Utorrent, Bittorrent Experiences And Why So Slow

[livinthailandos]

I do realize this is very useful for downloading like linux distros, tv shows, movies, software, etc, I have utorrent, vuze and have tried and to be honest I am not impressed by it, speeds are always well under 90Kbps, downloading is very long. I have maxnett 2mb premier

TV shows ( would it just be faster to use a VPN and just connect to the website hosting the show and stream the video or will that still be to slow )

Linux Distros ( I wouldn't even waste my time with bittorrent on this, by using downthemall (firefox extension download manager ) I am always able to get 210 kbps or more when downloading the ISO.

Software ( never downloaded any from bittorrent sites so dont know, anything I can find from softpedia, cnet, sourceforge, works for me plus then I still use downthemall )

Movies ( I dont really use most of the time I just watch at the movie threature. )

anyone else give me some ideas maybe I'm not using utorrent right or something else. Also can you provide your experiences on using these applications

[beano2274]

Maxnet is slow for International sites, that is well known.

I use utorrent and am registered with thebox.bz for programmes from the UK. I download movies and stuff from Mininova.org

[MKAsok]

anyone else give me some ideas maybe I'm not using utorrent right or something else.

You're probably connecting to torrents with too few seeds, or seeds that have capped their upload or else are otherwise maxed out upstream. If uTorrent is correctly configured, you should always be able to max out your connection downstream on a decent torrent (assuming no shenanigans from your ISP - I've just noticed you're using Maxnet who do apparently throttle BT traffic. Make sure you have outgoing encryption forced). Try this. It's a link to Open Office and should max out your connection very quickly. If it doesn't, see this guide.

[lothda]

True 5Mb ADSL (4Mb international) gives me 400kB+ on locally seeded torrents and well over 100kB for well-seeded international torrents. Using utorrent. Be sure to enable DHT, local peer discovery and peer exchange. Be aware that while this will increase the download speed if the torrent allows DHT, part of your download will not count towards your ratio if you use a torrent site that enforces one.

Edited June 14, 2009 by lothda

[filingaccount]

Contrary to what is being said here. Disable DHT.

Force encryption and allow legacy connections.

Limit your upload speeds. Maybe 17 KB/s is enough.

Limit the amount of seeds and peers both on the Global setting and per torrent setting. (I have mine at 250 global and 100 per torrent).

Make sure peer lacy bitfield is enabled in the advanced settings.

Also enable allow same IP.

Make sure your max half open connections is changed (XP SP2, is default 10. Increase it if you have not). Set the half open in utorrent to a value less that the XP SP2 limit (eg. XP SP2 is set to 250, then utorrent should be 249 or less. I prefer 250 in XP2 and 100 or a number around in utorrent). This enables more peers to connect quicker to you and still enables you to surf fairly unimpeded.

These settings work well for me, I make no guarantees it will work on any other connection but mine. Trial and error seems to be the only way to get it right.

Edit: My TOT 2 Mbps connection always gives me 150+ KB/s with the above settings.

Edited June 14, 2009 by filingaccount

[nikster]

You can do a lot of tweaking in the settings but honestly it's usually just about the #seeds vs peers.

If there's 200 peers and 100 seeds, it will be slow. If there's 200 seeds and 100 peers, it will be fast, maxing out your line eventually.

The only worthwhile thing to play around with is encrypted connections - set it to only allow encrypted, and to not fall back. That way your ISP doesn't know you are torrenting, and can't limit your speed. Though in my experience, Thai ISPs have given up on that, at least TOT doesn't do it anymore.

It's not about international bandwidth - you get around that particular limitation with any program that opens multiple connections. Download managers and torrents are therefore unaffected. You get your normal domestic speed for those.

BTW - I wonder sometimes why my torrent is so slow. Then I usually just torrent a recent episode of one of the more popular shows to test line speed, and it's usually maxing it out. Inevitably, its about seeds vs peers again - sometimes Mininova shows the wrong numbers, e.g. they'll say there are 100 seeds and 20 peers (good) when in reality it's 97 seeds and 500 peers (bad). So check the ratio in your torrent program.

If you have more peers than seeds than the only thing that can make your download faster is uploading more. So increase your upload limit to be just under what your line can support. That is if you have 512Kbit upload from your ISP, limit upload to 40KB/s. If you don't then your upload will starve your downloads. So be sure to not set it too high.

Jeez, after reading all this, I have to admit torrenting is a bit of a science

Edited June 15, 2009 by nikster

[raro]

I usually have plenty of downloads parallel, so if some downloads are slow, others are fast and overall I usually max out my bandwidth. I do not really care which download arrives first as long as something is downloading.

[dolphinlion]

I do realize this is very useful for downloading like linux distros, tv shows, movies, software, etc, I have utorrent, vuze and have tried and to be honest I am not impressed by it, speeds are always well under 90Kbps, downloading is very long. I have maxnett 2mb premier

TV shows ( would it just be faster to use a VPN and just connect to the website hosting the show and stream the video or will that still be to slow )

Linux Distros ( I wouldn't even waste my time with bittorrent on this, by using downthemall (firefox extension download manager ) I am always able to get 210 kbps or more when downloading the ISO.

Software ( never downloaded any from bittorrent sites so dont know, anything I can find from softpedia, cnet, sourceforge, works for me plus then I still use downthemall )

Movies ( I dont really use most of the time I just watch at the movie threature. )

anyone else give me some ideas maybe I'm not using utorrent right or something else. Also can you provide your experiences on using these applications

I use Vuze for all my torrents. The biggest problem with the internet in Thailand is connection speed, mine varies between 256 and 1024. Numerous calls to TOT have proved useless as they will not admit that they have a bandwidth problem among other things. I have been told that my modem is no good (D Link) to having too many computers on the same line (is ONE too many?). Every time a different TOT rep was here to "check the line" there was a different "excuse" as to why my connection was too slow and why it would cut out after every rain storm. And each time they would "guarentee" that I had high speed. So I kept a log of the different speeds and showed it to them, the reaction, total silence. One day it cut out when they were here and there was lots of phone calls and talking but in the end it was the same result, "wait two more months for good connection", I replied that they also said that to me over six months ago.

So after trying all sorts of settings I downloaded a little program called cFosSpeed. That program almost doubled my download speeds for torrents and at the same time I can now surf the net as before I could not use Vuze and surf the net at the same time.

Internet connnection speed will not improve in Thailand until they replace all the old wiring with modern high speed cable. We will all be gone long before that happens as no one is willing to take responsibility as to what is REALLY wrong the the internet in Thailand.

[Plus]

Tweak the settings, for me, just out of the box, set SSL on and don't forget to configure your router to open your particular port. But that's on True, on Maxnet you might need to tweak something else.

Linux distros are good for checking your speed, they should max it out easily, and you don't need to download them completely for a test.

Torrents are good for pirated stuff, but that's outside Thaivisa duscussion rules.

[filingaccount]

Seed to peer ratio comments

It's not always necessarily true that a high peer number and a low seed number gives you low speeds.

Simplified example:

There is 1 seed and 100 peers, and lets assume the torrent has been seeded to 50%.

So when you jump into the mix as a peer you will see high speed until you also reach 50%. At 50% you are then limited to how big the bandwidth is of that lone seed.

This happens due to the fact that up until 50% you do not have one seed, you have 101, because everyone is seeding it.

There are a few more variables, but this explains the basics of torrents and why you should most of the time (99%) max out your connection.

[raro]

Contrary to what is being said here. Disable DHT.

Force encryption and allow legacy connections.

Limit your upload speeds. Maybe 17 KB/s is enough.

Limit the amount of seeds and peers both on the Global setting and per torrent setting. (I have mine at 250 global and 100 per torrent).

Make sure peer lacy bitfield is enabled in the advanced settings.

Also enable allow same IP.

Make sure your max half open connections is changed (XP SP2, is default 10. Increase it if you have not). Set the half open in utorrent to a value less that the XP SP2 limit (eg. XP SP2 is set to 250, then utorrent should be 249 or less. I prefer 250 in XP2 and 100 or a number around in utorrent). This enables more peers to connect quicker to you and still enables you to surf fairly unimpeded.

These settings work well for me, I make no guarantees it will work on any other connection but mine. Trial and error seems to be the only way to get it right.

Edit: My TOT 2 Mbps connection always gives me 150+ KB/s with the above settings.

you're my man! Thanks!

[sniffdog]

Stop being cheap and pay for it ... get rapidshare. Always fast downloads (224Kbs on my 2Mbs) 24 hours a day.

Be sure to use a Download Manager.

[Plus]

Can you search or browse for stuff on rapidshare?

[MKAsok]

Seed to peer ratio comments

It's not always necessarily true that a high peer number and a low seed number gives you low speeds.

Simplified example:

There is 1 seed and 100 peers, and lets assume the torrent has been seeded to 50%.

So when you jump into the mix as a peer you will see high speed until you also reach 50%. At 50% you are then limited to how big the bandwidth is of that lone seed.

This happens due to the fact that up until 50% you do not have one seed, you have 101, because everyone is seeding it.

There are a few more variables, but this explains the basics of torrents and why you should most of the time (99%) max out your connection.

This is true. Leechers are also partial seeders. It's also not true that you necessarily need many seeders to get high speeds, particularly on private trackers where seedboxes are far more common. In the below example, the leecher's being served by 2 seeds. Me, and another, who I suspect is a seedbox. You can see I'm hitting him at a mere 8.5kb/s, whearas his overall download speed is 589kb/s. So he's being hit by the seedbox at around 580kb/s...

Can you search or browse for stuff on rapidshare?

Yes, Filecrop is excellent.

[sniffdog]

Can you search or browse for stuff on rapidshare?

No, neither on 'torrents' ... just like torrents you have to go to forums and link sites to get the links of files uploaded to Rapidshare.

In order not to wake up a mod, I won't disclose the names of these sites but googling will help.

Edited June 17, 2009 by sniffdog

[Plus]

I checked Night at the museum 2 on filecrop - it seems like a poor version of usenet, and you have to do everything manually.

Do they allow any free downloads?

>>>

Oh, and it gave me "Due to a violation of our terms of use, the file has been removed from the server" error.