even a little upload may be used by your router telling them to bugger off. (I'm not sure about upload used though.)

Once you quit running old torrents, you could change ports...or if you can figure out how, even change internet addresses. If you're still running the old torrents and change ports, the peers/seeds eventually figure out from either peer exchange or the tracker that you've changed ports -- and they start using your new port roughly within the amount of time it takes to contact the tracker twice.

Being firewalled is normally a BAD thing for BitTorrent clients. But congratulations for finding another "use" of being firewalled. I have one of my own already, partially hiding my incoming listening port from hostile ISPs. Outgoing encrypted connections occur on "random" ports between ~1000 and ~5000, so killing "all" traffic on 1 port gets probably at most...1 peer or seed! (The ports actually count upwards as used.) I'm on ComCast, I sometimes have to use every crazy trick I can think of...just to seed at all.

[Kimpire]

Well, in any case, thanks very much for all of the help through this insanity. My torrent is back up to its normal ~15K (bouncing up to 30 and bouncing down to 5 depending on whether I happen to have a decently-uploading peer or not), and my upload isn't going above 10.2. Woot!

You guys rock

[Switeck]

...Just like trying to solve crimes with limited clues and only one witness.

[_TW_MASTER]

u know its mainly because of the routers people make and buy the downloads go slowo and uploads to but for me i get freaken 31 seeds and 51 and get a 34.7 kb/s mainly because port not open and uploads at 102.5 kb/s so people i uploaded 4.87 gb in one day but still downloading so its 1.684 ratio i dont get this i got a clue but if i open my port will download speeds go up but does upload go up to? and if it does will speed go up little or high because when i do a speed test its good speed but why does utorrent open it self a port? i mean it does download and upload why wont it just open a port if i am connect to my router through wireless?

plus close this if your questions are answered

[Switeck]

A router is like a door that's locked on one side...you can pass easily through TO the internet from your computer...but the internet is locked out from coming into your computer without you opening the door (making the connection) first.

You forward the port, and uTorrent probably won't be firewalled...unless you have other firewalls blocking it too.

1st link in my signature for troubleshooting.

2nd link in my signature for configuring uTorrent.

You seem to need them both.