BitTorrent on WIndows XP SP2

August 23, 2005 10:14 PM

When I use BitTorrent on XP SP2, Windows "limits the number of concurrent, incomplete outbound TCP connection attempts" and (I think) slows me down, because they might be coming from a "malicious program". How can I stop it doing that and make it treat me like a grown-up? Is it in the registry somewhere?
posted by Mephistopheles to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

It's a driver limitation, and it's built into the driver itself. I'm unsure where it is, but there was a site that offered a download of an unhindered dll.
posted by angry modem at 10:24 PM on August 23, 2005

Best answer: try here?
posted by juv3nal at 10:50 PM on August 23, 2005

Response by poster: related question: netstat.exe tells me that BitTorrent is using some other ports than the ones I asked it to, for a few of its connections. These are roughly in the range 1000-1400. Why might it do this?
posted by Mephistopheles at 10:50 PM on August 23, 2005

Response by poster: Ooh, looks good.
posted by Mephistopheles at 10:51 PM on August 23, 2005

Response by poster: I think I get the weird port numbers too: those are the connections that are "locally initiated".
posted by Mephistopheles at 11:11 PM on August 23, 2005

If they're outgoing connections, your client is simply connecting to the other peer at the port they specify. Your port is for inbound connections.
posted by neckro23 at 1:57 AM on August 24, 2005

Note that this feature of SP2 does nothing to limit the number of outbound connections, only the number of HALF-OPEN outbound connections. There is a big difference. The limit only applies to connections where the SYN packet has been sent and no reply heard yet. This happens when you try to connect to an IP address that is not listening, or is filtering you. And you have to work hard to try to simultaneously connect to 20 non-listening addresses. A lot of hubbub has been wrongly made out of this non-issue. The way to know for sure if you're running into this is by looking in the event log. If you don't see any messages there, then this is irrelevent to your case.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:12 AM on August 24, 2005

Best answer: I found this to work wonders. 10 times increase in speed on popular torrents.
posted by aaronh at 8:39 AM on August 24, 2005

Response by poster: I was getting errors in the Event Log, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered. I'm not anymore.

I'll try the Azureus thing, too.
posted by Mephistopheles at 9:08 AM on August 24, 2005