Strange utorrent problem

[qdave]

There is this strange utorrent problem i am having lately. Basically it kind of kills my internet...and links are extraordinary slow to load.

I know some people will say that i dl alot and it kills my bandwith, but it is not so(its slow even if downloads are 11kb/s). since i have 2 pc's connected to a router, and internet works just fine on the other pc. i've also tried limiting dl/upload speed and reduce number of connections and some other stuff but it doesnt seem to help.

any idea what might be happening?

[qdave]

hmm it seems nobody wants to help me :p

[Tristan]

I don't understand how your connection would be slow on one pc and not the other. How are they connected to the router? See what happens if your directly hooked up to the modem. What if you run utorrent on the other pc, will your connection sill crap out on the pc it's running on or both?

[SubjectDelta]

I get lag when trying to get on the net while utorrent is running, i try killing things that aren't necessary before hand and it doesnt do a whole lot, but it works a bit. i also get lag on my psp online and xbox live.

[Favorable7404]

You may want to try to increase your maximum number of half-open connections on the question machine.

[qdave]

I don't understand how your connection would be slow on one pc and not the other. How are they connected to the router? See what happens if your directly hooked up to the modem. What if you run utorrent on the other pc, will your connection sill crap out on the pc it's running on or both?

my boths PCs are connected to the router by wire. its not wireless. and my router is also a modem. or rother modem with router capabilities. utorrent on other pc doesnt realy affect much. i mean even if i have utorrent downloading at few kbs it takes 3 mins for page to load up.i would understand if it was downloading at 400kb/s. but now...strange stuff.

[SubjectDelta]

while utorrent is running and i try to load any page, like google, yahoo, or neowin...it only takes about a minute, sometimes less...but its a big difference compared to the rest of the time utorrent isnt running.

[qdave]

it seems that you have a similar problem :) the same effects are for ie/chrome. didnt tried ff yet. strangely but wheni try pinging google.com, the results are the same whether utorrent is or isnt running.

Also if i pause everything internet works well.

[SubjectDelta]

yeah, i stop or pause the download(s) if I want to get on the net. It's not that big of a problem, I just wish I could do both at the same time with no hassle.

[Kushan]

The problem is "half-open connections". What OS are you using? If it's XP, your problem is easily solved, if it's Vista, it's a little more tricky.

One small workaround is to go into uTorrents advanced options (Options > preferences > advanced) and lower the value in net.max_halfopen. It's probably currently at 8, try 4 or 5 and you'll notice an improvement, but it's not perfect. Ideally, you should patch your system to allow unlimited half-open connections (or at least a very big number) so this doesn't happen.

[qdave]

yes i use vista and that little trick doesnt really help. i dunno is quite strange since everything was working fine few weeks ago.

[Luis.A]

Lower your number of connections within utorrent ;) .That might help.

[+BudMan MVC]

The problem is "half-open connections".

Yes its quite possible that his issue is related to half open connections.

This would explain why the machine running utorrent is the only one seeing the slow browse issue.

But the suggestion to lower the amount of half open connections an application can create is not a work around -- it is the FIX.. Hacking to allow for unlimited half open connections is nothing more than masking the problem. Its like pulling out the check engine light when it lights up vs looking to why its on.

The FIX is to not open half open so fast.. Which can be set in utorrent, does not matter what OS its running on. Half open connections are pointless, they do not speed up your torrent, they do nothing but cause you to hit 10/sec limit. Which is the point -- if a user hits this limit they should notice something is wrong and investigate. Kind of a check engine light for possible infection on your machine doing something your not wanting your machine to be doing, sending spam, looking for other machines to infect, etc.. etc..

I would look to the event log to the machine your having issues with - are you seeing 4226 errors. If so then yes your opening too many half open connections.

As suggested lower the number in utorrent. You can view which applications are creating half open connections with a simple netstat -ano

This will list the connections, the PID of the process that is creating the connection. Anything connection showing SYN_SENT as its state is a half open.

[Kushan]

Unfortunately my good friend, that doesn't always solve the problem. It's possibly a bug in uTorrent, but the delays in loading normal web pages is still very much evident, even when the program itself is supposedly limited. I'm speaking from experience as that was my first thought as well. I remember having it limited to just 2 half-open connections in Vista and I was still experiencing problems, yet when uTorrent was closed, everything worked just fine.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with having more than 10 half-open connection, the only reason that's there is to prevent the spread of malware so quickly, but it's still going to happen either way so if it's a problem, you may as well patch it, but I wouldn't recommend the process for anyone that's not particularly tech-savvy, on Vista at least.

[cwpenner]

Do you have NOD32 installed? I had the same problem until I added an exception to uTorrent in the web settings in NOD32.

[+BudMan MVC]

the only reason that's there is to prevent the spread of malware so quickly, but it's still going to happen either way so if it's a problem, you may as well patch it

UTTER BS plain and simple -- You should not go F'ing with the tcpip.sys file PERIOD!

I agree the limit was put into place to help slow the spread of infections -- and hitting the limit will cause a SLOW DOWN of all legit traffic -- Which is why I see it as a Check Engine type light..

Sure the infections can still spread, and I don't think slowing the number of half open to 10/sec will prevent or even really slow down the infection all that much.. But it sure an the HELL will bring it to the attention of the user if they can not open websites, etc.

The FIX is to find out what is causing you to hit the limit, not some so called "patch" to remove the limit. There is no legit reason to create that many half open connections a sec. Will having more open cause your machine issues - no not if there is no limit. I agree with that point. But vs masking the problem - FIX it at its source!!

Utorrent is not the only source of half open connections, its the TOTAL that the machine has that will cause you to hit the limit - not just utorrent. Which is why the user needs to look into what else is causing them not just utorrent.

As I already stated a simple netstat -ano will show you all the connections that are in a half open state - and which process created them. If you have other processes creating them -- then sure utorrent could put you over the top and cause you problems.

If your not getting 4226 errors in the event log - then your not hitting the limit, and your problem is else where. But if you are getting them - then you need to figure out why and correct, not hack the tcpip.sys file to not have the limit. That is just asinine advice no matter how tech savy the user is!

I have torrents downloading and uploading all the time with utorrent - I have yet to run into this issue, and I assure you I have not altered my tcpip.sys file in anyway. Could it be a bug in the version of utorrent they are using so that it does not limit itself - maybe? A netstat will show this - and then you can look into why its not doing what its suppose to be doing.

But suggesting that they hack their tcpip.sys is BAD advice -- PERIOD!

[Kushan]

As you pointed out, it's 10 half-open connections system-wide, so who are you to say that users might not have a lot of traffic-heavy programs running that can cause general web browsing to slow to a crawl? As I mentioned before, I had the exact same problem with uTorrent specifically and all the checking in the world kept leading me back to that one program. Even other torrent programs never caused the issue, but sadly uTorrent is the bread and butter of the torrent world these days and apart from that one, teething issue, it's an excellent program, which is why I was happy to patch my system to up the connection limit.

Sure, you might say that the 10 half-open connections limit is good for indicating something is wrong with your machine, but there are better ways for ensuring your machine is running as it should and frankly, if you're savvy enough to know a few command line commands, then you're probably savvy enough to perform proper checks and not let your system get compromised. It's not ideal, but from my own experience, the connection limit gets in the way too much of regular, everyday programs, with uTorrent blatantly not helping. The only real harm from patching the file is that IF your system gets compromised, it'll infect a lot more other systems than usual, unless you mess up the file patching but these days that's quite difficult to do (unless you're on Vista x64, but that's a different story).

Still if that's how you feel, that's entirely your point of view, I can only speak from my own experience and I have already recommended that the people posting here do not do anything drastic unless they really know what they're doing, I can't really say fairer than that.

[mujjuman]

not sure if this might relate to you... but i had a similar problem.

i went on the utorrent forums and they told me my zonealarm is the issue. so i switched from zonealarm to comodo and everything worked.

[+BudMan MVC]

It's not ideal, but from my own experience, the connection limit gets in the way too much of regular, everyday programs, with uTorrent blatantly not helping.

Like what programs?? What programs are you running that would be trying to connect to IPs that do not answer? Ie half open?

I run/test lots of lots of different software -- and have never ran into this limit, other than trying to port scan something, etc.. And I have rarely seen this event ID - and it never has been any type of problem.

A tech savy person that really wants to remove the limit -- I am sure is savy enough to find out how to do such a thing on their own.. Suggesting to users that it might fix their issue is BAD ADVICE! For starters we are all working in the dark on the actual problem, has the user posted an output of netstat? Has the user even stated that they are seeing 4226 events?

No! Have they stated what they adjusted the setting in utorrent to Again no! So suggesting they hack their tcpip.sys is BAD ADVICE!!

They have stated "i've also tried limiting dl/upload speed and reduce number of connections and some other stuff" What is other stuff?

They state "that little trick doesnt really help" -- what did they set it too? Did they set it at 1? Utorrent will work just fine set at 1 even! Just takes a few minutes longer to get up to speed. Did they verify that utorrent is limiting how many half open it creates?

They also state "everything was working fine few weeks ago" Well a few weeks ago their tcpip.sys was not hacked! So why should they hack it now?

What they need to do is understand is are they hitting the limit or not?? Do they have 4226 error in their event log? If so -- then take a look at netstat -- how many open connections is utorrent making? Other software? etc.

For all you know they are infected with something that is creating half open connections -- suggesting they remove the limit will only allow the infection to spread faster -- and the user will just go about their business since they would no longer be noticing an issue in their machine.

[Stalwart]

There is this strange utorrent problem i am having lately. Basically it kind of kills my internet...and links are extraordinary slow to load.

I know some people will say that i dl alot and it kills my bandwith, but it is not so(its slow even if downloads are 11kb/s). since i have 2 pc's connected to a router, and internet works just fine on the other pc. i've also tried limiting dl/upload speed and reduce number of connections and some other stuff but it doesnt seem to help.

any idea what might be happening?

I had the same problem. I thought some program messed up with my settings, but I was on the wrong track. I know what I'm installing, configuring and so on. The discussed problem came on light 2 weeks ago at most. When uTorrent was running with a couple of torrents downloading I couldn't even open a web page. The same thing was happening also when I was only uploading. It was a little bit better (meaning a web page was opening for about a minute) when all the uTorrent torrents were on pause or even stopped). I was trying to figure what was going on until another person notified me for the same strange behavior of the i-net connection when uTorrent was running. We came to the conclusion that a tiny update of the program occurred at some point, which actually caused the uTorrent to kill the bandwidth. May be it's a bug, may be not, meaning that it can be some sort of bandwidth hijacking.

My advice - get BitTorrent, same interface like uTorrent, almost the same functions.

Good luck!

[xXTOKERXx]

Ill be honest i didn't completely read the thredd, so ifo this has already been mentioned then whoops!

What you need to do is set your download and upload limits (right click on them in the bottom right of your UI)

Set upload to 10 Kb and Download in respect to your connection speed (I have a 8Mb line and have my download set for 800Kbs)

I had the EXACT same problems as you and this sorted it all out, and increased my download speed.

Note Utorrent does not change immediately, it will need a few minutes too see if the changes have worked.

[Kushan]

BitTorrent IS uTorrent, it's the exact same program with a different branding.

[Stalwart]

BitTorrent IS uTorrent, it's the exact same program with a different branding.

Yes and no. Actually BitTorrent acquired uTorrent almost two years ago, because of it's lightweight and efficient user interface. That means (the old) BitTorrent is the core, (the old) uTorrent is the wrapper. But as I said the problem comes from the (new) uTorrent client, leaving (the new) BitTorrent the better choice for now.