Slow downloads, high uploads, completely baffled.

[Silveh]

Hopefully the first thing I tell you wont put you off, and cause you to throw morals in my face or anything, but i've moved into University Accommodation in the UK.

The ISP (cablecom) says on their welcome page that p2p is not allowed. But I thought i'd give it a try anyway. Here's the problem:

- My download speed is incredibly slow, staying usually below 5 or 10kbps. My upload speed can go anywhere up to around 5/600kBps. Clearly it seems there are no direct blocks on torrenting. Or so it seems.

I've explored many different possibilities - for example, ISP throttling, tried setting up proxies and of course encryption is always enabled, etc. I took the ISP throttling test on some website, and was told that my connection is not being throttled.

Anyways, after trying many different solutions, nothing worked. Obviously i've tried the usual (changing/disabling firewall, opening ports, turning off PG2 / antivirus, tried different torrent clients).

In the end, I accepted defeat, convinced that I would not be able to download a single torrent for the next 3 years at university.

Last night, however, my room-mate showed me his laptop which shares the same connection I do. He was downloading a torrent at over 5MBps.

What am I doing wrong, and why do my room-mates torrents work and mine do not?

(Some extra info:

whenever I use port checker, it always times out or says my ports are blocked. Every single one, even the ones that I know for a fact are open (certain gaming ports, obvious http etc.) which is odd in itself.

Windows XP Home SP2

uTorrent 1.6.0 (but as I said, I tried multiple clients)

Comodo Firewall Pro

Nod32 Antivirus

Peer Guardian 2

(Not sure what else to list - got 2gb of RAM, 3.4Ghz pentium 4, 160gb HD etc)

Thanks in advance for taking the time to read / help!

----------

A small update - after hours and hours of configuring uTorrents settings, trying many different combinations and upload speed limits etc etc, I've managed to get up a total download speed of around 650kBps.

I took this speed test, too.

Measurements Table

TEST

Nr. DATE / HOUR USER IP SELECTED DOWNLOAD UPLOAD

KBps Kbps KBps Kbps

1 12-10-2008 23:34:50 United Kingdom 1479.18 11833.40 205.40 1643.20

2 12-10-2008 23:35:16 United Kingdom 1648.95 13191.60 208.83 1670.64

3 12-10-2008 23:35:45 United Kingdom 1648.95 13191.60 208.03 1664.24

4 12-10-2008 23:36:07 United Kingdom 1629.69 13037.50 208.24 1665.92

(these results were higher a few hours earlier, too.)

So, my problem still is that I can pretty much upload at my maximum possible speed, but i'm still falling very short on my download speed.

Also forgot to mention, the NAT status thing at the bottom of uTorrent is always red, can't get it to go green.

[enaco]

sorry i don't have any solution for you. Infact, i kindo have the same problem. Could you please explain how you managed to get to 650 KBps. Like , what setting syou used and all.

thnx in advance

[Silveh]

To be honest I have no idea. It's since gone back to going slow so.. meh. Just make sure your firewall's not blocking the ports, you've got the right upload speed limit set etc.

Sorry

[moogly]

I know there is a bug in NOD32 with uT. Maybe your issue comes from that.

We've worked around the NOD32 issue, but it's still a nasty bug in NOD32 2.5/7 and you should really not use IMON, as the issue could potentially affect any program.

[Silveh]

Thanks for the info, i'll check to see if NOD32's the culprit.

Edit: Nope, uninstalling NOD32 didn't make much difference. I'll keep IMON turned off from now on, though.

[moogly]

Anyway if you have still Comodo, maybe NOD32 is useless. In addition your campus may still be firewalled.