How can I download torrents and still use my network normally?

May 4, 2006 9:54 AM

How can I use bittorrent clients without bringing my home network to a crawl?

Every week, I download one or two torrents with the uTorrent client on a Windows 2000 machine. Inevitably, web browsing is almost unusable on the rest of the network during this time. So, I usually do the downloading when everyone is asleep.

I've tried throttling the upload and download speeds down to, say, 10kbps, but the only way to get full use of the web browsing back is to shut down the client entirely. I'd rather not do this. The web isn't just slow (which would be understandable), it's unusable - the browser will time out trying to contact sites. Immediately upon closing the bittorrent client, everything goes back to normal.

What other settings can I adjust in the client? uTorrent has a wealth of options (Super-Seeding, DHT), but I'm just not sure what each one does.

How can I download more effectively?

posted by odinsdream to computers & internet (19 comments total)

What is your upload speed? Cap your BT upload to about 50% of that. Also how is your network set up? Are all ports forwaded if you have a router?
posted by Orange Goblin at 10:03 AM on May 4, 2006

There's a plugin for Azureus called "Speed Scheduler" that will throttle bandwidth use at different times of the day.

I run Azureus most of the day, setting the upload rate at approx. 60-70% of my max upload bandwidth (512kbit), and that seems to keep web browsing pretty respsonsive. If your upload cap is very low (like 128?) then you may not be able to use BitTorrent at all (without experiencing the slowdowns).

There's another plugin for Azureus that will tweak your upload on the fly in an attempt to keep pings to a preconfigured address below a threshold, called "Auto Speed". Both can be installed through the plugins menu of Azureus.

To answer your other questions, Super Seeding: http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/Super_Seeding

And DHT is a distributed database for finding peers/seeds for a given torrent. More info here: http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/DHT

I don't think either really are related to this issue.
posted by kableh at 10:04 AM on May 4, 2006

Adjust up and down bandwidth and max # of torrents. Up shouldn't be more than 75% of down.
uTorrent also has a handy 'scheduler', so you can set the max speeds to almost nothing during the day (or whenever you use the computer) and let it fly at night.
posted by signal at 10:05 AM on May 4, 2006

You can adjust the number of connections that the bittorrent client can make to leechers/seeds. It sounds like this might be the problem: the client is trying to maintain too many connections, and your browser is timing out.
posted by jenovus at 10:10 AM on May 4, 2006

Adjust the number of connections. See if there are firmware updates for your router. See if there are driver updates for your NIC.
posted by skallas at 10:21 AM on May 4, 2006

My network is a cable modem/VOIP box going into a WRT54G, which feeds a few laptops and desktops, both wired and wireless.

Bittorrent ports are forwarded to the desktop wired machine running uTorrent.
posted by odinsdream at 10:22 AM on May 4, 2006

What kind of firewall/router do you have? Some of them can't handle the number of simutaneous connections that Torrent clients typically use.

If limiting your upload rate to 50-75% of your max upstream bandwidth doesn't work, try limiting the "Global maximum number of connections" to 50-100 under "torrents" in the preferences. Reduce the Max number of connected peers per torrent to a number under the global maximum.
posted by Good Brain at 10:22 AM on May 4, 2006

I've had problems with the WRT54G dying once in awhile during heavy torrent use, but it's not terribly frequent. My old Netgear router was much worse -- I try to keep my upload rate aggregate to <1 0kb/s since my maximum cable modem rate is about 25kb/s. that plus the a href="http://www.lvllord.de/">EvID patch (plus Azureus or uTorrent) is a good setup.
posted by kcm at 10:33 AM on May 4, 2006

argh, it ate my < again. kinda. just keep your cable modem and router ventilated and not stacked on each other.. both can generate a lot of heat during heavy load like this. lots of connections means lots of processing. you could disable the stateful firewall on the WRT54G if you don't need it, etc.
posted by kcm at 10:37 AM on May 4, 2006

kcm, I'm using 2000 Professional, which I don't think has this TCP limitation, correct?

If the WRT54G is a "bad" router that can't handle the load, what's a "good" router?
posted by odinsdream at 10:39 AM on May 4, 2006

I have a WRT54G and it works just fine. Apparently newer versions of this router are in fact crap, but I think the issue here, as others have pointed out, is that you need to throttle your upload speed. Just set it to something like 30k and all should be well.
posted by chunking express at 10:50 AM on May 4, 2006

I've used the speed scheduler plugin and found it to cause instability. Since I kicked it to the curb I haven't had a single Azureus crash.

My roommate - who is a chronic online gamer - and myself - addicted to tv downloads - have managed to come to peace with each other through the QoS option in the WRT54G bios replacement (SveaSoft, : Alchemy-V1.0 v3.37.6.8sv). It took some setting up but was worth it - not one complaint from him about lag since.

Under the applications&gaming tab/QoS I added these to services priority:

bittorrent: bulk
gnutella: bulk
bearshare: bulk
skype: premium

I could have added other stuff to premium but it hasn't seemed necessary. SveaSoft has newer bioses that cost money (unless you find them through another source) but this earlier free one has been fine for us. I'm even able to SSH into it from here at work and open a remote desktop so I could look up those settings....
posted by phearlez at 10:50 AM on May 4, 2006

You want to use a non-Linksys BIOS if possible - it all depends on what revision of the WRT54G you have.

If your router will support it, DD-WRT is very popular, and has lots of documentation.
posted by lowlife at 11:08 AM on May 4, 2006

If it's bandwidth, then it's upstream that's the problem. But 10kbps should be throttled down enough to solve the issue. That's why folks are suggesting other things, like number of connections. What you should do is throttle everything down as low as you can get it, see if there's still problems, and if not then slowly move up each parameter one at a time.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 11:13 AM on May 4, 2006

You could try a different torrent client - I haven't had problems with BitTornado taking over my router/cable modem. Can't hurt to try it.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:14 PM on May 4, 2006

You might check windows' Event Log (under Administrative Tools) for the '4226' EventID ("TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts..") - Perhaps it's not the bandwidth that's choking your web-browser, but a shortage of available connections?

I'd say it's probably the router, though - you could verify by connecting the Win2000 box directly to the modem..
posted by unmake at 1:09 PM on May 4, 2006

Limit your connections on your torrents, I've found that consumer routers top out at 255 connections, after that, it's a crapshoot. If you limit each torrent to say, 50 connections, and max of 200, you should have less problems.
Also, there is a QoS option in the Linksys menus, where you can set the bitorrent port to low priority. I've got this combination running at home, and usually my browsing is just fine (occasional hiccups, but nothing a stop-start of the client won't fix, maybe once a month or so).
posted by defcom1 at 1:39 PM on May 4, 2006

If there's a router outside your computer with bandwidth shaping then use that. They can prioritise HTTP vs P2P traffic.

If you don't have a router/firewall outside your computer you could make a m0n0wall box.
posted by holloway at 3:26 PM on May 4, 2006

After years of playing with these things, I now use this. It actually works, and astonishingly well.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:26 PM on May 7, 2006