Conservative Settings Chart (Alternate Speed Guide for uTorrent)

[James_D]

Since my connection is 15.3/1.5mbit, should I be using the settings in the 1.5mbit section?

Because I'm using those settings right now and I'm downloading a torrent with 209 seeds and 60 leechers but only getting 340-430kB/s

[Switeck]

If your networking hardware and software can take it, increase the per-torrent connections max as high as 250.

What's your upload speed doing at the same time?

Is it staying constant at 140 KiloBYTES/second?

[James_D]

it's between 0 and 10kB/s when I'm downloading, is it supposed to be higher?

[gomp]

my experience is upload should be approx 25-50% max speed, any higher than the connection is noticebly slower and laggier, 75% upwards makes browsing incredibly slow. On a 1024kbit upload I set my upload speed to 30kB/sec.

I have more upload slots set than whats reccomended since the bittorent protocol seems to punish for using less upload slots and people either dont send or send very slowly to you if you not sending back.

[Switeck]

James_D,

YES! A LOT higher!

Your upload speed typically should stay maxed out once you're running enough torrents that you have >10 peers connected to you at once which are missing anything you have.

gomp,

Your ADSL line may be in a partial half duplex mode.

You may not have 1 megabit/second upload speed max either.

The amount of upload slots I recommend is slightly greater than typical Speed Guide gave.

You should never need more active upload slots than you're actually giving in KiloBYTES/second upload speed. Really even half as many is pushing it.

So if you're only uploading at 30 KiloBYTES/second, that means 15 upload slots...TOTAL. If you have 2 torrents active, that's 7-8 upload slots per torrent.

gomp, please continue this topic here:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=344199#p344199

(that's your thread on the subject after all...)

[gomp]

switeck I can upload at 115kB if I choose to, over ftp p2p or whatever. Just if I use 80-90% which is what this guide reccomends I have too big an impact on my connection, funny enough when I searched over the internet others have the same and have to cap speed lower than 80%

[Switeck]

Should be ok at 60-70% though, or you have other issues.

[thelittlefire]

You can actually set your upload limit TO the theoretical limit in 1.8 AS LONG AS you enable bt.calc_overhead.

Well, gomp has problems aside from configuration, either a bad connection at the local or remote end with his ISP. More would need to be known about it though, so a new thread would be the wisest course of action.

[gomp]

I cant use 1.8 tho due to the more agressive hashcheck algorithm that cannot be disabled.

I dont believe I have connection issues, if I search on google there is people galore who like me find 80% is way too high to set the upload, I can set 80% and it will not affect my torrent download speed that is true. But it does affect my pings, my web browsing, other internet activities so I decrease it.

Du meter shows my current upload speed as 65-75kB/sec with 30kB/sec been on utorrent, the rest is all ack packets been sent to allow the downloading (I am currently also downloading some files of a ftp). So I have about 30kB/sec spare so the theory is I could increase my cap to 60kB/sec which is just over 50%. But my latency would go through the roof then as it will be saturated.

[DreadWingKnight]

If the pieces are genuinely available, they will get to you. If you are not getting the final pieces due to hashfails, do NOT assume that turning off the ban on hashfail algorithm is at fault. Assume that it's either your connection setup or the peers you're downloading from.

A peer that constantly sends you bad data will not stop sending bad data just because you're persistent. The more aggressive hashcheck algorithm will prevent you from wasting gigs upon gigs of transfer on bad data.

[Switeck]

gomp said: "Du meter shows my current upload speed as 65-75kB/sec with 30kB/sec been on utorrent, the rest is all ack packets been sent to allow the downloading... So I have about 30kB/sec spare so the theory is I could increase my cap to 60kB/sec which is just over 50%. But my latency would go through the roof then as it will be saturated."

This HIGHLY suggests you're allowing quite a lot of connections at once in uTorrent, EACH of which require regular "Keep-alive" packets. This costs bandwidth just to keep them. There is a happy medium where you can upload a little faster and yet still have quite a lot of connections.

[thelittlefire]

Additionally as I said in the 1.8 development thread: If you cannot find the settings you're looking for in the Advanced screen... look harder, and read the manual.

[gomp]

I got no peers constantly sending me bad data, what happened was I had 2 seeds on a small torrent. One seed was sending to me at about 0.5kB/sec with no hashfails, the other was sending to me at 200kB/sec with about 25% of hashes failing, so even tho 1 in 4 failed it was still far quicker to allow that seed to have to occasionally send me data twice than wait for the other seed. Obviously if a seeder/peer is sending all bad data then they should be banned. The problem was the 25% failure rate did trigger the autoban and I was left with only the very slow seeder. Once I adjusted the ratio setting it was good.

[thelittlefire]

Is it possible for the "wizard" portion of the Speed Guide to NOT continue without changing from the default setting when/if there is a change made to the screen?

I had forgotten the exact link to this thread and came across http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=11459 instead... very exciting to see this thread being referenced more given the current dearth of preset options.

I would also like to say for whatever reason the graphics don't line up for me either... and show all graphs on the first page.

[Switeck]

Whatever crazy font you are using isn't fixed size.

My signature makes references to both this message thread and the one you mentioned.

[thelittlefire]

I don't know I thought the browser handled it... the non-fixed width (monospace) is Times, and the fixed width is Courier. If the graph should always be lined up, why not specify it in the post with whatever tag it was in the third example.

[Switeck]

I happen to LIKE the way it looks now.

And I've been messing with the appearance so much more than the data contained now that I feel like I'm ignoring the point of it all.

The 3rd example isn't a case of using a different font as far as I know.

[thelittlefire]

If more people saw it, or if the developers weren't so overworked I'm SURE they'd take some of the information in this thread to heart I know I appreciate the nuance you provide for variety and certainly in the way the information is presented for the new user.

Don't lose hope

[Switeck]

My settings are a table. I tried to match uTorrent settings I felt were appropriate for the upload bandwidth a connection was capable of sustaining. The rationale behind my choices are firstly to change as little as possible from the original settings and secondly to give whoever uses them what they probably want most: MORE DOWNLOAD SPEED by allowing more downloading torrents and upload slots than is really optimal for sharing/uploading.

There are HUGE misunderstandings about both max number connections and half open connection limit. Basically in a nutshell, many people believe "more is better/faster". ...And so spawn the YouTube videos suggesting increasing uTorrent's connections per torrent to over 1000 and half open connection limit from 8 to 50 or more. I saw one that set half open to 500. I can only hope few people see these videos OR take them seriously! Most consumer networking hardware and software can't (or won't without 3rd party modifications) handle 400 connections or a half open value greater than about 20...at least for very long. You can't download faster if your entire networking is overloading, crashing, and constantly disconnecting. Most consumer networking stuff is utter crap, and that even includes the "better" stuff!

EVEN if your local networking can handle it...after all, many have 1 gigabit/second home LAN routers now...that doesn't mean your modem can or the local ISP branch line can, or the local internet gateway you and 20+ other ISP customers are sharing can. Local cable connections are actually a hub/star type networking topology where only 1 cablemodem can upload at any given instant. If one has 1000 connections, it is trying to upload constantly...just to stay connected to them all! And that's part of what makes ISPs mad. Similarly, if 1 customer can do that, potentially 10% or more of ALL customers may be doing that. So even if an ISP's networking hardware is 10 times better than the average consumer stuff, it HAS to be! Somewhere around 20-200 cablemodem lines may be fed through a single heavy-duty ISP router/switch. If there's 100 customers active and 10 each have 1000 connections in a file-sharing program that single router has in excess of 10000 connections going through it all at once. Its internal RAM to keep track of them all can even become an issue! Even if the connections are not at high speeds each, together they may cause the router switching delays...seen as high pingtimes and known as "lag". So ISPs hate this even more.

Windows XP SP2 and Vista both enforce a half open connection limit of 10 and it does little good to "fight" that limit even with the 3rd party hack to make it work. Microsoft "unpatches" the files that make the hack work almost every minor windows update, or at least once a month. But even if they didn't...a higher half open connection limit is pretty much unnecessary for high-end (10 mbit) broadband and overkill for (<2mbit) low-end broadband. You can set half open limit in uTorrent to ZERO a few minutes after starting a torrent, and if you're not firewalled you will still get new connections because other peers/seeds are almost constantly (re)trying ips of other peers/seeds. These incoming connections don't count against the half open limit, which ONLY applies to outgoing connections and tracker updates. Even when half open is set to 0, it's potentially possible to still get a mini Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack from incoming connections...if your combined active torrents have probably 1000+ peers/seeds trying to make new connections! (That's their half open connections trying to connect to you by the way.) Having said this, I don't recommend using ZERO half open connection limit. Instead, typically stick with the default value of 8 unless you have problems...and if you have problems, reduce it to 1-4.

Sadly there is some truth to "more is better".

A PURE leech that gives nothing back to anyone can still get pretty fast download speeds so long as it connects to enough peers and seeds. Probably 1 out of 4-20 peers and seeds will be uploading to the pure leech any given moment, so more peers+seeds = more download speed! This is because of altruism built into BitTorrent...it is more concerned about making sure EVERYONE gets the torrent downloaded, not to maximize individual download speeds. There are some Bittorrent-like clients that exploit this altruism to get even more download speed than normal. Older BitComet clients were believed to do this, though it's probable that there were just lots of BitComet cheats, hacks, and mods that did this. BitLeech is the only program I know by name that does this. Obviously, everyone cannot do this (leech with lots of connections) because upload has to come from somewhere.

For the same reason, everyone cannot lower their upload to absolute minimum...or download speeds across the board will drop.

But what's not so obvious is even having lots of connections reduces max upload speed. It reduces max download speed as well, but most broadband connections have vastly faster download than upload so that matters mostly for the low-end ones.

For instance, a 56k dial-up modem using uTorrent's built-in Speed Guide (CTRL+G) is the "Dial-up (56k) settings. Were you to try to use those settings, your modem would potentially be trying to maintain 20 connections on 1 active torrent at a time. It's like trying to web surf by connecting to 5-20 websites at once on dial-up for "more speeds"! By all rights, that's a hefty connection burden, as just sitting idle those connections burn bandwidth! I almost think mine which allows 7 may still be too high for that.

A connection that has only 64 kilobits/second usable upload bandwidth in uTorrent's settings is allowed 50 connections for its 1 active torrent. If on average each connection gave 1 KiloBYTE/second download...then while uploading at only 5 KiloBYTES/second, it might receive back 50 KiloBYTES/second in download. That's not a sustainable trade rate for BitTorrent networks in general. This is partially why uTorrent has "Download Limited" when uploading slower than 6 KiloBYTES/second global speed. But that only partially fixes the problem...50 connections even without that limitation will cut into the limited upload speed possible with no way to return the favor in a reasonable amount of time.

The ISDN settings are special, these have KNOWN download as well as upload limits that are also equal. All the others (besides dial-up) have much higher download than upload, especially shared lines. So ISDN doesn't need as many connections to reach its download max as a broadband connection with equal upload speed...if only because the broadband's download max is probably MUCH higher.

Jumping up to 256 kilobits/second usable upload bandwidth (xx/256k)...uTorrent's settings are 70 connections per torrent, 130 global connections, 22 KiloBYTES/second upload speed, 3 upload slots, 1 active downloading torrent, 2 total active torrents. Even at this much less limited speed as 64, there's a minor problem. Connections per torrent are 40% higher, and with now potentially 2 torrents running at once (1 seeding, 1 downloading)...there can be 130 connections total. That's 1 connection for every 2 kilobits/second total upload bandwidth! It's unnecessary, pretty much excessive. It means there's less upload bandwidth to actually upload pieces of the torrent, puts a tremendous load on marginal networking hardware and software, and increases pingtimes/lag for anyone sharing the internet connection. And it makes ISPs hate us.

So my 256 kilobits/second settings are 35 connections per torrent, 60 global connections, 22 KiloBYTES/second upload speed, 3 upload slots, 1 active downloading torrent, 2 total active torrents. The only things that changed were the numbers of connections per torrent and global. This is a reoccurring pattern of my whole chart relative to uTorrent's Speed Guide settings.

Seeding torrents DON'T need as many connections as downloading torrents to maintain whatever maximum speeds are desired. This is because there is no longer any incentive to connect to as many peers+seeds as possible to increase your download speed at the expense of the torrent swarm or everyone else...you ALREADY have the whole torrent. If you care about ratios, reasonable amounts but fewer connections for seeds means FASTER upload speeds. If you care about sharing to others, your upload speed is split between all active torrents and split again between upload slots per torrent. If you allow 3 upload slots per torrent, then connecting to more than 3 is done strictly for redundancy (in case one disconnects and in case one downloads slowly.) Such redundancy is probably adequately covered connecting to 10 peers, worst-case 20 peers, and excessive beyond 30.

Then there's what I call a high-low torrent activity. Some torrents are just going to be fast, some slow -- either due to lots of peers/seeds or exceptionally fast peers/seeds. If you have multiple downloading torrents, probably only ONE will gain much download speed by reaching max connections...the others either have few peers/seeds to connect to or won't be much faster connecting to a few more. Even if the torrents were somehow identical in speed and number of peers/seeds, little is lost if one connects to fewer peers/seeds than the other/s. In the end, the amount you have to upload to reach a 1-to-1 ratio remains the same and probably will take longer than the download did.

So from 384 kilobits/second upload and beyond, even though they are allowed multiple downloading torrents at once...there is not nearly enough global connections for all of the active torrents to reach max at once. This also helps keep uTorrent's connection load low enough that far more consumer networking hardware and software doesn't have problems. It reduces the load slightly on ISPs. And it means the fewer peers you connect to have more incentive to upload BACK to you...since you're spending more of your time and upload bandwidth uploading to EACH of them. So download speeds often still remain decent. In the rare case you connect to a bunch of bad peers and seeds...uTorrent will slowly disconnect inactive ones to replace them with hopefully better ones. And the ones you upload the most to...tend to give you the most back, by design of the BitTorrent protocol. If everyone used similar settings as my suggestions instead of uTorrent's Speed Guide's (or worse), average download speeds would improve noticeably. However those who don't intend to share much...or can't upload fast...will gain less and may even be worse off. BitTorrent will still see that they complete the download so long as enough others play fair.

Sadly, many don't play fair. For whatever reasons, they seek 1-sided "BitTorrent speedup" programs that improve their download...or simply set their upload speed low because they heard it makes their download speeds faster. And it DOES if you've set it too high! If your other settings are bad, then even lowering upload speeds to below 50% of rated max might show download speed increases on torrents with numerous seeds and/or fast peers.

Or they stop a torrent as soon as it finishes downloading...without seeding much. Those are called "Hit and Runners". The faster they download relative to their upload, the bigger the loss to the torrent swarm (ie: other peers) when they leave. They may have a sizable fraction of the torrent that no one else but seeds have...and put a huge burden on the remaining seeds to re-upload now-missing pieces again.

Sequential downloading is covered by the 4th link in my signature...but in short it doesn't HELP the torrent swarm and may not be all that great for you either. The last seeder may quit in disgust after uploading 5+ times the size of the torrent (mostly the 1st file over and over again) and nobody else has the whole torrent yet. Then no one wins. Even ISPs lose as the remaining peers and new peers upload all they have to each other and end up with unusable content. "It goes fast till it hits 69% then download speed instantly falls to 0!"...is the typical comment resulting from such a torrent. 100's of new peers may join and get 69% and be unable to complete for days OR EVER, thus making the bandwidth wasted a curse that continues cursing.

uTorrent's Scheduler allows us to not overuse our connection based on time-of-day...especially helpful if you're sharing your connection or have to contend with ISP "peak hours" that have reduced speeds. People only use it if forced even though it's not terribly complicated. It *DOES* have a major problem in that uTorrent doesn't reduce max connections (as far as I know!), max active torrents, or upload slots during Limited periods. ISPs probably would only prefer if "turn off" was used during peak hours, so no love there either.

Many ISPs have become extremely hostile towards file-sharing traffic in general and BitTorrent traffic in particular. Despite the encryption support added to uTorrent, uTorrent is horribly slow for many people. Future improvements in the encryption seem unlikely to help any, as it's all kinds of activity patterns rather than reading the raw data that ISPs are now monitoring. Even if you aren't on a particularly hostile ISP, you WILL NEED ENCRYPTION ENABLED OR FORCED in uTorrent to connect to many that are. I expect things to get worse rather than better in the short-term, as more and more ISPs see file-sharing as an insatiable bandwidth eater. They are at least part right. I imagine world wide web usage and bandwidth has increased considerably too since it first appeared in 1993. Can't be called an "ISP" if you block that though.

The miracle of BitTorrent file-sharing is not that it can give high download speeds, but that it works at all in spite of horrible odds.

[Firon]

No offense, but that post is waaay too long.

[Switeck]

Sorry, I tried to keep it short.

[Lorden Darkblade]

Thanks a lot for these configurations!

I was having a lot of issues with uTorrent but now it's working fine!!!

[Dark Shroud]

It might have been long but it was still a good post. Anyway Switeck, Xunlei/Thunderbolt is another client that works the same as BitLeech & BitThief. Xunlei is from China and a bit competitor to BitComet over there. I just thank god it doesn't have an english version.

[thelittlefire]

It does though... it has the equivalent to utorrent.lng I just downloaded the EN language pack for it

[Dark Shroud]

Figures, take my eyes off it for 5 minutes and it has a language pack.