1.8 killing browser performance

[fodor4]

I'm a newbie, but have been using uTorrent for some time.

Last week I upgraded to ver.1.8. I like the look and added info. Seems to be working fine.

My problem is that my browsers (AOL9.1 and IE7) seem to be really dogged down when I run torrents. Pages catch and error messages pop up. Constantly need to refresh. Pages load really slow. When not running torrents the browsers run great.

I didn't have this problem with ver.1.7.7. It affected the browser speed a little but not like with 1.8. This is even happening with running just one torrent.

I'm running WinVista on Dual Core AMD 2.81GHz processor with 3 GB RAM. Cable broadband connection.

[Switeck]

The 2nd link in my signature gives suggested settings for uTorrent based on your max sustainable UPLOAD speed.

NOTE: Max sustainable UPLOAD speed is nowhere near max download speed for almost every internet connection in existence.

You may want to use lower settings than your connection can handle because it is shared with others or due to monthly bandwidth quotas.

[fodor4]

I dropped my connection type from xx/10Mbit to xx/2Mbit. It seems to have noticeably improved the browser performance. Thanks for the help.

[Switeck]

Is 2 megabits/second your download or your upload max...or both?

[fodor4]

I recognize it's my upload max. Actually the speed test indicated upload speed around 450 kb/s. (download about 7500 kb/s) However if I understand the settings correctly, this really restricts the number of torrents I can run simultaneously. At xx/512kb setting, it says I can only have three active torrents. On occasion, I have had up to 8 or so. With ver1.7.7 this affected browser performance to a degree, but didn't lock everything up on my browsers.

I have been looking at this setting as a compromise between browser performance and utility of uTorrent. Do you suggest that I drop my speed setting to the indicated upload speed (450k) and live with the torrent restrictions?

[thelittlefire]

The more you connect to peers the more data you're sending up the pipe, making your uploading for DATA less.

You can manually control peers and torrents after you set the upload cap if you like... but you shouldn't INCREASE it until you figure out what exactly is the problem. Usually you'd decrease your numbers with problems. Active torrents are in the Queueing settings in the Preferences screen.

[Switeck]

"Actually the speed test indicated upload speed around 450 kb/s."

That's 450 kilobits/second, not 450 KiloBYTES/second.

Sadly, that's a lot lower than you probably hoped for.

Telling uTorrent to upload faster than your connection's maximum will just overload the connection...and kill browser performance.

In the 2nd link in my signature, your connection probably could still use 512 kilobits/second upload settings...but you'll be pushing very close to max upload speed for your connection. Even try raising downloading torrent max (in queue settings) to 3 or 4 if you want.

The settings are to get fast(er) downloads and uploads rather than trying to do everything at once, so raising active+downloading torrents higher will result in you giving out progressively worse speeds to others. You can partially counter that by lowering upload slots per torrent. Each upload slot represents a peer you're uploading to. If each upload slot isn't averaging over 1 KiloBYTE/second then it's not playing fair with others...and most others will be returning equally bad speeds to you!

4 torrents with 4 upload slots each really isn't much different than 5 torrents with 3 upload slots or 8 torrents with 2 upload slots...because the total upload slots ends up about the same. Do note that with 8 torrents your average torrent download speed is very likely to be half or less what you'd get with 4 torrents.

[fodor4]

I think I'm beginning to understand. It's kind of like a water hose. Increasing pressure won't increase flow. It depends on the diameter of the hose.

If I understand what you are saying, due to better efficiency, downloading two sets of three torrents will probably take less time than trying to run six at once (with my connection).

I'm currently running one torrent. I've dropped the speeds from 10M to 2M to 1M, and now I have it at 512k. I've seen the download rate increase. I wouldn't have expected that without your help. I'll try it like this for awhile before I mess with queue settings or upload caps.

I'm surprised I've managed as well as I have until now. Maybe I should have read the owner's manual before I took it out for a spin! Now that you explain it, it's making sense (well, on a layman's level lol).

Thanks for all your help.

[Switeck]

Your download couldn't reach max speed before because while upload is overloaded...even requests to other peers/seeds to continue uploading to you fail. It would also cause slow+laggy web browsing.

[columbusbobby23]

Hello all,

I too have running into the same problem.

When i have utorrent going for a while with 6-8 popular torrents with a lot of seeds, My download speed usually gets around 500 kb/s and my upload speed goes up to 70 kb/s when it is set to unlimited.

But when utorrent is running i can't do any surfing using Firefox. When i can pull up web pages, It is extremely slow.

I set my upload speed to a maximum of 20 kb/s and my download speed to 200 kb/s.

This did not help the problem.

While utorrent is shutdown my web pages come up very fast.

Once i start utorrent i can surf the web very well for about 30 seconds before it starts slowing to a crawl.

I had my own custom settings speed settings so i decided to change them by using the speed guide. I started with xx/640k.

That didn't help so i gradually lowered it to xx/256k with no luck.

When i lowered it to xx/192k i was able to d/l at 100kb/s with pretty decent web surfing speed.

But I'm not really sure which of those lowered settings helped my surfing speed.

Also with that lowered setting i am limited to only downloading one torrent at a time.

I would like to download 5-6 torrents at a time with 300-400kb/s and surf at a reasonable speed.

This is also a problem that arose when i updated to 1.8

My ISP isn't on the list of ISP's that throttle.

I read through Ultima's Troubleshooting Guide as well as a few other ones and tried different things to help with no luck.

If there is any way you could help, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

[DreadWingKnight]

Provide all the information the troubleshooting guide requests, including the logs.

[Ultima]

So you disabled DHT and tried all of those suggestions for interrupted connections? If so, tell us what your current settings are for everything the troubleshooting guide recommended for you to change.

[columbusbobby23]

I'm using DSL 6/mb connection on Vista SP1

I'm positive that I'm not having any firewall issues.

I checked the search for beta version and downloaded V. 1.8.1 Beta.

I wasn't sure which DHT to disable so i disabled DHT - Networking and for new torrents.

I wasnt sure about the Protocol Encryption since my ISP doesn't throttle so i left it enabled.

Lowered the net.max_halfopen to 6

Unchecked IP resolving

On my Modem/Router P-660R-D1(earthlink DSL) I'm pretty confident that i set up my port forwarding correctly because i have the green check mark for network status.

Also the port checker gave me the OK! Port 47470 is open and accepting connections.

But in my modem setup i checked the uPnP option, So i left that checked in the utorrent settings, Should i disable both of these in utorrent and my modem?

Also I believe that if i uncheck NAT-PMP port mapping that will undo my port forwarding, If I'm wrong about that please let me know.

peer.resolve_country is false

I have no Anti-virus installed for a couple days.

The DSL Reports Speed test says: D/L - 4701 Kb/s U/L - 572 Kb/s Latency - 30ms

This is the only computer on the network.

I have actually spent a couple hours testing out different settings and i got it a little better but not much. I believe that is mostly due to me lowering the global connections to 200.

My current settings are:

Upload Limit - 30

Upload slots - 4

Connections (per-torrent): 50

Connections (global) 200

Max active torrents - 9

Max active downloads 10

Thank you very much for your time.

[Ultima]

Hm. Try lowering net.max_halfopen to 4 or 2? Lower global max number of connecions to something like... 90. And max active torrents shouldn't be that high... 3 active torrents, 2 active downloads.

Thanks for your patience!

[columbusbobby23]

That seemed to help out quite a bit thank you.

So you recommend only downloading 2-3 torrents at a time?

Also should the DHT networking & DHT for new torrents be enabled if that's not causing me any problems?

And should i enable or disable the uPnP on utorrent and my modem?

Thanks again.

[Ultima]

DHT isn't really necessary unless you're often in torrents that are dying. I suppose you can enable it, but if you begin noticing the symptoms again, disable it. Many low-quality routers can't handle DHT very well.

[columbusbobby23]

Thanks for all your help Ultima.

Your the man!

[utree]

My problem and Band-aide

I have OptOnline with Boost. Connected to the modem I get around 33,000kb/s [i actually download full throttle torrenting at 3.5mBs] and upload around 4,900kb/s [i reach a steady 600kB/s - 800kB/s MAXED OUT. I am behind a netgear router, an older one, which at speedtest.net gives me 21,000 kb/s [true 2.4mB/s on full throttle torrenting and about the same upload.

I used utorrent 1.7 and never had a problem. I was even going to switch over to the wrt54g[dd-wrt or tomato] for more download speed [i had hoped].. While makin my choices I upgraded to 1.8 and BAM my internet slowed like all hell.

My webpages became unsurfable and all that jazz. i tried all the fixes I could find [winXPsp3 dualcore 1.8, 3gb ram at the time 80gb sata300 and now 1tb sata300 32mb cache] anyway I did everything I could do to fix it to no aval. I upgraded to the TB with a clean install and new utorrent 1.7 and wow did I get great speeds.. I was very happy. It seemed the new install fixed everything..

I see the 1.8 is now stable and released and decide to download it again.. damnit.

My internet was so bad i was convinced my netgear was shot, it wouldnt connect to the modem anymore and lagged liek all hell and what crap so I borrowed a friends linksys and bought the wrt54g on ebay [waiting for it] anyway his linksys only gets 10mb/s max so its crap..

I am now waiting for my new linksys and decided to play with the netgear.. plugged it in all works out.. heres my 22mbit

utorrent and bam - webpages are horrid.. fudge me!

I started messing around and I found if I put half open to 4 all is fixed.. but I still dont get the utorrent speed i used to.. at all. I would say I am semi pro at this.. I have my ports fowarded I do not run any sort of firewall or antivirus or antispyware.. my processes are so clean nothing starts up at start up and I only have 2 services that are non microsoft..

I am hoping with this new router I can do some more fixing.. if not I am going to have to reformat. I know that if this old netgear can handle 2.2 - 2.4 steady megs a second that the linksys with the more flexable firmware should be able to let loose more of my 33mbit line! LOL..

rant? help? I dont know.. hopfullY I can edit this if I dont like how it all came out!

Base install of 1.7 and id set it to 10mbit and edit to upload down to about 300kb always worked out perfect for me.. on every computer..

1.8 has killed me! You know how norton screws everything up and just deleting it or trying to forget about it makes everythign worse.. and norton internet stays crapped up even when you disable it.. and the only way out of it besides reformating is the norton removal tool [iT ACTUALLY WORKS!!!] .. They need something like that for 1.8.. even downgrading doesnt fix anything.

\

PS this has happened on 2 hard drives, my mistake is updating I when I knew it was broke.. I know..

[Firon]

Connect straight to the modem with 1.8.

[Switeck]

utree,

Try the 2nd link in my signature for uTorrent settings based on your max sustained upload speed.

[utree]

ive done that 4 or 5 times over and I thank you for your advice.

The problem isnt my settings.. Ive installed utorrent 100 times on diffrent machines and never had to touch a setting..

the problem is 1.8.. I think.

btw I used your settings and yes, my web is ok and my utorrent is downloading.. but this isnt a fix.. this is a bandaide..

I no longer get any of the speeds I used to get and my computer doesnt perform like it was.. i h8 1.8

[Switeck]

It is very stupid to use the default settings on most internet connections.

They.suck.badly.

They only kinda work with faster connections with lots of upload speed.

[Firon]

Just to note, there's no inherent problem in 1.8. I can download at 10Mbyte/s and my computer doesn't slow down at all.

[utree]

"Just to note, there's no inherent problem in 1.8. I can download at 10Mbyte/s and my computer doesn't slow down at all."

So when I tell you utorrent [1.7] on a brand new xp/sp3 install and it works great. I hit peak downloads and uploads and I lag not.. Update to 1.8 and I cant even connect to the trackers? That its not 1.8?

Hmm.

Sucks for me ehh.

[Switeck]

Well fix it!

1st link in my signature.