Torrent D-Load:U-Load Ratio 1:2.89

[kiotiMac]

I'm using uT 1.8.1, WXP Pro SP3, AMD Athlon XP200+ 1.67GHz, 768MB PC2700 RAM, DSL Broadband through a Linksy's AM300 ADSL2+ Modem/Router, Port Forwarded and have Green light in uT ( avg DL speed = 1.6MB/s, avg UL speed = 760kb/s.) Max UL is set for 70kB/s in uT Options > Preferences > Bandwidth section. DL Speed is unlimited. Max Active torrents is 5; 3 down, 2 up.

315 Nodes and DHT / LPD / PEX are all working.

Downloading a 897MB .torrent that claimed to have 17 seeds and after some time I noticed it only had a D-load of 12kB/s and an U-Load of 60-65kB/s. Usually the DL speed is slow at the start but that can and does change to faster DL speeds once the seeds and Peers kick-in.

When I started the DL I set the torrent to 'High Priority' for all the files it contained.

Torrent has been D-Loading for 8 Hrs 56 mins and has done 56% in that time.ETA is 8 hrs 13 mins. No sign of the 17 seeds yet.(Seeds 3/17, Peers 3/7)

2 hours back i clicked the 'General Tab' and saw that the DL was 302MB with an UL of 554MB.

Right clicked the torrent and manually set the UL limit to 30kB/s from Unlimited . Opened the 'Peers" to see what the story was and noticed that all of them were D-loading at rates from 0.7kBps to 1.5kBps. 4 of them showed as 100% in the % column and weren't U-loading at all, and had UL'd very little indeed. The other 3 Peers didn't have 100% ( varied from 67% to 75%) and were swallowing the UL at rates of 17kBps, 23kBps and 26kBps and between the 3 of them had totalled up 518MB of the 554MB UL'd: there total DL'd added up to 184MB and they were only DLoading at 1.5kBps while devouring the U-Load bandwidth.

So I set the UL to 10kBps, this didn't lower the DL Speed, in fact it sped up a little and as the 4 peers that were'nt uploading had lost nothing, the other 3 were now getting Less up and there DL speed didn't drop. Liking this, I set the UL limit to 3kBps. This didn't alter the DL Speed either, so I left it at that. I made those 3 crawl to the '100%' finish line.They just got there one after the other about a half hour ago with an end and now they got the 100% their DL Speed hasn't changed. Result of the DL:UL

being 502MB DL and 584MB UL.

The DL'd is now 61.1% done, DL =548MB and the UL is 606MB. Still only have a DL Speed of 13 to 17 kBps but that was what its been almost all the way through. I haven't reset the UL yet. Will do so now...bbs....

Set it at Unlimited, both DL & UL Speed is Unlimited. 15 minutes later only have Seeds:6/17, Peers0/12 and a DL of 11.4kBps and no UL at all. I'll leave it at that for now. See what happens.

My question is this, why am I U-Loading to Peers at such a rate of kBps? I'm not a Seed as I don't have the full torrent. Am /was I in a swarm of Leechers that were getting from me that which I had via a Peer - one of which seems to have done a runner with its 100%. Are these 'Peers' filling their coffers via mine and other peoples bits of the torrent? and feeding it out to other people/? I'm a Leecher until I have Downloaded the full Torrent and start Seeding it myself.

I have read a few threads on this subject, the last of which I found here http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=52485

When I began to compose the query of mine it wasn't meant to be verbose. My apologies.

To cut a long story short:-why does this happen?

I'm still on Unlimited DL & UL Speed, only getting 11-12 kBps DL, no UL at all, Seeds 6/17. Peers: 0/12, only 3 Pieces coming in-alternating Fast and Slow and have an ETA of 10 hrs something. Raining here in Invercargill ( NZ) past three days but the Torrent I'm DL'ing probably going to be a Real Wet Week.

[Switeck]

Apparently your international link is slow and/or BitTorrent traffic is possibly throttled by your ISP.

All you can do is be patient and start another torrent that hopefully has local seeds/peers on it.

Lowering your upload further and further probably increased the time it took to get what you got.

Best to download during off-peak hours (typically after midnight but before 7 AM) -- as there's less contention then on the local network and internet gateway.

uTorrent's Scheduler can help, once you can figure out about what speed limits you have throughout the day.

[kiotiMac]

cheers Switek. The torrent was finished when I checked at 9am the next day and was seeding. Strangely enough, the UL had not changed from the 606MB it was at when the DL was at 61.1%: still 606MB when torrent finished D-loading.

I did contact the ISP I'm with ( snap.net.nz) to query the possible throttling and any further ideas on that I discarded. I've been with snap quite a while now, with my computer running 24/7 and I'm using a good whack of GB's( sometimes 10GB a day) and have never had any reason to believe that snap had throttled my P2P connection: they don't do it.

I think the torrent I was getting was just 'one of those mothers'.

The uT scheduler is set to run Full Speed, 24/7.

I was d-loading the torrent during the day but it went overnight at still the same DL / UL speed. Also, at the time of submitting the thread, I had used Speedtest.Net and the DL speeds were only around 4000kbps, they're usually around the 7000kbps, the UL was much the same as it usually is 700ish kbps.

Good news is that I have now just DL'd another torrent, this one is 1.92GB, DL & UL Speeds set at Unlimited and had DL speeds from 360kBps to 590kBps once it kicked in proper: -U-Load Speed was fairly constant at a 40kBps to 43kBps throughout the DL. Seeds: 13/15, Peers:3/9 and a good fair average of fast / slow in the Pieces section.

It took 1 hr 35 mins to complete

I'm well happy with that result, especially the figures for DL = 1.92GB, UL = 152MB. Seeding now @ rates of 47.3kBps to 70kBps. All good. Constant 70kBps UL now.

Yeah, that other torrent was a **$#@X^^, and it was the only torrent that was active, DL & UL.

Thanks again for your reply and I'll look into the "International Link" you mentioned. Oh, I was having a bit of a problem with some damn "New Network" attempting to connect to my computer when I started it on monday and I allowed it, thinking it had something to do with the 'Windows Live Mail' account I had set up the night before, Comodo Firewall bought the alert up on screen and I allowed it:::::ha ha..all router, Internet, DNS, Default Gateway, IP Addresses and the static IP Address I have got altered. I sorted that out the day I was getting that torrent--I don't think the 18+hr 897MB Marathon can be credited with that though.

All good now and back to normal.

[Switeck]

Apparently, all the other peers finished the download...so you had no one left to upload to after awhile.

Even when you want to upload as fast as possible, it's best to set an upload speed max -- otherwise, random uploaded packets will be lost by your ISP as it auto-limits your speeds. This can cause bursty behavior for both upload and download alike.