Download speed 10% of the maximum

[uTormentor]

I downloaded the OpenOffice torrent to see what speed it would download at, and it ran at 1.1mb/s.

However, my normal speed is around about 110-20kb/s and only stays so high for around about 5 minutes before returning to under 100. I have only seen it go over 700kb/s once, before i downloaded the OpenOffice torrent, and it stayed at over 700kb/s for about 2 seconds before plummeting back down to around 60kb/s.

I limited my upload speed to increase download speed at 35kb/s, but limiting upload speed doesn't seem to work anymore so i just leave it and it uploads at its seemingly maximum of 60kb/s.

My port forwarding is extremely erratic, sometimes its forwarding properly sometimes its not. I did the port forwarding guide which took me about half an hour, and it worked for the same amount of time before not forwarding properly again.

I have a 10mb connection with the worst throttlers in the UK (VM), but if the OpenOffice torrent was downloading at 1.1mb/s, why is my download speed only 10% of that?

I previously had a 2mb connection, and that would max at 245kb/s download speed (on a regular basis) and 40kb/s upload speed. So my average download speed was better on my 2mb connection than my 10mb connection!

I'm pretty sure that the upload speed of 60kb/s is capped, i can get more than that on a 10mb connection, and thats what i need more than my download speed as i need to balance out my ratios.

It seems that utorrent downloading is an absolute mystery to everyone, people download various programs and try different settings but things always seem to remain the same in the end.

Any help would be grateful, and please dont treat me like an idiot and just give me links! I've read them all and been researching throttling etc for months now and downloaded/uploaded torrents for about 5 years.

[Switeck]

...Then you probably already know about how Virgin Media is crippling/disrupting/throttling BitTorrent traffic.

So please inform us so we can give better suggestions to people also suffering from that same ISP.

[uTormentor]

Every basic 2mb package is now a 10mb connection (probably related to the UK governments new digital tax), and on Virgin Media's own website it states that this basic package is throttled by upto 75% for 10 hours a day (although this doesn't really explain why my download speed is on average 10% of the maximum download speed).

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

XP users should use peerguardian or protowall. For Vista i've begun searching today but peerguardian fails to launch for me (although it shows up in processes in task manager), and the people behind protowall are refusing to develop a program for Vista.

However, as the majority of Virgin Media users will now be using a 10mb speed (thus different settings), i have found that if you set the max upload to 35kb/s eventually you can get speeds of around 500/600 for around half an hour, before it goes back to around 100kb/s. Although this isn't 1mb/s, it's still an improvement.

[MrTRiot]

Trying DLing uTorrent 1.9 alpha and disabling legacy connections...that should help your situation

[Switeck]

"XP users should use peerguardian or protowall."

uTorrent has ipfilter.dat if you're going to block insane numbers of ips.

Generally, blocking ips does NOT increase download speeds! The only exception is if you're blocking completely hostile ips, which are FAR rarer than most blocklists suggest. Even my block list at:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=46221

...probably only has 100 or so active hostile ips in it, though which ip addresses they're using changes between those ranges and depends HEAVILY on which torrents you're running.