utorrent starts but my torrents wont download (red arrow)

[lenstar]

As the title suggest, when I download a torrent it just lies there in red without actually downloading. I'm not a computer wizz so I don't know if it's a firewall issue or a setting on utorrent however I can't get torrents to download. It's only a new mac and I'm not very experienced with them but it was working fine up to a week ago and suddenly it just stoped. I've used other torrent downloaders but I get the same problem.

Any advise would be most welcome. I've looked around and I can't seem to find any answers so I joined here to see if anyone can help.

Thanks in advance.

[pete99]

if you've worked your way through the set-up guide and still no luck there's a couple of things you can try that I've sketched out in this post: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?pid=428666#p428666

I was getting red arrows, on and off, too. Check out the console logs too, quite often they throw up connection issue messages.

Cheers

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One other point, if you've run through the checklist and things are still running slow, you're downloading a lot of files or a big file continuously, and you're getting a lot of checksum errors - you may have a thermal rating issue with your router. I did with mine, when download an 8GB file continuous running, but I was using a different torrent client although I don't think that affected the problem much. My router had poor air-flow and was running hot and falling over or crashing quite a bit.

But if its running hot to the touch you can improve performance just by running it in free-air, with the lid off. You don't need to modify the case and cure the air-flow problem like I did. I'd guess the continuous thermal rating of my router is fairly typical - about 15 hours stand-up in the box, as is - but you'll find the card inside has been rated for continuous duty, most likely, it's really just a packaging issue that can affect performance for this application where continuous running is important to download a big file.

I found my router kept dropping off again over night, so I could buy a new one or fix this one. I thought I'd have no guarantee that a new one would have any better thermal performance or constant duty cycle, so I decided to fix mine. This meant a series of heat-runs, where key temperature variables are monitored.

First set of tests, as is, to get benchmark performance data - stand-up time for continuous use and peak exhaust vent temperatures. Second set of tests - no lid - to monitor key component temperatures and 'free-air' running temperatures. Third set of tests were to monitor thermal performance of various air-flow modifications to the case, against benchmark data. It took some time because I didn't have any data-loggers so had to take hourly spot readings with k type thermocouples, and some continuous readings for peak detect of key temperatures. It was a bit tedious and took a little longer to cure continuous running thermal issues with my router than I'd hoped.

I've made substantial modifications to the case to improve air-flow: mainly extra draw holes drilled in the base of the case adjacent to the pcb to provide air-flow for component cooling, and I've fitted a chimney to the top cover to draw air through the components. Running temperatures are now excellent, but I've probably over-killed the problem a bit. I haven't had any more self-saturation trips from this router.

On the continuous thermal duty of my router before modification - all I can say is that it was very poor, around 15 hours to self-saturate with maximum exhaust temperature of 36 degrees C, against a background ambient of 18 degrees C. (Temperatures inside the box were a lot hotter with poor air-flow draw and the 2-2.5 mm plastic case is a great thermal insulator, locking heat in).

It's something else to check if you get through the other points on the list I referred to earlier. I only fixed my router when I'd ticked all the other points on the checklist okay. Having said that, some of these factors are variable states, such as ISP broadband speeds, or whether your router allocated port is testing open, so you need a sign-on/sign-off checklist really of all the variables you need proved and allocated before you start downloading a torrent file. You'll find it easier to spot problems and changed states in variable factors beyond your control, and it'll help narrow down trouble shooting to specific issues.

Cheers

oh there's a bit more background I posted here, when I was having this problem :

http://forum.transmissionbt.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8054#p40260