Improve BitTorrent Download Speeds

[yingjai]

my adsl can normally download at ~150kb/s and upload at 45-50kb/s.. i already changed the port settings to the one recommended and limited upload to 30kb/s.. in my ABC client, it is still saying it's uploading above the limit on the bottom right corner.. and i have 25 torrents running and my download never gets maxed.. usually downloading at ~100kb/s right now.. what's wrong? can symantec corporate antivirus affect the download speed with it's autoprotect setting? is bittorrent safe enough to turn off antivirus?
i'm using the newest Yet ABC client btw.. 2.6.9

[hoopplaya4]

I am currently using Azureus, and have port forwarded all the ports. I am trying to download on port 60996. The max i can get is anywhere from 20-40 kbps. I also fixed the firewall on SP2. However, I am sitting on a 3 Mbps line, and I would like to max out its potential. PLEASE HELP!!

[Malicious Intent]

yingjai - 25 torrents is way over the top. Have three running maximum. ABC forces a download rate of 3kbs per torrent minimum, but that is only half your problem if you have that many torrents!

hoopplaya4 - you only need to forward port 60996 - not the standard ports or the ports I use.

You both need to read and use my asking for further help guide at the end. Niether have told me enough.

[vebcaster]

Hello everybody.

After spending hours, if not tens of hours, reading faqs and forums, and heading slowly, but surely, towards nervous breakdown, I concluded that I am amongst the oh-so-many unlucky users of bittorrent who cannot get the download speed to a reasonable level. I decided to post here, in hope that maybe, just MAYBE, someone can help me get on the right track.

First of all, my setup:

Windows 2000, SP3
ADSL modem connection, and then hardware router
Shareaza latest version client (tried Azureus, got the same problem). Plenty of sources for each torrent. I tried many torrents, and many trackers.

I will put all the sizes and speeds in KBytes, not KBits. I made sure that all the speeds from all clients are in KBytes, both by checking with the program settings, and by watching the sniffer, and by simply timing the download.

I am pretty sure I set up ports correctly.

On normal (http download via IE) i get very good speeds (for my connection), 70KBytes/s and even more, from servers worldwide. However, on the bittorrent network, my speed rarely exceeds 2Kbytes/s and most of the time is it is just ZERO. It goes to 2KBytes for about 3 seconds and then back to zero sometimes it gets to ~200Bytes/s, or even (really) 1Byte/s. I once saw 30Kbytes, for about five seconds, but that never happened again.

I tried many various settings for both upload and download speed limits, the result was the same, I might as well not have tried. Shareaza CAN upload to users, and sometimes it does, but at the same supersonic speed (2Kbytes/sec).

Nevertheless, it CONTINOUSLY sends and receives packets. My sniffer shows it has ~25 inbound connections and ~25 outbound connections, on which shareaza CONTINUOUSLY sends and receives very very small packets of 1Byte-10 Bytes in actual payload size.

I REALLY don't get it. I understand (from reading the posts) I am supposed to be patient, so I was. I waited for hours and hours, my torrent downloaded some 2% of the 500MBytes, and on other torrent, with wich I was even more patient, I have some 15-20% complete of ~500MBytes. Some smalled torrents (~60MBytes) were even downloaded completely, but it took very very long time. For a normal HTTP download, it would have been a 10x (at least) faster download.

On DC++ I often get 10KBytes/s download speed, and upload speed is also pretty good (14-15KBytes). Bittorrent, by design and by the nature of the protocol used, is SUPPOSED to carry MUCH higher speeds. I must be doing something wrong, though I am unable to realize WTF that is. My patience is running out and I really don't want to uninstall the program, but I will if I don't get it to work, and soon (I am not threatening anybody :-D ).

Thank you for your patience reading my post. I assure you I DID read every post on every related forum and every FAQ I could find, and these were not few.

Please try to help me.

Thanks and Regards,
Gecko Pointdexter.

[hoopplaya4]

I would like to download faster than 40 kbps.

I am connected through a D-Link Router. (Not Wireless). On a 3 mbps line, cable. I am using Azureus, through port 16881. I have the green happy face showing. I have forwarded that port, 16881, on my router and in the windows firewall. That did help speed it up from 20 kbps.

I have no software running, like Norton, etc... I am using Windows XP, SP2, and am the person using BT. Is there anything else I could do, or have I done everything possible?

[Malicious Intent]

vebcaster - thanks for all the information, but you haven't mentioned the health of your torrents. I can only really provide help with ABC and Azureus. It is strange that your upload is so slow. Have you tried to change the listening port?

hoopplaya4 - the aim of this guide is to get green faces. I don't know from then on - sorry. Perhaps someone else will be along, but dont hold your breath. It has been pretty much me and a few fanboys for the last 6 pages!

[vebcaster]

malicious intent, thanks for your quick reply. please tell me what do you mean by the "health" of the torrents.

changing the port - I tried, to no avail. I pretty much tried everything. Azureus worked just the same (very slow uploads and downloads) - and I tried everything on azureus also. I don't get it. IT WORKS, users cand download from me, i can download from users, it just DOESN'T WORK well.

thanks,
Gecko Pointdexter

[Malicious Intent]

Health = the whole green and yellow thing that my guide is based on.

[yury1854]

Is there any way to get good speeds with BT if you CANNOT (for some reason) open up ports in the firewall?

Like using some sort of proxy/ghost client on another machine to interact with the network.

[Paktu]

I am currently on a university residence hall network and at first had problems with yellow faces and NAT errors. I then tried setting my port to 5190, which is what AOL Instant Messanger uses, and it works great!

[r3ko]

I was getting really slow speeds with bt, so i downloaded Azureus to check if i had any NAT errors, which i do. Well i went through your guide but i am still getting errors. I tried opening up lots of different ports with my router and testing them, but still no good.

I am on wins98se and my computer is on wireless connection with a linksys router.

i am out of ideas.
r3ko

[bigevil]

i use azureus WinXP SP2 i dont have a router,firewall.i have disabled winxp fireall and ICS.i port scanned using grc.com all ports are reported as closed but i still cant download at more than 20 KB/s upload is faster than download 30 KB/s.I connect using LAN my true download speed is 100KB/s and upload is 45KB/s i did a speed test at dslreports.com.i cant find a solution to this problem.i always get a yellow light.i checked the ports using azureus i got NAT Error

PLEASE HELP

[YWD67]

I use:
BIt Tornado
High Speed Broadband Cable (get as much 350 KB/s on download, but the average is 180)
Xp Windows with out that last new Security crap MS put out.

[poindextermatic]

I am using Azureus with a 512 connection, I tried your advice and changed to listen port 16881 instead of just 6881. I found dl speeds much slower even after a few hours, and yes I allowed the ports in my firewall....so I changed back to good old 6881 and everything is fine again...
????(confused)

[WhiteyT]

I have a LinkSys BEFCMU10 modem hooked up to a Netgear WGR614 v4 router. I have forwarded ports 6881-6889 to my static IP address and am not using any software firewall including the XP firewall. I am using the Azureus bittorrent client and have a GREEN light.

I am a Comcast 4/384 subscriber.
I have tried 4 different cable modems.
I have tried 2 different machines.
I have tried hooking up my PC directly to the cable modem.
I have tried hooking up my freshly formatted laptop directly to the cable modem.
I have tried all kinds of port ranges and I have never gotten a NAT error.
I have tried tweaking every possible option in all the different bittorrent clients and 20 kbs download is the fastest I have gotten.

It seems as if my peers only send me data at about 2kbs each for a short while. Is this a problem that can be fixed?