Is conservative connection actually worse than ISP throttling?

[ywc]

Recently about 3 wks ago, I realised that my connection was slower. So I searched for a solution here and found that it may be due to my Singnet ISP throttling. I followed the instructions to disable UPnP, NAT-PMP, all DHT, IP resolution and change advanced settings.

But if I did so, my status would eventually become yellow, then red and my d/l speed would never exceed 20kB/s. In fact, I go above 10kB/s <50% of the time and never get any seeds. If I enable those features (excluding resolve IP), my status becomes green and I get more peers with seeds and I get a better d/l speed (up to 50kB/s with average of 13kB/s).

So should I still change everything to prevent providing my ISP research/detection info, or should I set everything back to default, which gives better speeds, but still below what it should be?

[GTHK]

Try just UPnP and NAT-PMP in turn, are either one of those enough to "get green"? Run a portforward test under each condition as well.

[Switeck]

If uTorrent cannot hold onto peer/seed connections because your networking (software or hardware) is acting up...you can expect to see peers/seeds disconnect in uTorrent's Peers and Logger window/tab.

A sad side-effect of that is if you've disabled unencrypted peer/seed connections and/or are now firewalled in uTorrent (yellow or red light), you will likely get a lot fewer peer/seed connections so even a SINGLE peer/seed disconnect does proportionally more damage.

If your ISP is crippling any unidentified traffic (basically non-HTTP web surfing traffic), then the results would likely be the same.

I see SingNet peers all the time on torrents I'm on. They are hands down the SLOWEST peers I see, regularly disconnecting...and even when they're connected seldom break 0.5 KB/sec. While this is also partially to do with my ISP (ComCast cable USA) probably having a terrible or no peering arrangement with them, the fact that these peers tend to stay at the lowest percentage complete on a giant torrent relative to peers that started around the same time speaks volumes.

Other examples:

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=58465

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=61753

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=62106

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=62791

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=63782

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=64149

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=64603

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=64903

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=75928

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=75934

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=76054

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=76202

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=76664

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=78140

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=79840

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=81986

[ywc]

I have been testing out my UT for abt 2 days now and I would like to share this with those who are having the same speed problem as me with the same ISP.

Following all the steps to disable everything from UPnP, DHT to resolve IPs, and reducing the global max connections to below 10, I always got nothing more than a fluctuating speed between 2kB/s and 15kB/s. My connection status was also constantly becoming yellow then red with no seeds. My port could not even be forwarded anymore.

But once I decided to try and fix my connection status, I played around with the settings a bit more and this is what I have done from the steps suggested for ISP throttling:

1) Disable NAT-PMP

2) Set encryption to Forced

3) Disable resolve ISPs

4) Set bt.connect_speed to 3

5) Set bt.transp_disposition to 5

6) Set net.max_halfopen to 1

I left my other settings to their normal setup values and allowed incoming legacy connections. I get all the seed and peer connections now and my d/l speed fluctuates between 30kB/s and 70kB/s with it at an average of 40-50kB/s most of the time. At times, it would stay around the range of 85-110kB/s for abt 10-15min.

Its definitely a big improvement over the 0.5-9kB/s previously and I hope this will work and if possible, help others in the same boat-even not only on the same ISP!

[cruxader]

Actually there is another reason why Singnet seeds are slow!

They are on ADSL.

See:

http://home.singtel.com/consumer/products/internet/internet_price_plan.asp

Important bits:

"SingNet Broadband 3Mbps plans offer download speed of up to 3Mbps and upload speed of up to 350kbps; 6Mbps plans offer download speed of up to 6Mbps and upload speed of up to 512kbps; 10Mbps plans offer download speed of up to 10Mbps and upload speed of up to 1Mbps; 15Mbps plans offer download speed of up to 15Mbps and upload speed of up to 1Mbps."

As you can see, Singnet folks upload speed is less than 10% of their download speeds!

I wish I could get a better deal but at least they are generally reliable - aka deliver what they promised.

All Singapore performance dropped since mid-last year after some cables were damaged. Since then Singapore ISP appears to have implemented some form of throttling.

Nevertheless, I must say that the latest version of utorrent seems to have fixed some inexplicable slow downs I have been experiencing 6~8 months ago.

[Switeck]

SingNet heavily throttles/disrupts BitTorrent traffic and had done so even before the undersea cables were damaged by the typhoon that hit Taiwan about a year ago.

In the past, even my UPLOAD to them seems unusually slow for ADSL.