Speed not up to par. Also, found a speed guide, opinions?

[zuN]

http://www.bootstrike.com/Articles/BitTorrentGuide/

From looking at the comments, it seems like this is a successful speed guide. However, I'm not fond of using that patch to change the Windows setting for the half-open connections. The guide states to set the Windows half-open connections to 100 and the net.max_halfopen setting to 50. I've been reading these forums a bit and found a lot of support for keeping the net.max_halfopen setting at 8. Thing is, even with using Ultima's setup guide and Switeck's recommended settings, my download speeds are not as good as they should be.

According to Speedtest.net, i have a download of ~3 Mbps and an upload of ~471 kbps with my Shaw ISP. Based on those settings, i have my upload speed set at at 41kB/s

My other settings are as follows (build 1.8.2.15296):

-Global Maximum # of connections at 100

-Maximum # of connected peers per torrent at 40

-Number of upload slots per torrent at 4

-Disabled Enable DHT Network, Enable DHT for new torrents, Enable Local Peer Discover, Resolve IPs, and Enable UPnP port mapping

-Static IP set, Port is in the 30000's, Router Port forwarded, Windows Firewall utorrent Enabled, Encryption Enabled.

I have played around with the enabling and disabling of those options that I currently have disabled and to no avail, my download speed is still low; low as in ~60kB/s which is the average speed for my downloads.

Here's an interesting situation. When I was downloading a torrent with 0 connected seeds (53 available) and 40 peers (439 available), I was downloading at ~100kB/s. While, when I tried downloading a torrent at that same time with 83 connected seeds and 3 peers, I was downloading at the same speed.

What frustrates me is that that, in general, I have better download speeds with a lower seed:peer ratio than a higher seed:peer ratio, and when I have a large seed:peer ratio (eg. the 83:3 example) the download speed rarely breaks the 100kB/s barrier (never enters into the 200kB/s). My friend has exactly the same kind of connection, but he is using Bitcomet and obtains speeds of ~500kB/s for well seeded torrents. He obtains a download speed of ~1Mbps and an upload of ~460kbps on Speedtest.net. We experimented with my applicable utorrent settings on his Bitcomet and he still receives that amazing speed.

Now regarding that link above for the speed guide. As questionable the guide/comments may be, in general they do seem to be receiving significant speed boosts. Could I have some opinions on this guide as well as my current download speed problem? Also, what are your opinions on that TCP Optimizer?

[jewelisheaven]

TCP Optimizer changes registry at best, at worst it replaces system files.

BitComet is an http server in the backend. That's why long-term seeds always seed at perfect speed.

As far as your numbers, he needs 10 Mbit down to break 1 MB/s-- 1 Mbit down = 100 KiBps in uT (what you see displayed). You have a 5:1 ratio give or take, you should be getting at least 250 KiBps down and could give 50 KiBps up. On one of the test torrents http://slackware.com/torrents/ can you max your download speed?

The difference in speeds based upon swarm size and connectivity may be due to ISP "network management". I'm not clear on how the network is, but does Shaw lease Bell pipes?

[zuN]

I just tried the first torrent http://slackware.com/torrents/ and I think I did reach my max download speed. Currently it's going around ~300kB/s to ~400kB/s with a peek at 460kB/s so far; never seen these speeds before it's pretty amazing. So to interpret this, does this mean that my settings are quite optimal? Also, I do not know if Shaw leases Bell pipes. I tried googling around but haven't found anything yet.

[jewelisheaven]

It means, yes sadly those peers aren't very sharing.

TO combat this, try lowering your per-torrent connection settings and total connections. This will allow you to upload more, to more people, over time. I think I've used this description before, but I couldn't find it so bear with me: The maximum size of a piece (in uT, supposedly Vuze allows variable length piecs not set to 2^n bytes) is 4 MiB, @ 30 KiBps that's 136 seconds, or just over 2 min. To get a 4 MiB piece out in under 5 minutes (the minimum wait time before inactive peers are disconnected to make way for new peers) is 13 KiBps, so .. based upon average piecesize in torrents you download, divide it accordingly, such that those peers which get upload slots from you will maintain within that timeframe. As far as number of peers connected, I wouldn't connect to more than double the amount of upload slots (yes this is very conservative, but it may just help you in the long run). You can triple it if you're downloading alot heavily, but the best way to get a good download is to find someone with upload to whom you also upload back to very well. The minimum is 3 KiBps sustained where this happens, and I find between 5 and 10 KiBps to be a better indicator of a peer's spare pipe capacity.

If you try lowering those settings, and then set your torrent to go are you able to utilize all the upload you're allocating to uT? These ideas will help you maintain a consistently positive share ratio with peers to whom you share to. You may not get the fast peers all the time, but they will connect and stay connected if you keep sharing well to them. If you find yourself overloaded on a seed-heavy swarm and you don't have to worry about uploading you can double these numbers as it's less likely for a peer to stay connected if they aren't uploading very fast, so that they seed more people after several pieces and may rotate back to you at a later time.

Have I mentioned you should be commended for doing much of the research first

[Switeck]

Make SURE that TCP Optimizer isn't allowing more than 4 server connections at ONCE!

If not, you almost certainly will get 4226 errors unless you set windows half open limit stupidly high (which you probably shouldn't.)

[zuN]

Well I just read that TCP Optimizer doesn't affect Vista so looks like that won't help. I did more speed tests and I obtained ~1.5 - 2.0 Mb/s download and still the same upload. Apparently Shaw's speed for my cable type is up to 7.5Mb/s download and 512kb/s upload. I figure this is a factor of why my download speeds don't seem to reach their max potential (exception was that test torrent).