Performance Issues with Qwest DSL, Actiontec 701 & µTorrent

[radium]

Yesterday I switched from EarthLink to Qwest DSL. Before the switch, µTorrent 1.5 worked very well and didn't degrade the performance of other applications accessing the Internet. The Earthlink DSL connection was capped at 3Mbps/256Kbps and the hardware consisted of a ZyXEL Prestige 645M-UHP, ADSL modem connected to a Linksys WRT54G router. My Windows XP Home SP2 PC was the only device connected to the router, which was used as a firewall, the only one other than Windows' built-in firewall. The µTorrent incoming connection port 50264 was TCP/UDP forwarded in the router. Everything worked great!

Qwest supplied me with an Actiontec 701 wired DSL modem to use with their service. Since I understand that this device is also a router, I replace both the ZyXEL and Linksys with the Actiontec, which resulted in the recommended Qwest configuration. My Qwest DSL service is capped at 3Mbps/640Kbps. The only modifications I made to the Actiontec setup where to add an administration password, set the firewall to Medium (the lowest setting that passes all the GRC Shields Up!! tests), and to TCP/UDP forward the µTorrent incoming connection port 50264. The only change made to the µTorrent setup was to change the connection type from xx/194k to xx/512k based on averages from dslreports.com speed tests.

Here's the issue: with the Qwest setup described above, µTorrent 1.5 significantly degrades the performance of other applications accessing the Internet on my PC, a Dell Dimension 8400 with a 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 processor and 1 GB of RAM. Initially, with µTorrent running, applications like Firefox 1.5.04, IE 6, Outlook, MS Money, etc can access the Internet, though the speed of Firefox and IE are noticeably reduced. Over a time period of approximately 30 minutes, Firefox and IE stop responding: new Firefox tabs don't display anything and clicking on links in already rendered pages doesn't provoke responses. At no time does Firefox or IE complain about not being able to reach a server or find a page. Even the Actiontec setup page can't be reached by either Firefox or IE. After 30 minutes, applications like Outlook and MS Money do complain, first that there is a problem with either the network connection or the modem, with messages that the applicable server can't be reached after that. While all this is going on, µTorrent continues to download and upload files. The differences between Earthlink and Qwest DSL that I've noticed so far are that Qwest µTorrent downloads are slower, that most but not all download arrows are red, and that it takes significantly longer for the DHT indicator to go from yellow to green when µTorrent starts up. Qwest µTorrent uploads are always at or near the µTorrent settings.

Exiting µTorrent restores the Internet connectivity and performance of the above applications in a few seconds, without restarting the PC. If µTorrent is restarted, the connectivity and performance problems start over just as described.

Qwest Technical Support was contacted. They remotely verified the DSL line and rates and noted a few warning messages while the Internet performance degraded, though they didn't think the warnings were anything to be concerned about. However, when the word "bittorrent" was first mentioned, the tone of conversation changed. I was informed quite flatly by the representative that bittorrent is not supported by Qwest, their residential service is intended primarily for email and Web browsing, the demands of bittorrent downloads probably exceed the capacity of the Actiontec modem (I can download and upload directly near the caps), and that I was on my own in regard to this issue.

I'm hoping the Qwest Technical Support is wrong and that this is a problem with either the Actiontec 701 or µTorrent settings. I'd like to keep the Qwest service for the faster upload speed and because it's $10/month cheaper than Earthlink. Does anyone have a suggestion? Thanks in advance and sorry for being so verbose.

[Switeck]

DHT's UDP packets may just be a bit much for the modem-router combo.

Or you may not be getting quite as much upload bandwidth as you think.

It may be the extra connection load, even more than the speed increases, that cause the slowdowns that you are experiencing.

Or Windows's XP's half-open connection limit has been reset by a recent update.

[radium]

Switeck,

Thanks for your reply. I checked your last observation first since it was the easiest to verify, and sure enough, the half-open connection limit had been reset from 80 to 10. This was sloppy on my part: I should check the limit after every batch of MS updates and will do so from now on. I followed the recommendation in the TorrentFreak article "Speed up Bitcomet and µTorrent" and set the limit to 100.

That article also recommends that upload speed be set to no more than 80% of the measure maximum. I re-ran several dslreports.com speed tests and got a very consistent 527kbs +/- 12kps for this connection. The µTorrent connection type has been set to a less aggressive xx/384k based on the recommendation and speed tests.

The result is that µTorrent download performance has significantly improved, all download and upload indicators are blue and green, and the DHT indicator goes from yellow to green in a shorter amount of time.

Next I'll see if the other issues have been resolved. Good calls and thanks!

[radium]

That was it. I've been hammering the Internet connection now pretty hard for five hours straight with µTorrent, direct downloads, Outlook, IE, FireFox, etc. So far all applications have been rock solid with no Internet connectivity issues. It looks like Qwest and the Actiontec 701 will stay for awhile...

[Switeck]

Good to hear. I've been starting to wonder with all the posts if there was something more insiduous causing problems with µTorrent than the usual suspects (the ones I named).

[knyte]

hey radium i'm running into the same situation as you

if i leave the bittorrent client off, i won't have any issues, such as staying connected to trillian, ventrillo and world of warcraft, but once the client is on, i would get frequently disconnected

my service is verizon and i have an actiontec modem/router combo (gt704wg)

any suggestions on how to fix this?

[Switeck]

kynte, try reducing settings using Speed Guide (CTRL+G) and reduce your half-open connections in µTorrent back to their default...or even as low as 4!

[radium]

knyte,

Sorry about not getting back to you sooner; when I'm not having issues with µTorrent I don't check this forum and I forgot to suscribe to this topic.

If the guidence Switeck gave you helped, so much the better, if not, I've noticed that the performance of my Actiontec 701 does degrade over time. Not in the time frame of minutes as described in this thread, but in hours and in days. If the speed gets annoying enough, powering down, waiting a few seconds, and then powering up the modem restores download/upload speeds. Qwest has been totally useless in diagnosing this problem.

The people in the forums over at BroadbandReports are totally down on Actiontec modems/routers. At some point I'll try either to configure another brand of modem to work with my Qwest service or try to configure the Actiontec for passthrough mode in conjuction with a seperate router.