Torrents sometimes take very long to start downloading

[timsplitt]

When adding torrents to uTorrent, they will sometimes take anywhere form 5 minutes to several hours to start downloading. This is not due to lack of seeds, this happens to torrents with hundreds of seeds.

Within seconds of the torrent actually starting downloading (after doing nothing for a lengthy period of time), it can start downloading at several megabytes per second. I have tried this on both my home connection which is 20/20 Mbps, and on my school connection which is 1/1 Gbps, so I doubt this is due to lack of bandwidth. I am also way below uTorrent's connection limit.

I use no software anti virus (I am a big enough nerd to know that I won't get viruses or spyware) or firewalls, but I am hardware firewalled, but this doesn't prevent other torrents from functioning as they should. Even opening the torrent that has been stalling for an hour in uTorrent in a different bit torrent client can make it start downloading in the new client within seconds.

The torrents always manage to announce properly and get scrape data from the tracker, but that's where it ends for an extended period of time.

I'm running Windows 7 x64 and my settings are set to what the speed guide thread on this forum suggests.

All advanced settings are set to default except the following:

bt.allow_same_ip - true

bt.prio_first_last_piece - true

peer.resolve_country - true

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[DreadWingKnight]

Screenshots of:

Preferences - Queueing

Preferences - Bandwidth.

[timsplitt]

Queueing: http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/5783/queueing.png

Bandwidth: http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/1977/bandwidthi.png

I have tried to set the max active torrents much lower previously, but it had no effect. Out of all the torrents I seed, I rarely have more than 50 connections spread out over 5-10 torrents. Most of the torrents will probably only be active a few times per year.

[DreadWingKnight]

Your queue settings are obnoxiously retardedly high.

Try with 5 and 5.

[timsplitt]

According to Switeck's setting chart, I should be fine with 100/40, and even if I have hundreds of inactive torrents seeding, should that really give me these connection issues? All the majority of them would do is announce every 42 minutes, and to me it seems like that would be some very insignificant bandwidth on a 1 Gbps connection.

Anyway, is there any way for me to be able to seed hundreds of inactive torrents while still being able to instantly start new torrents, or will I have to pick only one?

[DreadWingKnight]

The problem is caused by the fact that your global connection limit gets exceeded far before you run out of active torrents.

Turn the queue numbers down.

[Nog69]

I see this question coming up a lot in this forum and others, and nobody has ever answered it in a way that actually works. Well I have figured it out. I've been experiencing this problem for years with uTorrent, and recently realized that (in my case, at least), it is happening whenever I have a large number of torrents that I'm seeding; several hundred at least.

In this case, whenever I want to start a new download, I have to STOP all the seeding torrents first. Allow the new downloading torrent(s) to connect, and then restart all the seeding torrents. After restarting, the new downloads will retain their connections and the seeds will connect for uploading, as if there was never a problem.

This works every time, regardless of the number of torrents I'm seeding. I've tested this with as many as 1200 active seeds, and get 100% positive results. Everyone else who has ever given advice about this problem, such as changing Bandwidth, Queuing, Connection, or other preference settings, have just been throwing out wildly inaccurate guesses (trust me, I've tried them all in every conceivable variation). This is clearly a resource limitation within uTorrent, that no setting changes will correct, but this method works. Try it!

[DreadWingKnight]

That tells me your connection limits and active torrent limits are horridly wrong for your connection.

[Nog69]

I have done some more experimenting and found the real source of the problem. The culprit here is TPB torrents tracking in the same client (uTorrent) as private tracker torrents. When I shut down just my TPB torrents, this problem completely goes away. Doesn't seem to matter how many TPB torrents; as long as there are any active ones, they interfere with private torrent trackers starting up and staying connected. My bet is that most others who are having this problem, are seeing it on their private trackers as well. If this is the case, then try this. It worked for me like a charm.

I am a member of 3 private tracker sites, and there doesn't seem to be any problem with any of them playing together in the same uTorrent client. Only when I mix TPB torrents with them. I know this sounds very weird, but it's true. I tested this in several dozen variations of different trackers, and all results pointed to TPB torrents as causing the problem.

So, to deal with TPB torrents (which I'm not ready to give up yet) I installed another torrent client, and manage all my TPB torrents in a separate app. The 2 apps running at the same time chew up a pretty good chunk of system resources, but it works. When I need some overhead, I'll temporarily shut down the 2nd client.

Try it out and post a reply to let others know whether or not it worked for you.