Lots of Peers, few Downloads (slow). UL > DL Speed.

[SiHi]

Hi guys.

First, I know this type of post has been made many times, but I've followed the stickies and similar topics. Things have improved but I feel like something is still wrong.

I'll start with some specs:

OS: Vista Premium SP1, x32.

ISP: SHAW Cable, Canada - X-Treme I (Avg: 6 Mbps DL rate, 800 kbps UL rate)

uTorrent v.1.8.1:

Port 21,

UPnP disabled,

NAT enabled.

Firewall exception enabled.

Max UL: 47

Max connections 250

Max peers 90

Slots per torrent: 4

net.max_halfopen 500

net.outgoing_port 50

net.wsaevents 150

iirc, everything else is default.

Firewall: COMODO Pro, v3

Okay, so, up until this morning my download speed was a meger 5-20 KBps. (From my searching, another SHAW user had these same rates) Sometimes it dropped to 0-1KBps, while my uploads were ~30KBps.

After looking through the topics and stickies I got it to run at DL: 60 KBps, and UL 30KBps. (THANK YOU!!)

But according to my speedtests (from which the SHAW test seems to give me results twice as good as the other tests...) my DL and UL rates should be much much higher.

I used the Glasnost Test. Everything was running perfectly. Here's the results:

Is BitTorrent traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?

The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP upload achieved minimal 162 Kbps while a BitTorrent upload achieved maximal 209 Kbps.

The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 1152 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 1257 Kbps.

Is BitTorrent traffic on a non-standard BitTorrent port (10009) throttled?

The BitTorrent upload (seeding) worked. Our tool was successful in uploading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 98 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 98 Kbps.

The BitTorrent download worked. Our tool was successful in downloading data using the BitTorrent protocol.

There's no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent downloads. In our tests a TCP download achieved minimal 1167 Kbps while a BitTorrent download achieved maximal 1063 Kbps.

Is TCP traffic on a well-known BitTorrent port (6881) throttled?

There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all downloads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP download on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 1152 Kbps while a TCP download on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 1167 Kbps.

There's no indication that your ISP rate limits all uploads at port 6881. In our test, a TCP upload on a BitTorrent port achieved at least 162 Kbps while a TCP upload on a non-BitTorrent port achieved at least 98 Kbps.

I played around with a LOT of uTorrent settings. Nothing really worked. This morning I set uTorrent as a trusted application and accepted it's port on COMODO. I set the the Protocol Enc. from Forced to Enabled. Things got a little slower. Set it back to Forced, BAM. The peers like ten-folded and the speeds tripled.

Still, though, only 6 or so of my 100 peers is letting me DL. I noticed that they appear on the list, DL rate appears as 0.1, and then the DL just disappears and some of them upload. Many of them just seem to be sitting there dormant. Not uploading or downloading.

I just want to know if this speed is good? My speedtests give me results much higher. I know uTorrent will never match those, but it should be a little higher, right? If it helps when I downloaded the file for COMODO firewall, my peak DL rate was 231 KBps, avg 190 KBps.

Long post, I know. Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance. Hope I can get some help, or at least someone that knows what I'm going through

[Ultima]

net.max_halfopen 500

net.outgoing_port 50

net.wsaevents 150

Who ever told you to mess with net.wsaevents? That setting should NOT be touched. Even the description in the manual is extremely vague (but it certainly doesn't say to increase the value).

net.max_halfopen should not be set so ridiculously high.

net.outgoing_port... why do you have it set to a single port? That's EXTREMELY restrictive, and would almost undoubtedly cause problems.

Finally, Shaw is known to throttle BitTorrent. Search the forums for Shaw -- you'll find several other users around these forums having troubles with speed in recent days, despite the fact that Glasnost turns nothing up. Glasnost isn't perfect, and its result only indicates a sufficiency condition, not a necessity condition (that is, if it says your ISP is throttling, then it's most likely sufficient proof that it is throttling; if it doesn't say your ISP is throttling, then that doesn't necessarily mean that your ISP isn't throttling).

[SiHi]

Thanks for replying.

So what would you recommend I do about halfopen and outgoing port? I have never done anythinf like this before, so I don't really know what "halfopen" means.

Also, is there a way to fix this throttling issue with SHAW? You don't have to give me full details, a yes or no answer will suffice.

Edit:

I reset all advanced settings to default. The DL and UL speeds are still the same.

I assume this problem is now only a throttling issue?

[rafi]

how does this test perform ?

http://borft.student.utwente.nl/~adrian/torrentphp/torrent.php/OOo_3.0.0_Win32Intel_install_en-US.exe.torrent

[SiHi]

Wow that's amazing!

It peaked (so far) at 360 kbps, averaging about 230. The upload speed is between 1 and 3 kbps.

The file has 44 seeds with 1 peer, while the file I hae trouble with is currently running at:

Seeds: 5

Peers: 26

DL:~0.5 KBps

UL:~3 KBps

So, this means its not a problem with my uTorrent, just that other torrent I am downloading? This is just because of the seed number then, right?

Note:I was a little weary as to the .exe on the end of that torrent so I aborted it. Am I supposed to download and use that or something?

[rafi]

It's just a test ... you should delete it... (unless you like it better the M$ office... )

It goes to shoulw that YOUR instalation is good using a very good end-peers, that have lots of bandwidth. Now it's a matter of how to judge the situatuation (case of many-many end peers):

1) end peers can be ALL loasy bandwidth (not likely)

2) peers/seeds ratio is not good (peers#>>seeds#). Nothing you can do about it... not enough sources for everyone...)

3) the case that I'm interested in, is: seeds#>>peers# . Now it's up to uTorrent to pick up sources 'wisely'. In this case I found that uTorrent should improve itself to at least reach the max # of peers you defined, which seems not to be the case above 150... I'm not sure it's optimized for this in the latest releases

[SiHi]

Alright, right now (for the old torrent) the seeds are at 23(650) and peers 38(5050). DL and UL rates are both about 12 KBps.

I have made NO changes since I downloaded that test file, which was about DL 350 KBps.

I would imagine the problem is with the torrent itself? I have it set to high priority and hgih bandwidth with Force Start on. I just don't understand why like there are like 70 people on the peer list, but its only downloading from TWO!

D:<

Gah. I guess theres nothing I can do about it.

Well thanks anyway for your help guys. At least now I know it's not my uTorrent settings.

[rafi]

just make sure your UL limit is @ <70% of your ISP max.

[humpty]

Yeah, this is weird. Ever since 1.8.1 . We're talking about plenty of seeds and peers here.

e.g seeds 45:19019 peers 100:71690

upload limit is automatic

and they are multi-tracker (at least 3 trackers) with unrestricted peer exchange,

local peer discovery and even DHT).

Some torrents have absolutely no problem and max out the speed e.g 360kB/s

but others just don't get past 50kB/s. It's just not picking up any more seeds or peers.

[Ultima]

That'd be just a lack of luck. More peers doesn't mean more speed either, as it simply means that it might take longer for you to find fast peers.

[humpty]

i disabled encryption.

lo & behold, 150 - 180 kB/s.

[SiHi]

Hi Humpty.

How do you disable encyption?

[thelittlefire]

You see encrytion options under Preferences near theoptions for your connectionsettings.

That is kind of odd for NO encryption to be faster than encryption... perhaps your ISP simply shapes all traffic. IIRC Bell (sympatico) in Canada does this.