Still seeking advice on hash fails

As one who seems to experience an inordinate number of hash fails I keep trying to determine the source. I am quite certain they are not intentional due to the torrents I run and often knowing exactly who is sending them to me personally and we all find it aggravating that they occur.

Something I have found happening when they seem to be happening in great number is I notice that at the same time I experience time outs when pinging, google, hotmail, or even my DNS. If I allow ping to run I notice a time out occurs at least once every 10 to 20 pings. Could this be a sign of where my hash fails originate, and if so what might I do to have it corrected?

I've complained to my ISP several times and they always tell me they see no problems, and I even got them to replace all their equipment, which did eliminate my disconnects and having to relogin frequently, but the hash fails continue as previously.

Do openoffice torrents (http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/index.html) have hashfails as well?

If they do not, it is likely a case of the torrents you're choosing to download are being poisoned by anti-p2p groups.

In an earlier post I noted that downloading a Linux torrent also produced numerous hash fails on occasion, And I'm certain I can eliminate the possibility of any poisoning of the particular torrents I'm running. In fact I had been running a torrent of my own, seeding to 3 peers, and 2 of the peers have stopped DL'g from me due to hash fails while the 3rd has had none at all. I had also been running another torrent as a peer and have experienced no hash fails on DL data. So currently it appears that my UL data is being corrupted to 2 of 3 peers, and my DL data is not being corrupted at all. This makes things even more confusing as if I am to suspect my ISP having involvement I would expect all 3 peers to be getting has fails. I've been fighting with this for some time now and it just seems to become more confusing as I discover more. No answers, but numerous new questions.

I originally complained about the large number of pieces being queued which really escalates the number of failures causing many innocent peers to be banned, but Firon says nothing will be done about the queuing process so this just remains a monumental problem for me. Using another client I can eventually determine which peers to ban in order to ease the problem, but that client uses an inordinate amount of resources, and creates some other problems for me. This problem causes gB's of data to be discarded so I would really like to find some solution or means of reducing it's effect. Oh, and one other thing is the peers that I ban in order to reduce or eliminate the fails, usually can later be allowed back with no problem as it seems the problem comes and goes.

Thanks for your time to answer.

What's your half-open connection limit in µTorrent? And what's windows set to?

How many connections do you allow?

Is DHT enabled?

Do you have a wireless router?

...or a D-Link router?

...Or a USB ADSL/Cable modem?

Do you have a software firewall installed, such as Norton firewall or Zone Alarm?

All these tend to cause problems, some (D-Link and Zone Alarm) more than others.

For my country

same client (bitcomet)

same torrent + tracker

same time (20.00-22.00)

same modem

different ISP

One has none hashfailed, Other TONS hashfailed

not try with uTorrent yet, but I'm sure because ISP (one has static IP, other has dynamic IP with proxy)

I think ISP proxy may send and recieved noise data. that cause hash failed.

------------------------------------

Torrent with many seed+peer may cause a lot of hash failed. Try another small one.

I'm not sure what half-open connections is, and haven't found an option defining it, but I have global maximum connections set to 100, and maximum connected peers per torrent set to 25 currently, and have played around with both numbers previously with no noticeable effect. As for windows, I have not done anything to change any settings as I wouldn't know where to change them.

DHT is currently Disabled, but I have run with it Enabled with the same results.

I have previously used a router, both wireless and wired, on one computer but am not using it presently. I have tried connecting both computers direct to the internet with no difference in the results on either computer.

One computer is running Zone Alarm firewall, but the other which normally is never connected to the internet, my 5 year old daughters, has no firewall at all, nor any other add on software, just plain vanilla Windows XP-Pro, and a few childs games, mostly educational.

I've even tried uninstalling Zone Alarm on my computer, which is no easy task and that too had no positive effect.

Additional findings, unsure if this bears any connection to the problem): I notice if I ping -t any web site I get an occasional timeout. Sometimes I can let it run indefinitely with no timeouts, and other times timeouts occur randomly. I don't know if that could have any relation to my problem or not, but it doesn't seem to affect browsing the web.

have u tried to... i dunno, connecting a laptop or a friends PC instead of ur current machine to see if it has the same problems?

I don't know which version of Utorrent you're using but this is my story. I tried more than 5 different bittorrent clients and everyone of them produced at least 1 "hash-check failed" torrent out of 3 and disconnect me randomly from Xfire. Then, about 6 months ago, I came across utorrent 1.5 which has the feature "Enable/Disable data scraping (or something like that,)" I disabled that. Since then I never had a single "hash-check failed" torrent. I also redownloaded many of the old "hash-check failed" files and they were completed without a problem... until I updated to v1.6 which "Enable/Disable data scraping" feature is no where to be found. So far, I have gotten 2 hash-check failed files out of 10.

Right now I'm scrambling around the web to find and reinstall utorrent v1.5. Still no luck, 15 sites that I've been to linked me back to this main site with v1.6, and all of the torrents for v1.5 are dead. Please point me to where I can get v1.5. Or did they rename "Enable/Disable data scraping" to something else and hide it in v1.6?

PS: Yes, I read the thread about you guys will not help people to find old version of uTorrent

Someone else's (working!) computer connected to your internet would rule out your connection.

Also try connecting your computer to a different internet connection to rule out the problem being "inside" your computer.

Nefarious - I've tried 2 separate computers already, using 3 different applications, with and without a firewall, one computer has never had a firewall installed, tried various options available with each application, and experience hash fails with both computers.

Pill_Clinton - I'm currently running uTorrent 1.6, with no change from 1.5. I don't see what association scraping could have in relation to hash fails. My hash fails run in the hundreds of mB's and occasionally exceed 1 gB. This, I have pointed out in a previous thread is a result of queueing a large number of pieces which allows many peers to contribute to each piece. As it appears that the corrupt data comes and goes if pieces are not completed in a timely fashion they may remain for hours awaiting 1 final 16kB block to complete and then fail hash check due to a block which had been sent long ago and the sender may not even be connected any longer.

I just noticed that utorrent 1.5 is available as a torrent posted yeaterday by MisterXindeed on demonoid's tracker.

Switeck - I've tried using my daughters computer, which had never been connected to the internet previously, and therefore had no firewall, virus check programs, or any other software installed that might conflict with a bit torrent client, just a few educational games and a drawing program. As for trying another internet connection, I have the only internet connection for many miles here as I am in a very remote part of the country, where electricity is no even available everywhere. I'm using a 2 way satellite connection. I've also had all my ISP's equipment replaced, and retested. And although clouds or rain can cause my signal strength to decrease, it appears that the hash fails can occur on a bright and sunny day and none at all during a heavy rainstorm when the signal is extremely weak. It appears that I can't find any evidence to support blaming my ISP, as with a large number of peers I might be communicating with all without hash fails, and then suddenly I might begin to get hash fails with many but not all and in some cases I know the sender and am certain that he is not trying to create bad data.

Actually, I feel this may be an unsolvable problem, possibly related to 3rd world access to the internet, and traffic flow to various parts of the world. As such I have tried to promote an interest in providing more ability to manipulate the program in order to enable a user to be able to lessen the impact of hash fails. Queueing seems to be one area that allows many failures to be set up long in advance which can only be cleared by often discarding 100's of mB's of suspect data rather than wait and see if each is corrupt. Good seeds and peers who only happened to be banned as they were one of the contributers to a bad piece also reduces the speed of a torrent as the fastest usually are involved in completing nearly every piece so they are quickly banned leaving only the slowest contributors and ultimately more, but slower appearing hash fails.

I'm now resolved that the problem is not one to be corrected and will just require much difficult manipulation of how I allow torrents to run. I'm open to any other suggestions as I've completely ran out of ideas.

try disabling outgoing encryption. It helped me (at the time...)

I've tried all options including that, and am more or less confident the problem has nothing to do with settings, hardware or software at my location. I feel the data is being corrupted in transit and there is nothing I can do to avoid its happening, and am just looking for a way to determine which peers are in the path experiencing corrupted data and then quickly removing them before they contaminate a large number of pieces.

Reboot slightly more often. Just restarting µTorrent should cause it to forget who it banned for hash fails.

Use an ipfilter.dat blocklist to ban "repeat offenders" that probably are sending out corrupt pieces on purpose.

I blanket-block the whole 38.x.x.x block simply because of past experience with them for example.

Even if your ipfilter.dat file contains only this, it might help slightly:

38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255

<munched by admin. don't link older versions. we don't support them>

"Switeck Moderator wrote:

Reboot slightly more often. Just restarting µTorrent should cause it to forget who it banned for hash fails.

Use an ipfilter.dat blocklist to ban "repeat offenders" that probably are sending out corrupt pieces on purpose.

I blanket-block the whole 38.x.x.x block simply because of past experience with them for example.

Even if your ipfilter.dat file contains only this, it might help slightly:

38.0.0.0-38.255.255.255"

Hi

I only started using P2P last night. Out of a download of 410MB I had 210MB worth of hash fails. Going on Switeck's advice above I eventually figured out how to use an ipfilter (there didn't seem to be enough info from the µTorrent faq on this, I didn't even know it was a third party app from quite some time). In the 90 minutes since starting the ipfilter I have downloaded 111 MB and the hash fails only lasted the first 10 minutes. The µTorrent logger shoes two ip's were banned and since there's been no hash fails.

I'm using PeerGuadian 2.

Before that my speeds would be totally choked down to like 2kB/s (I guess by the antip2p ips that were hammering me). Now it's floating from 15 to 40 ish. Restarting utorrent was getting the speeds back up but it would only take about 5 or 10 mins the choke it up again.

Dling 10 MB just in the time it's taken to write this. Tops.

Stumpredom

ipfilter.dat is not a 3rd party app. It is a part of µTorrent...you just have to fill it with data.

It's a text file, editable in notepad or wordpad just fine.

But getting a good blocklist can be hit-or-miss. Peer Guardian 2's blocklist (probably from bluetack) is generally overkill and may block lots of not-hostile ips...such as the one for "www.utorrent.com" for instance.