uTorrent possibly freezing WiFi

[Ayson]

Hello everyone. First post here. I have been using uTorrent for about 6 years now, but never really required to ask for assistance from the forum till now. Please help me with the following.

I have been having some WiFi related problems, which I have narrowed down to uTorrent. Since I was initially not sure what was causing the problem, I had first posted in another forum, but the person who was helping me there freaked out after reading the word 'uTorrent' and stopped posting any replies.

Here is the original thread:

http://www.sevenforums.com/network-sharing/267140-limited-slow-no-access-laptop-wlan.html

which I have summarized here:

Hardware:

Laptop ASUS A8E with Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN and Realtek Ethernet

ADSL modem + router TP-Link TD-W8961ND

Desktop with Atheros Ethernet

Both PCs running Windows 7 Pro.

uTorrent 3.2.3

Problem: Laptop - Router wifi network freezes 8-10 after minutes of use.

Details:

Post 1 (At this point, it was a general problem, I had not thought of uT)

I used to have a Netcomm NB6+4W modem + router and that was problem free. Now, the laptop, after connecting to the network, cant access the internet when set in PPPoE mode, cant dial when set in bridged, can't see the homegroup, or share files, keeps disconnecting, cant open the router config page, cant use remote desktop, . . . . . and most surprising, if I try to hibernate, the screen goes blank as usual, but then it just waits, and waits, till I switch off the router, then it continues to save to disk and go off. I have tried 802.11 g+n, b+g+n on the router. If the laptop is restarted or the router wireless de-activated and then activated, the problem goes away. But everything goes wrong again about 15-20 minutes later. The laptop basically keeps loosing the wifi connection randomly, but it says 'connected' in the taskbar. I can use the desktop ok, and so I have internet access and access to the router config from there.

Router firmware is newer than the one offered on the website. Router was purchased less than a month ago. On the router I have set strength to low, but even on high the problem persists. The laptop is about 5 metres away from the modem, and says 'excellent' signal. Wireless driver was updated. I was using WPA-PSK/WPA2-PSK ; AES, then I tried unsecured and now im back to AES.

Post 2 ( I still hadn't related problem to uT)

When this jam occurs, and as it is stuck jammed, the desktop, connected via lan cable, and phone connected via wifi, does not experience any problem with internet connectivity. So the problem is specific to the laptop. This frequent disconnection is so very irritating. I can't do anything (wifi related) on the laptop without it getting stuck every few minutes. I did start in safe mode, but it did not help because I need some thing that uses the network constantly for about 15 to 20 minutes to see whether the network is jamming. There is no other indication, ie. it says 'connected' in the taskbar, and its MAC is listed in the modem page even when it is jammed.

(slowly getting to uT)

Using my desktop, I played a movie via remote desktop, from the laptop. No other programs were running on the laptop and there has been no jam for 20 minutes. I closed remote desktop, and tried reopening and it is still working. During problem times, the remote desktop usually looses connection pretty often.

I think the problem program is uTorrent. My ISP offers unlimited transfers between 0200-0800 and i have set up uTorrent to transfer only during this period. It is during this time that the freezes mostly occur, after u torrent has run for about 8-20 minutes. BUT the freeze occurs at other times too. I googled 'utorrent freezes network' and the like, and found that when u torrent exceeds a certain number of connections, some routers tend to lock up. I don't know whether this is what im experiencing, since my router doesn't freeze, only the laptop-router link freezes, as I mentioned earlier with the desktop and phone. I kept remote desktop open for about 20 min, with utorrent running, but not transferring, and no jam.

The absolute max internet speed i get is about 190kB/s down and 70kB/s up, so, even at full speed, utorrent cant possibly saturate a 87-144Mbps wifi connection, I hope. When the jam occurs, there is no data transfer taking place to/from the laptop. The status bar in u torrent shows 0.0 kB/s up and down. At this point, browsers can't open anything, remote desktop won't connect, I cant open the modem config page, and I cant see the laptop in the network from the desktop. Even if I shut down utorrent after this jam, nothing happens. The connection still remains jammed. I was using utorrent just fine, with my older modem that doesn't even have 802.11 n, no settings have been changed since in utorrent.

My problem is different from what I have found searching online, as in, my router is not frozen, as mentioned in the other threads, only the laptop - router link is. So im not sure if it is the uTorrent connections overload.

I did all of the following together after manually forwarding port. (I was using UPnP)

•Try lowering net.max_halfopen to 4 or lower (Can be found in Preferences > Advanced)

•Try lowering bt.connect_speed to 4 or lower (Can be found in Preferences > Advanced)

•Try disabling IP resolving in the Peers tab's context menu

•Try disabling DHT (Can be found in Preferences > BitTorrent)

•Try disabling UPnP and NAT-PMP (Can be found in Preferences > Connection)

•Try disabling peer.resolve_country if it isn't already set to false

•Try lowering maximum global number of connections to 200? 100? 50? Lower?

•Try disabling uTP? (Set Preferences > Advanced > bt.transp_disposition to 5)

But now my down speed was stuck at 20-30kB/s for more than 10-15 minutes, usual is 180kB/s, so I changed:

net.max_halfopen to 100

bt.connect_speed to 7

max global connections to 180

and got my usual speed. This time instead of 8-10 minutes, the laptop downloaded for about an hour at good speed, according to the graph, before jamming.

So please tell me whether uTorrent is the cause here, and then what settings should I follow. Thanks in advance.

[Kitsoran]

What version is the wifi driver? Does canyouseeme show your port open with the manual forwarding? What are your connection and queueing settings? What firewall/AV do you use? What ISP?

[Ayson]

Thank you for the quick post.

Driver Version: 13.4.0.139

canyouseeme.org: Success: I can see your service on <IP> on <port>, Your ISP is not blocking <port>

Under 'Connection'; only 'Add to windows firewall' is checked.

Under 'Queueing'; max active 4, max down 2

Under 'Bandwidth'; max upload 90kB/s, global max conn. 180, max conn. per tor. 80, upload slots per tor. 6, use additional slots 'checked'

I am using Win 7 with Avira Free, and ISP is BSNL, India. This has been the same for the past 2 years, and without problems.

Edit: I would like to repeat that

my problem isn't only that utorrent isn't downloading, but

that utorrent is also freezing my wifi.

[Freddie Chopin]

I'm having a similar setup (TD-W8961ND) and a similar problem - I discovered it with uTorrent, but it actually affects all high-speed net activities, so I guess it's not a problem of uTorrent...

In my case the problem is like this:

1. Previous modem/router (some really old Edimax) worked like a charm with torrent or any download - download speeds usually reached full bandwith, which was about 500kB/s - such speed was achieved after few seconds usually. Same is true for downloads of large files via internet browser

2. Current modem/router works completely different - whatever settings I use (of modem/router, uTorrent, network in Windows) the speed quickly "climbs up" to reach almost full speed and after a short while or high-speed (5s, sometimes 20s) it suddenly drops to ~50% (50kB/s) and stays that way forever, at the same time it's really hard to open modem/router configuration, websites work like via a dial-up modem etc.

3. If I stop the high-speed download for a few seconds and restart it, the whole situation repeats EVERY TIME.

I guess it has to be some problem with ADSL itself...

Have you got any luck solving your problem?

4\/3!!

[lovetour]

Freddie Chopin, I think they want you to start a new topic instead of "hijacking" an old thread. You can post a link to this thread if you think it's relevant. (I'll offer here that older routers cannot always handle extremely busy networks.. the issue is often simply overheating, reduce the number of connections uTorrent uses. Your case might actually be ISP throttling which is a complex issue. In any case, please start a new thread for more help.)