What can I do if my ISP is throttling?

[pk7677]

I used to have a good connection but ever since I moved and got a new ISP (Charter) my download speed has gone to hell. I have a 5mb line and can get 200~400 kb/s with firefox easily but in utorrent I am lucky if I can break 30kb/s. I search all over the net for solutions but no luck, only thing I found helpful was people who lives in my town, Worcester MA all have similar problems so I think my ISP is throttling.

"I'm allmost certain that charter is blocking torrents in my market here. But it's odd. It's like they are only blocking the downstream. I can still max out my line on the upstream. But i've tried 3 computers, with and without router, and had everything reset (even the modem) and nothing will fix it."

I am having the exact same problem, I set my upload limit to 35 or 40 and utorrent would max it out but my download speed stays under 30 no matter how health the torrent is. Is there anything I can do to gain a speed boost? I just downloaded the 1.9 alpha and my Protocol Encryption outgoing is forced and Allow Incoming legacy connection is checked. Are there any other setting I should tweak? Any 3rd party software that can stop my ISP from throttling?

[Switeck]

You running the latest v1.8.3 beta?

(Big bug fixes in it. )

Disable incoming legacy connections, DHT (both kinds!), Local Peer Discovery, UPnP, NAT-PMP, Resolve IPs (right-click in PEERS window on an active torrent).

Keep Peer Exchange enabled...though it only works with public torrents.

Reduce global and per-torrent max connections to 100 or lower.

Lower bt.connect_speed to 1-4 outgoing connection attempts per second. (It's kinda obvious to ISP's throttling equipment when it's set to the default of 20!)

After testing like that for awhile, try also possibly disabling Teredo (IPv6) and uTP connections.

Disabling uTP is easiest to do on v1.8.3 betas.

There's also 'extreme' hiding tricks to get better speeds:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=361747#p361747

(Note: My post immediately following that one explains what settings in uTorrent are similar to the Azureus ones.)

...but such hiding tricks are *NOT* easy to do!

[pk7677]

No I'm using 1.9, so should I switch back to 1.8.3?

Edited: I just downloaded 1.8.3 again and used your settings but its not working out very well. Its going at 1~3kb/s for both upload and download. I think I'm just going to switch back to 1.9 because I saw some major improvements, last night I actually hit 100kb/s download and maxed out my upload. Going to try the same setting on 1.8.3 to see what happens.

[Switeck]

I thought you were using v1.8.2 or earlier, sorry.

Yes, v1.9 is ok.

If you're being throttled though...if uTP cannot help and forced encryption cannot help, there's likely not much that can be done.

[pk7677]

1.9 greatly improved my speed, now I get 30kb/s~50kb/s download constantly but its very hard for me to reach a high stable speed. I got to 340kb/s once but it only last for seconds. My speed would go from 20 to 100 to 300kb/s instantly and it would drop back under 50kb/s in seconds too. Is there a way for me to stable my speed? Does installing IvP6 help? Some people say it helps ISP from throttling utorrent.

Here is my current setting: UPnP/NAT-PMP port mapping Enabled (don't remember why I did that), Maximum upload rate 35kb/s, Global maximum connection 100, Connect Peer per Torrent 90, DHT network/DHT for new torrents/Local Peer Discovery/Allow incoming legacy connections Disabled. Outgoing is Forced, bt.connect_speed is set to 4.

I am pretty confused because I also achieved good but unstable speed with the default setting from 1.9 after I reinstalled utorrent. :/

[Switeck]

With uTorrent v1.9, you may have gotten a couple uTP connections that your ISP doesn't yet throttle.

uTorrent v1.8.3 beta doesn't make uTP connections by default, but can accept incoming uTP connections...though they're probably still rare.