Use MiniPEXT as Operating System facilitates better Torrenting?

[panthera]

Hi,

I am using MiniPeXt 2k5.09.03 from - Digiwiz at www.thecavernforum.com as operating system. I connect through

ADSL modem at 256kbps via Realtek RTL8139/810X Family Fast Ethernet NIC and I use uTorrent. My PC is P4 3.2GHz 512MB ram.

At 256kbps I can download at 90MB\hr (28KBps) average speed giving 69MB\hr of real data on disk. I can simultaneously download 25+ torrents at a time.

I would like to know whether I can improve on this and if so how?

Thanks

[Ultima]

Running at your speeds, you should NEVER allow that many torrents to run simultaneously... Firstly, allowing so many torrents to run simultaneously creates overhead, which will suck up a large portion (if not, most) of your speed. Secondly, your upload speed will have to be divided among even more than 25, and that makes you a totally useless peer to anyone trying to connect to you, which in turn will make you lower on their priority of peers to share with.

No matter what operating system you use, it absolutely cannot overcome these limitations. Run the Speed Guide to select the optimal settings.

[panthera]

Hi Ultima,

My settings are : (for my connection of 256Kbps)

Global Max Upload - 22KBps

Global Max Download - 0KBps

Global Max No. of Conn. - 130

Max No. of Conn. Peers or Torrents - 70

No. of Upload Slots per Torrent - 3

Max No. of active Torrents Up or Download - 2

Max No. of active Downloads -1

Enable DHT network and for new Torrents

Enable Peer exchange and scraping

Enable uPnP port mapping

Protocol encryption Disabled - outgoing

With these settings I get :

Active Torrents 11 out of 22

Download speed - 23KBps

Upload Speed - 21KBps

DHT - 250 nodes

Green light in my status bar - Network OK

Question : Can I get better with other settings ?

[Ultima]

11 torrents active out of 22? Are you sure? Did you force any?

As for your settings... it would seem 256kbit isn't your upload speed, but your download speed... you have to select the right upload speed in the Speed Guide. If you don't know it, test using the DSLReports thing (be sure not to use your connection for anything else while testing).

[panthera]

I did the test at adslguide.org.uk to get following results :

Download 211Kbps

Upload 213 Kbps

In Speed Guide settings in uTorrent the three closest speed settings are :

128 Kbps

192 Kbps

256 Kbps

So which should I choose ? I had set it to 256 Kbps uptil now.

Also my Show Statistics tab under uTorrent Help section shows Total Upload : 6.03 GB and Total Download : 6.72 GB

and Total Running Time of 100:30:18 giving UL/DL ratio of 0.89

[Ultima]

Everything seems alright, I guess. But the part that's still confounding me is the 11 torrents active out of 22... there shouldn't be that much.

[panthera]

That is where Operating System comes into play. I just cant run so many torrents in WinXP. It crashes the PC. In MiniPExt I can add as many rorrents as I like!

Advantage of having many torrents running is that if one is not available another which is available starts making full use of bandwidth available. Not all torrents are like open office which is fully seeded and available all time.

I cant find a way of pasting the screenshot in here else I would have done so.

[Firon]

I've never had any problems running large amounts of torrents on Windows XP... If it crashes, you got broken hardware or drivers.

[Ultima]

Indeed, you've got some other problem on your hands if you can't run a lot of torrents without Windows crashing. Read what I said above, changing operating systems will not decrease TCP/IP overhead, so even if you're able to run more torrents simultaneously, you're just wasting your time trying.

[panthera]

My statistics :

Running uTorrent :

Outlined in Red :

1. Green Light and DHT enabled.

2. Download Speed in uTorrent.

3. Download Speed in DUN.

4. Upload Speed in uTorrent.

5. Download Speeds of 11 Active Torrents.

8. Operating System MiniPE2-XT.

9. Number of Active and Inactive Torrents.

[Ultima]

Firstly, this MiniPE2-XT is apparently a reworked version of Windows, so technically, you're not using another operating system. Secondly, you still haven't read my post, or bothered to understand it. But whatever, if you don't want to believe me, then yeah, your settings are fine, you can just waste your bandwidth on overhead communication.

[panthera]

MiniPE2-XT is a Live CD version of windows which does not require any installation on hard disk.

It boots and runs off a liveCd.

I have yet to experience a crash in it!

[Ultima]

I know it's a modified version of Windows. That doesn't make it able to bypass TCP/IP overhead... (I feel like a broken record -.-)

[panthera]

Tried to calculate how much overhead was actually incurred :

I got 18.5 MB extra per 100MB data download.

Is that too much or what?

A typical 8hr session shows 675 MB download traffic and 510 MB upload traffic on DU Meter and gives 550 MB data on disk

[Ultima]

That's hitting the limit of how much overhead should be. Besides that, having 11 torrents running while your absolute max down is 32KiB/s means each torrent gets an average of 2.9KiB/s. Not very useful to have 11 unfinished torrents as opposed to 2 complete and usable, another 2 running, and 7 in the queue ready to be run (for example). I'm not even going to get into how thinned out your upload speed would be per torrent, as it would be depressing. Notice how a bunch of your torrents are uploading at 0KiB/s? At that point, you're just a leech in the swarm.

[panthera]

Thanks Ultima,

Using your settings I was able to reduce overhead to alnost zero, however bandwidth utilization also reduced to 65% from 96%.

At my measured speed of 211Kbps (ISP advertised 256Kbps) I should get download traffic of 90.5 MB per hour.

Any suggestions?

[Ultima]

You can never reach your absolute maximum because of some residual overhead that will always be there. Besides this, BitTorrent was never made to max out your connection, so it all depends on the swarm. Anyway, try a faster torrent, like OpenOffice.org v2.0.2 w/ JRE (104MB) or Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake Beta 2 Desktop CD. If they can nearly max your connection, you should be fine.