Clarify : What "update tracker" does

I just did a survey through the forum contents for solutions after running into speed problems and tested out the settings suggested.

With Singnet as one of the most malicious ISPs, I tried my best to reshape my data. Now I always have a disabled DHT and a constant yellow status symbol. Without a UPnP or NAT nor LPD and a forced encryption, I now can't seem to connect to any of the seeds in the swarm (the peer numbers in both S & D are still not zero.)

Though I have to keep manually unbanning the torrent, there was a question which this situation caused to come into my mind and I would like to clear up my answer.

Does updating the tracker only update what peers( S & D ) are connected to in the swarm or does it "refresh" your connection to the swarm so that it may help to connect more peers to you?

After doing a search and reading several messages in this forum, my understanding is that the "update" only updates the tracker about your own status. We have no control over "pulling in" or how fast we want to "attract" more peers to connect to us.

Correct me on this and/or point me to a source to read up if necessary.

Thanks in advance.

We have no control over "pulling in" or how fast we want to "attract" more peers to connect to us.

With the exception of making good and damn sure you can accept incoming connections.

So I presume that regularly trying to update the trackers doesn't help in trying to get more peers connected (not looking at the issue of data shaping and conservative settings). But I noticed that lately my status symbol has started to turn red. I have to restart UT to get back my yellow status again.

It doesn't, and all it does is put needless strain on the trackers.

Connecting to more peers doesn't help with getting better speeds.

Since tracker updates are *NOT* encrypted (unless doing them through a proxy, VPN, or they are HTTPS trackers), each tracker update you do is just informing your ISP what ips to throttle/disrupt/block! Doing updates more often...will likely only make things WORSE.

If uTorrent is not firewalled, then peers/seeds can connect to you...and you should get more connections that way. Do note that your ISP's crippling may also get MORE aggressive as you get more connections!

Have you also disabled Resolve IPs (right-click in PEERS window of a torrent)? That should make things a little faster.

Yes I have already disabled Resolve IPs and stopped updating the trackers regularly before reading your reply. But speeds still remain at an occassional max of 10kB/s. I noticed I get many peers with "d" flags (choked downloads?) than "D"s and more "U"s. Thanks for your insight.

Your ISP is to blame...

http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=58465

They are probably using the undersea cable problems (which are probably fixed by now) in the recent past as an excuse to continue crippling your line to a severely slow level.