I am using BitTorrent to download files and given the whimsies of TOT it appears to work quite well.

Unfortunately I’m one of those guys that can’t leave well alone and have been Googling ways to improve my speeds.

I have opened ports in the 40000 area for my downloads but after reading loads of stuff it seems ports in the 60000 – 65000 area would be better as there is not so much traffic.

But if every Torrent user knows these higher number ports are faster would that not slow things down?

Should I stay with my 40000 ports that work quite well or change to a higher number port?

Daffy.

Every port above 49152 is okay. These are absolutely free ports. i.e. not used by any other program.

Petch01

Ports are not faster or slower.

Ports are simply a way to recognize what kind of connection you want to make. If you connect to port 80 on a specific IP address, the server knows you want to connect to the webserver. If you make a connection to port 110, the same server knows you want to connect to your mailbox using POP3.

The port you fill in in your bittorrent client is simply sent to the tracker, so the tracker can tell other peers that they can connect to your machine on that portnumber. And if that port is 8888 or 64321 does not make any difference in speed.

As Petch said, each program (read: service) uses a specific port number. Port numbers cannot be shared with other services.