uTorrent not downloading at all.

[bellic69]

Quite sure this doesn't fit the criteria for speed problems.

I've forwarded the all correct ports (tried 6881 and the random ports), allowed uTorrent through ZoneAlarm and my WRT54G's firewall. I've followed all instructions torrentfreak.com and have the below settings. As of now I've disabled all my firewalls, bypassed the router itself and connected to the Motorola Surfboard modem but nothing works. Have also tried BT Engine and changing the max half-open to 80 on both lvllord's patcher and uTorrent's net.max half open setting still no go.

Situation now is my 4 torrents refuse to go anywhere above 1kB/s. Most of the time they're just zero. Have also installed SG TCP but that doesn't seem to help any. Internet access is still pretty quick. Forced or no forced download doesn't seem to make any difference. Yes, the torrents don't have exactly the most perfect seed/per ratio, but zero speed is quite...unbelievable. I don't get what's going on. Capped up/down/peers whatever but it's not even moving how could it possibly be eating up too much bandwidth or something? I don't need real quick torrents or anything I just want to get this going. Thinking of scrapping it and getting Azureus or BitComet or something once these torrents are done.

Two weeks ago: was still downloading fine, average speed for each torrent was 50-100kB/s with 2-3 torrents.

Two days ago: downloaded Zohan, Superbad, Madagascar 2 and Gossip Girl. Not too fast but still acceptable.

Two hours ago: total breakdown, not moving at all. I'm quite desperate now so please bear with me if the problem here seems obvious.

Configuration:

Linksys WRT54G, Motorola Surfboard,

Results from Speedtest.net from Singapore server: average taken from total of 12 tests at midnight last night, nothing running.

(kbps)

Upload - 299.63 ~ 300

Download - 7943.27 ~ 8000

Ping - 36.09 ~ 36

uTorrent settings as shown below:

(kB/s)

Max upload - 31

Maximum download - 850

Maximum connections - 1000

Maximum connected peers - 49

Upload slots per torrent - 7

Maximum running torrents - 10

Currently running torrents - 4

Seed ratio - 100%

UPnP enabled

NAT-PMP enabled

DHT enabled

Local Peer Discovery enabled

Peer Exchange enabled

Scrape information enabled

Outgoing encryption enabled (not forced)

Incoming legacy connections enabled

Port 6881

Have forwarded all ports properly, given the torrent machine highest priority under wired QoS.

Active torrents:

Rail_Simulator-HATRED 1.78GB Seeds 9(17) Peers 12(21) 66.3% done

Quantum of Solace TS XviD Full English Audio_Sync Fixed v2 - Lynks 953MB Seeds 23(7389) Peers 12(7596) 51.6% done

Shana 9.79GB Seeds 12(32) Peers 23(166) 0.8% done

And the most infuriating, stuck torrent:

[sS-Eclipse] Shakugan no Shana Second - 02 (XviD) [26AE1470] 171MB Seeds 3(5) Peers 4(11) 96.6% done

Miscellaneous information:

AMD Phemon Toliman X3 8450 2.1GHz

OCZDDR2-800 4GB

ATI Radeon HD4850 HIS IceQ edition

Asus M2N68 - VM

AeroCool 500W

Surely this is much, much more than enough for a tiny torrent client?

Used to be able to download alot of stuff (on a 3-year old PC sharing the same connection) and mighty quickly too, what's going on now?

[Switeck]

READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT ABOVE!

Zone Alarm is hostile software, especially on Windows Vista systems.

Your ISP DEFINITELY disrupts BitTorrent traffic!

Change your uTorrent port to something more obscure, like between 49000-65000. Port 6881 is BitTorrent's old port value and many ISPs throttle or block it by default.

Your settings in uTorrent are a bit much... 1000 global max connections WILL overload numerous types of networking hardware and software. Even 100 connections may be too many.

7 upload slots per torrent...is too much for 31 KB/sec total upload speed which ALSO gets split between multiple (10 max!) torrents.

Setting uTorrent's net.max_halfopen higher than the default of 8 is VERY likely to draw attention from your ISP. I usually recommend reducing net.max_halfopen to only 1-4 for hostile ISPs.

Outgoing encryption needs to be set to FORCED, because your ISP will likely disconnect or throttle any BitTorrent traffic that it detects.

Incoming legacy (not-encrypted) connections may be needed to be set to disabled...it really depends on the exact method of throttling/disrupting BitTorrent than an ISP uses. Some ISPs let a little known BitTorrent traffic through to keep from totally pissing off their customers, others don't.

These probably all need to be disabled:

UPnP enabled

NAT-PMP enabled

DHT enabled

Local Peer Discovery enabled

Resolve IPs (right-click in PEERS window of an active torrent to get menu to disable it.)

[bellic69]

Ahh finally. A reply.

According to this, [ http://azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs#Singapore ], Starhub Cable does not limit BitTorrent bandwidth. The list states that "Tier 1 partners might shape traffic" although I don't know what I mean. I've been using this ISP for 3 years now and personally find it rather reliable; it was only very recently that my torrent has become crippled, torrenting has always been a pleasant affair until then.

Also, I use Windows XP 32-bit, not Vista. If ZoneAlarm still poses a problem then I'll change that.

I'm not very sure about the many different kb/s values, neither do I trust those accelerators that do the tweaking on my behalf. Based on the average I took from yesterday's 12 tests, what are the suggested values (I followed the formula from Torrentfreak) I should use or is there some utility like MaV's calculator (which Icedog provided a broken link to in his "Don't Use" guide)? It's still giving me crappy download by the way, even though I've left it running all day.

No offence, but I really don't agree with you on my ISP "definitely disrupting" torrent traffic. Therefore I don't really fancy the idea of practically locking uTorrent down (especially with DHT, Local Peer Discovery disabled and the fact that forcing encryption will significantly reduce the amount of peers that uTorrent can find).

Just a random thought: instead of using 6881 or an above-10000 port, is it possible to use ports that my ISP sets aside for stuff like VOIP or Xbox Live or something?

Cheerio,

Nicholas.

[moogly]

Dont use crappy accelerators and use the Speed Guide:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=34259

320 kb/s and surely 256 kb/s must be your reference.

║ 256 kbit/sec ║ 22│ 3║ 35│ 60║ 2│ 1║

║ 320 kbit/sec ║ 29│ 3║ 35│ 80║ 3│ 1║

And not 1000 for max connections.

Use this post to set Settings > Bandwidth in uT.

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=361023#p361023

[bellic69]

If you're talking kilobits per second, then this would be where I'd start working from,

Upload - 299.63 ~ 300

Download - 7943.27 ~ 8000

Ping - 36.09 ~ 36

Have temporarily reduced maximum connections to 100 until I figure out a solid number.

Also, I'm curious what are your average upload and download speeds for a single torrent (please state estimated seeds and peers) so I'd get a rough idea what's normal, what's fast, and what's going to make me pull out my hair soon. It's still stuck!

EDIT- current settings (kB/s):

Maximum upload - 29 changed to 300 on moogly's suggestion athought it's hovering between 13 to 23 right now =.=

Maximum download - 400 (the graph didn't state what to put there, either that or I didn't get it. At any rate, the speed graph's easier to read this way and from the looks of it my uTorrent's never going anywhere near 400 anyway)

Maximum connections - 80

Maximum connected peers per torrent - 35

Upload slots per torrent - 3

Maximum number of torrents - 5

So far so good, people?

[moogly]

300 Kbit/s for your max UL, it's 37.5 KByte/s so your UL is really low.

Personally my max UL is 95 KB/s and my max DL is 750 KB/s.

So your max UL speed is really low for a 8M connection.

[bellic69]

What's your average upload and download speeds on a particular torrent? What's considered normal? If it's 0.something kB/s then I can live with it.

[Switeck]

I've seen 100's of examples while torrenting myself to Starhub and other Singapore ips...and they almost as an absolute rule can neither upload to nor download from me quicker than 10 KB/sec -- most barely reach 3 KB/sec briefly before disconnecting less than 30 seconds after linking up to me. Whether the Singapore ISPs themselves throttle BitTorrent or some internet link between me and them is crippled I cannot say for sure, but I can say for certain...overall connections with them SUCK.

Icedog's guide is "don't use" for a reason.

Always remember these settings ARE reversible!

So TEST uTorrent with DHT and Local Peer Discovery disabled AND FORCE encryption outgoing.

If it doesn't work, change the settings back and make sure each of your torrents allows DHT and LPD again. The loss of DHT and LPD is almost always minor (and even beneficial!) except on very marginal public torrents with few peers/seeds seen by the tracker.

Using a port that your ISP normally sets aside for stuff like VOIP or Xbox Live is worth a try.

[bellic69]

If you say so, I don't see how much it could hurt.

I've disabled DHT and LPD, forced outgoing encrption (allowed legacy incoming, this correct?) and changed to Xbox Live TCP port 3074.

Have restarted and will leave it overnight and post the results in the morning.

I'm sorry for your bad experience with Singaporean peers. But that cannot be helped, it's them corporate bastards to blame. If whatever I've done above can circumvent this then by all means possible. =)

I still haven't gotten a response regarding what's the 'normal' torrent download speed.

[Ultima]

There is no such thing as a "normal" download speed in BitTorrent. Theoretically, BitTorrent can download as quickly as your connection allows, provided you connect to fast peers, and nothing interferes. But your ISP is known to interfere.

[bellic69]

Okay, disabling all that and forcing encryption didn't seem to work. This going to sound weird, but I added a real fast torrent [ http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4183909/Microsoft_Office_2007_Complete_Version___CD_Keys ] with a superb seed/peer ratio, and suddenly all 5 torrents are chugging along nicely between (a measly) 1-5 kB/s. Could there be an explanation for this or do I have to download a redundant torrent along with whatever I want in the future?

Also, would pasting tracker lists into the properties box help a torrent or will it just overload something seeing my uTorrent takes quite awhile to update it's trackers?

So all of a sudden, the problem with my crippled (or otherwise stuck) torrents seem to be caused by my ISP? Switching providers aside, is there actually a way to bypass this? I've heard of alot of services and all of them have ugly websites that claim they're the only service and that's the best which makes the whole idea sound like another internet marketing scam.

Thanks,

Nicholas.

Edit--

Question: Should initial seeding and forced downloading be left on or off?

I tried a proxy just now but it started giving me these proxy connect errors, so I turned it off. But under status it's still showing 'proxy connect error hostname not found' ?

My upload speed is atrocious: 5-10kB/s global. It's not that I don't want to share, but this is simply...arrgh!

Also, it seems that at any one time, only two torrent will hover around the 5kB/s mark (while the other are 0.something). It's like there's only 10-15kB/s of downloading bandwidth to go around? Weird.

[Switeck]

I have not banned Singapore ip address ranges using ipfilter.dat though I can do so, because I am aware their slow speeds is only partly their fault (such as when they run BitComet/BitLord and/or use bad settings in uTorrent/Azureus/other clients.)

When using forced encryption outgoing...Incoming legacy (not-encrypted) connections may be needed to be set to disabled. Otherwise, your ISP will STILL see unencrypted BitTorrent connections. The only reason to allow legacy incoming is if your ISP allows some BitTorrent traffic. Yours does, but it's so slow that it's not worthwhile.

Try reducing the max connections both per-torrent and globally to less than 60...maybe even as low as 10. Admittedly, you probably won't download/upload much faster that way -- but at least whoever you're downloading/uploading probably won't be restricted to <0.5 KB/sec speeds. Just staying connected to lots of peers+seeds is counting against whatever max download/upload speeds your ISP is allowing BitTorrent to get.

Is net.max_halfopen still set to the default of 8?

Try setting net.max_halfopen to only 1-4. Maybe your ISP is partially detecting BitTorrent traffic just on the basis of all the outgoing connections uTorrent is trying to make at once?

(8 at once, over-and-over again seems pretty obvious to me.)

Initial seeding and forced downloading should not be used. Initial seeding intentionally uploads slower than your set maximum. Forced downloading only exists to override scheduler and queueing limits...it otherwise does nothing.

You may have proxy settings misconfigured...or there's no proxy server at the ip+port you're trying to connect to.

Your ISP may be throttling BitTorrent (and no telling what else) simply because you've crossed some unknown bandwidth usage limit they have set...or some equally arbitrary limit.