Bittorrent deciding not to work?

[quickblaine]

Hi

recently (past couple of days) my bittorrent downloads have got slower and slower to the point that in the last few hours they have completely stopped. I've spent the whole day on google, forums, bittorrent help sites trying to figure out whats up, and cant seem to fix it. first i thought it was the torrent I was downloading, but I've just tried another brand new torrent with loads of seeders and thats not working either. I've tried everything router-wise, I've forwarded all the right ports, and right now am even using some thing in my Belkin wireless router that means my mac is completly exposed to the net, it the hope that it helps. transmission is saying the port is open. I normally get dl speeds in bittorrent of around 20KB/s, which from the impression i'm getting from forums, is still pretty slow, especially since my internet has a download speed of 520kbps.

Sorry for being so painfully noobish, but can anyone offer any help or an insight into whats up?

Thanks,
Ben

[kingofthescreen]

Before I begin I am in no way an expert.
Couple of things that might help clarify:

(1) What client are you using? - If you are using azureus one thing that might have happened was the tracker went down and azureus is using its distributed database to continue to share. I have noticed when this happens that the speeds are usually less that before and will often diminish the longer the tracker is down.

(2) What torrent site are you downloading from? - A public tracker will generally give you lower speeds than a private one. That could be the reason why you aren't maxing out your connection. Also use the following page to set your max up and down speeds as well as number of connections. http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Good_settings#Good_settings_based_upload_speed

(3) Who is your ISP? - If you haven't already, try a torrent from a different site. If that works then it is most likely a tracker problem. If not your ISP might be blocking torrent traffic. Try encrypting the traffic using one of the guides on the following page: http://torrentfreak.com/how-to-encrypt-bittorrent-traffic/

Good Luck!

[circusset]

I assume that you had good speed before and it is just recently that things are sucking.

Have you tried rebooting - macs don't need it often but sometimes it helps

You can also try a different port - if your ISP is slowing or blocking things it is usually port specific.

You could also give Azureus a shot - just to make sure it is not Transmision that is causing the problem.

[washounce]

some isp's like comcast limit their p2p activity. you can take a look at this for more info

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,18323368

also, is this affecting both downloads and uploads?