net.max_halfopen defaulting to 500 in last few updates?

[GetOutOfBox]

So I've noticed that my router has been occasionally experiencing episodes of packet dropping and found that my net.max_halfopen setting is defaulting to 500 in utorrent (I uninstalled+deleted settings and reinstalled the official stable version, tried hitting reset, and it's definitely the default). My understanding is that setting it higher than 50 is unnessesary (as it does not effect download speed, merely how many inactive connections can be held at once, as well as how many connections can be in the process of initiating at the same time) and beyond 100 is absolutely pointless and ends up putting unneeded stress on the network. 500 is absolutely ridiculous; that means that you could literally have hundreds of open but inactive connections (the peer did not notify your computer that it was disconnecting, but it has stopped responding usually from a torrent client crash or a network issue somewhere between you). It makes sense to allow a few slots for non-responsive clients as intermittent network issues can cause a healthy connection to momentarily break; you want to pick up from where you left off if possible. But it should really only need to be about 10% of your global max connections setting at most, and I personally set it lower (60 half-open for 800 max connections).

 

Any idea why it's been set this way?