bittorrent limited to 20% download speed

[capr]

Hey so I am playing on my new 100mbps connection and am downloading the largest, fastest file i could find that was legal. openSUSE dvd image. http://software.opensuse.org/121/en

Problem is, the download speed is only about 20-25% of my maximum potential. the file starts downloading at 10MB/S and then the speed drops to 1.2-2.8 MB/s... I don't get it. why would this happen? I have ran tests and know that my isp isn't limiting bittorrent activity. If i use the direct download link, i get 8MB/s...

is there a setting with utorrent? I am no expert with torrents and everything is set to whatever defaults the setup guide chooses for me.

i shoudl mention that there isn't much uploading going on and there is nothing else using the network.

[nominak]

You probably need to port forward your router for utorrent.

[rvbfan]

Who is your service provider.

They could be traffic shaping.

[capr]

it's not a port forwarding issue, I looked into that. I am connected to 40+ peers just not downloading very fast.

My provider is not doing anything to my bandwidth. I used the extensive tests here http://broadband.mpi-sws.org/transparency/bttest-mlab.php?

I have also asked them and they said they don't do traffic shaping for any reason.

[nominak]

Maybe that torrent is just slow.

[Azusa]

Yeah i think it may be the torrent cause with me it hit 6mbs(max) then went down to 100kbps.

[primexx]

try ubuntu or microsoft's servers. or even download the adobe master collection trial with the adobe downloader

[Muhammad Farrukh]

The torrent seems to be a slow one.

Try another download and see what the speed is

[TEX4S]

Let me know what you find. I rarely see above 5 MB/sec - only get about 4 - 4.5 MB/sec in Steam & about 2.5 via http.

Just to be sure of your connection - go to MySpeed Visualware & see what you test @ It seems to be a little less flaky as opposed to speedtest.net

[ReDFoX2200]

Most ISPs now have traffic shaping (and they will never tell u they do that), and mostly that is the case with you :)

there is an encryption option (in your torrent application settings) so ur ISP wont detect that ur downloading torrent, give that a try.

Also try Half-Open Outbound TCP Connections, I know vista is only 10 connections (not sure about W7)

Edit: Half-open port limitation is removed with windows vista SP2, (so mostly it wont be there in W7).

[capr]

My speed visualware returns the same results as speedtest.net. I tried downloading the ubuntu torrent from their website but the file is too small to show results. It starts out strong at 10MB/s and drops to 5MB/s but not all the way down because it finishes within seconds.

This speed is of course the reason I don't think my isp is shaping my traffic. further, did you look at the link i posted? http://broadband.mpi...ttest-mlab.php? this thing basically tests your isp and tells you if your bandwidth is being limited in any way. I tried getting 5 different torrents to download at the same time to see if they will cap my connection but they all slowed down just enough so that my overall download speed was 3.1MB/s...... also forcing encryption didn't help much. I have the same speed fluctuation that leads to a slow overall speed in the end.

[c3ntury]

Who is your service provider.

They could be traffic shaping.

This. Either that or it's the torrent your using.

Try downloading a reliable torrent (e.g, the ubuntu ISO), which you know has thousands of seeders available, and see what happenes.

If it is traffic shaping, then perhaps look into Usenet or perhaps a VPN.

[+BudMan MVC]

"If i use the direct download link, i get 8MB/s..."

You understand that your going to be limited by SENDING speed right??

Doesn't matter if there are 1000 seeds, your not going to connect to all of them. And there is OVERHEAD with torrents, And the seeds only send at a certain speed.

So you download ubuntu in seconds and your complaining? The DVD which what 1.5GB?

You can not take 100mbit and /8 and think your going to see 12.5MBps down -- you don't even see that on lan transfers. For starters you never actually get 100mbit, high 90's etc..

So what does your speedtest show exactly, and what are you uploading at during these torrent downloads? What is your upload speed? There is a ratio you want to set for best downloads, if your not sending fast enough peers will not send to you as fast as they can, etc.

With peers you have ###### for tat in upload/download with seeds you don't so you really want to be connecting to seeds for BEST download. The number of which matter and the total number of connections you have set matter, etc. etc.

So you have run through the setting wizard for your speeds and settings? What were those settings?

[capr]

for the open suse download I am connected to 67 peers right now. my upload speed is set at 5600kB/s but that torrent doesn't really use more than 100kB/s upload stream. I am not expecting 12MB/s but I would like something around 9 at least. the thing that's making me think twice is the fact that the limitation is always around 2-3MB/s.

the suse torrent downloads at 2.8MB/s on average. I run 3 instances of it and you would think this would almost add up but that's not happening. I am getting about the same 2.8 average overall download speed.

oh and budman I know you are gonna comment on the 0ms ping. people brought it up in my other tread a week ago when I had just gotten the connection setup. I pinged my gateway like you said, here is the result. I don't know how to make cmd show milliseconds.

C:\Users\capr>ping 216.243.60.1

Pinging 216.243.60.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.243.60.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=254

Reply from 216.243.60.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=254

Reply from 216.243.60.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=254

Reply from 216.243.60.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=254

Ping statistics for 216.243.60.1:

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),

Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:

Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

C:\Users\capr>

[+BudMan MVC]

Well that is Freaking Screaming connection! Windows ping doesn't show less than 1.

Do a traceroute to the server your testing against, and we should see if your ping should be <1 the whole way. As I brought up in the other thread, I doubt the server you speedtesting with is connected to your gateway ;)

Ok lets do the math 95.37/8 does not = 12, sorry! Close but not 12, not take into account the overhead of moving a file your never going to see even 11.92MBps in p2p with that connection. There is just too much overhead with it to say you can actually fill your pipe. Your getting replies from other peers, How many actual connections do you have going - look at your router for this state info, if not on your machine running utorrent. Can your router actual handle the number of connections without getting into trouble? What router do you have?

As to your upload vs your download, if you mostly working with torrents that have lots of seeds you wont see much upload since everyone pulls from the seeds vs peers. With seeds there is no ###### for tat, they have the whole thing they don't you need you to send them part of it, etc.

2.8 is about 23Mbps -- maybe that is what your isp lowers too after specific amount of time? Do they do any sort of speedboosting crap like comcast? So on speedtest I see like 25Mbps, but sustained transfers it lowers to around 16Mbps

Are you using encryption on your settings? Maybe its a limitation of the software on your computer, writing to disk, etc. Someone would have to do some testing with local only seed since the speeds your talking are lan speeds - I with I could test with you, but I just don't have that kind of connection to figure out what could be the bottle neck.

It could be the number of connections you are doing and your router just can not handle it fully.. When your downloading take a look at the peer tab and how fast are you pulling from each seed, which one is your fastest, etc.

If I get a chance this weekend, maybe I will play with a local seed of some large files and see what I can get across my gig network to see what could be causing bottlenecks, etc.

edit: Double check to make sure you didn't put in a download limit in your client when you went through the setup guide. Also your not running any QoS or limiting on your router - quite possible misconfiguration of QoS could limit your download max. Also keep in mind that just because you show your connected to 67 seeds does not mean your actually downloading from all 67 at once, and then your speed is going to be limited to how fast they send, etc. etc.

How long are you taking to download in time?? Maybe these are just too small of torrents for you to actually get to your max speed. Torrents can take a few minutes to work out everything and get really going.. So if you only downloading say 1.5GB and your hitting 2.8+ out of the gate ans spiking to 8 or 10 for a few seconds, etc. maybe just not enough time to get to cruising speed?

Post up your speed graph for a full download of a good linux distro with lots of seeds, etc.

[capr]

I will post the traceroute test later as it's a side note. I just downloaded an ubuntu distro and have included the graph. unfortunately the download lasts a few seconds and isn't enough to show what I am claiming here.

This download shows that there are no accidental download limits setup and the client and disk and router can handle the speed and connections. the router is an e4200 linksys which promises to handle this sort of thing.

I enabled encryption but it's not forced so I am getting the msot number of peers. I am allowing legacy incoming connections. uTP bandwidth management is enabled and UDP tracker support is enabled. DHT network is disabled. UPnP and NAT-PMP port mapping are also enabled. I don't know what most of these mean but it sounds important.

here is the graph, if you want to tell me to shut up and stop whining after seeing this I will understand.

Here is the graph of a different download that also has many healthy seeds but lasts longer and you can see the speeds drop to around 4. If i had a bigger file I would show you how that works.

[+BudMan MVC]

dude from that first graph you doing like 11,000 KB or 11MBps there -- So I have to ask WTF, thats pretty freaking screaming as high as you could expect to see with your speed.

And the other one peaks up to 9.6MB.

You really really need to read a bit about how BT works, do you actually expect it to instantly jump to your full pipe and then sit there at MAX speed until done?? That first graph is like a picture perfect you could not in a million years ask for anything better in downloading from p2p. And it pretty much maxes out your pipe in what less than 60 seconds.

Your speed is going to come down to how fast and how many seeds what and can send to you.. Torrents are not going to work like a download from one source that has unlimited upload pipe. Its not going to work like you doing a file copy from server on you lan, or ftp server that has 100Mbps upload and your the only client.

You are clearly SCREAMing down and reaching your download speeds.. And your speeds are going to flux from swarm to swarm on how my seeds/quality of said seeds, number of peers, etc. etc.

I really don't see any reason to complain from what I am seeing.