Major Speed Issues on Verizon FiOS

[FlameBV]

I'm currently on a 25MBps/10MBps plan with Verizon FiOS. I did a couple tests, including various speedtests and independent speedtests and have verified that I constantly receive the full 25/10 speed.

On uTorrent, I set my max upload speed to 2.1MBps and left my download speed unlimited. I started to download a torrent and left the PC alone.

For some reason, my average download speed hovers around 200KBps, while my upload is around 1.6MBps. I currently hold a 8:1 ratio on all my torrents. I'm on Windows 7 RTM Ultimate x64, which does not have any half-open connections limit. I use uTorrent 2.0 Beta Build 16407.

uTorrent is limited to 8 half-open connections. I read through various blogs and forum posts (to cite one, http://sumod.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/dont-mess-with-half-open-connections/ ) that changing uTorrent's settings will cause my whole connection to destabilize. If this is not true, I'd be willing to try it, but I'm hoping to hear from someone about this before I change that setting.

The port (port 1080) I'm using is 100% forwarded through the router. I can't think of anything else to do (besides the half-open connection mod, but I'm waiting for confirmation on whether it's good in uTorrent 2.0). Please help me!

Thanks in advance!

[Ultima]

The Speed Guide said to select the closest upload rate for your connection, not the closest download rate. Select xx/10Mbit, not xx/20Mbit.

Afterwards, test a torrent from here.

Regarding half-open connections, indeed, I've written my own rant against changing it here. Long story short: don't bother increasing it unless you have a very good reason.

[FlameBV]

I set it to xx/10Mbit. When uTorrent runs the test, however, it automatically sets itself back to 20MBit. I overrode the standard and manually set it to 10Mbit afterwards, but I just wanted to mention that.

I've went back and enabled Automatic Port Mapping, as UPnP port mapping works on my router.

Downloaded the ubuntu torrent, here's my speeds:

So it probably was a lack of seeders on my torrent.

The main reason I was concerned was because of:

After some more research, I've found that Peer DL speeds are inaccurate and that my concerns were unfounded.

Thank you very much for your help, Ultima!