Still recieving connections after utorrent is closed

[wis3warrior]

After closing utorrent I am still getting unsolicited traffic trying to connect to my computer. My firewall log is filled with activity from multiple Ips and both Tcp and udp Protocols but all have the same port destination of 33525. I'm pretty new to bit-torrent but I know I shouldn't be receiving all this unsolicited traffic should I? I have pretty much everything set to default. I use upnp instead of port forwarding and have utorrent allowed in my firewalls filter. Do I have something setup improperly? How do I fix this problem? -Thanks For Your Help

[DreadWingKnight]

The thing is, the traffic is NOT unsolicited. It takes a while for peers and DHT neighbors to cull their cached data from when you were connected.

[wis3warrior]

So its normal to see this many connections even after having utorrent has been closed for 30 mins? Is there anyway to change it so this cannot happen,if so how? I just don't like the Idea of having all these peers still trying to connect when I no longer have utorrent open.

[DreadWingKnight]

There isn't. You can only tell so many people you're done on the way out. Others have to figure it out on their own.

The only security risk that exists in this sort of scenario is when there is a vulnerable application listening on the port.

What internet security software are you using?

[Tensk]

wis3warrior, as DreadWingKnight says, some peers know you're gone at the very moment you sign off, but others have to find out on their own, and this, in computer networks, has always been done (more or less) by asking if the connection is there and, if there isn't an answer in a certain time, they consider it as dead/closed. The matter is knowing what time takes those peers to figure it out, and it usually depends on the protocol itself, also in settings the user might have chosen if the program allows it.

So, since that is something the other peers decide, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Anyway don't worry, there should be little to no risk at all with that fact happening. If you've configured your pc as it's usually done, the only application listening on that port should be utorrent, so nothing would happen to you then.

[wis3warrior]

Ok well as long as there isn't a security risk it doesn't bother me I guess that was my main concern. One other thing I just thought of to ask though,will this slow down my network bandwidth at all? Seems like it would since all these peers are constantly trying to connect.

DreadWingKnight:I'm using Mcafee for antivirus & spyware protection and pc tools firewall plus for my firewall.

[Tensk]

"One other thing I just thought of to ask though,will this slow down my network bandwidth at all? Seems like it would since all these peers are constantly trying to connect."

Well, it's obvious that this connections need a part of your bandwidth to reach your pc, bandwidth you could be using for something else so, thinking of it that way, it would affect you some way. But, actually, these connections are really very, let's say, small, so they won't affect you any way you would notice in a normal use, I mean, if you close utorrent and just want to surf the web, watch some videos on youtube and stuff like that, or whatever, you should notice any loss of speed.

If you want to go to the limit, it actually depends on how many connections are trying to reach that utorrent-session-no-longer-there, and this does depend very much on how many connections (per torrent and total) you allow in your utorrent sessions on a direct basis (the more connections you allow, the more they will try to reach your pc, not neccesarily, but very, very likely), so if you have lots (and I really mean LOTS) of these connections after closing utorrent, you could experiment some loss of speed, but really, it's not very likely, and if this ever happens, you should tune your options in utorrent since it will also mean loss of speed when you're downloading... and I guess you don't want that. Anyway, it's not very likely if there's any chance.

Now that I think of it (as I was writing the paragraph before this one), what could actually affect your connection (and you could perceive it as a loss of speed, but not really a loss of bandwidth (funny, heh? xD)), is that all those connections could actually overwhelm your router (whatever device you use to connect to the Internet), just in case that all of them, and all those you were now opening after closing utorrent (and remember, whenever you open a web, there's one connection for the .html file, one for every image, one for the .css file (if it exists), and, well, one connection for every file that web page is referencing, and they start almost at the very same moment, they're simultaneous), I said, just in case all of your connections make your router come to a "saturation" state since it can't handle all you're asking it.

Once again, it's not very likely this will happen since, once again, just in case this was happening, you would have notice it pretty clearly when using utorrent as in the bandwith case.

So, to summarize, there's a chance it might affect your connection, but, if your utorrent settings allow you to work properly (or almost) when it's running, it's not likely at all it will affect your speed. I wouldn't care about it but, if you do, just turn off and on your router. If you have a dynamic ip connection those useless connections will automatically disappear.

[wis3warrior]

The program I use most frequently and has the biggest impact I think on my network bandwidth is my p2p programs. So far I have not noticed a significant loss in speed when surfing the web or doing other things on my networked pcs such as streaming music,so I won't worry about it too much right now. I haven't really noticed this many peers trying to connect at once after I have closed utorrent,but I'm sure it has to do with the popular files that I am downloading and how many at a time I am downloading.

Anyways thank you both very much for your help in answering my questions I do appreciate it.

[Switeck]

wis3warrior,

If uTorrent is having a big impact on network bandwidth...try more conservative settings.

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

Make sure your upload speed is REGULARLY sustaining the upload max you told it to use!

...Otherwise, you may have it set too high.

You seem to be on ComCast, which is disrupting BitTorrent seeding almost everywhere.

Encryption on outgoing connections needs to be set to Enabled or FORCED, if it's not already. Sadly this won't stop ComCast's disruptions, only reduce them.