Slow download on utorrent 2.0.02

punkinbee59 · 17 Jul 2010

I have Win 7 home premium, am using 1.5 mb internet speed, had my firewall accept the program

I"m trying to download 4.13 GB of a TV series and the download was so slow I thought I'd have to wait til next week to get it all LOL

as of now it's been 4 hours and I"m at 40.9% with 68-70 kb download speed. And I do have the green dot to tell me my network is doing fine

I didn't start the program as admin as a friend of mine installed this program for me.

I had the disk cached reading turned off, and it barely upped the speed.

I have Firefox 3.6.6 if that helps....

I'm used to IP address/ports from dial up years ago, but with high speed internet from Qwest, I'm not so familiar with that...

can't think of any info to give out so hopefully this will be enough?

suggestions/advice most welcomed!!!

punkinbee59 · 17 Jul 2010

I need to mention that opening up programs or browser slows it down. I've turned pretty much everything off..

after all this upgrades you'd think the speed issues would have been worked out??

edee · 18 Jul 2010

Torrents do not work like regular downloads , when you use a torrent client you are essentially downloading from other computers who can control the upload and download speeds .

The download speed of your torrent depends on a couple of different things :
1.) The amount of people seeding ( uploading ).
2.) The speed of the upload by those people.

So if you are only downloading from a few or couple of seeders your download will more than likely be slow and take a while , for instance when I seed a torrent when I am away from my system I will normally turn the upload rate to unlimited but if I am surfing while seeding I normally turn my upload down to 20 to 30 kb sec because the seeding interferes with my surf speed .

So you see you cannot expect your ISP's download speed while downloading torrents , it just does not work that way .

severedsolo · 18 Jul 2010

Standard Disclaimer: I hope your downloading only Legal Torrents, otherwise we can't help you.

Ok now thats out the way, I'll answer your question.

First: Have you got Utorrent set up correctly? The "Setup guide" seems to always set the upload speed too high. Click Options>Preferences and go to "Bandwidth" you need to set your "upload speed" to: (max upload speed)-10%. if you dont know your upload speed go to Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test and then times the upload result by 1000, then divide by 8 to get your upload speed in KB.

I would also recommend turning "net_calc overhead" to true (in Advanced under Preferences). otherwise overheads cut into the "breathing room" that it needs. (Technical explanation, it needs a little upload to download, so that it can confirm its got the packets)

There seems to be a bug with Utorrent 2.0.2 where if you have your download speed set to "unlimited" then it doesn't download properly. this seems to be most prevalant when net_calc overhead is set to true To fix it do the following:

Under "Bandwidth" set the maximum download speed to the most you can get, (again using the same formula as upload)

Next: check whether your ISP "traffic shapes" this means that P2p connections get low priority, so you will see slower speeds at peak times.

Lastly: It may just be a slow swarm, if you have everything set up correctly (as outlined above) and your ISP isnt shaping you, then try downloading something like Ubuntu via torrent: Ubuntu homepage | Ubuntu

If Ubuntu doesnt max your download within 15 minutes, and you are CERTAIN that your not being Traffic shaped, then you have a problem.

Hope it helps.

pyro · 18 Jul 2010

from my experience with the torrents just check the listening port try to check if these ports are open in ur modem or not if not u can open the range 6881 to 6889 in the modem and choose one to set it up in utorrent it might help. Plus i agree with edee not all torrents are fast downloaders.

logicearth · 18 Jul 2010

uTorrent displays its download and upload speed in Bytes (upper case B). However, when talking about network speeds bites is used (lower case b). At most on your 1.5 mb connection you might get to a speed of "180 KB" in perfect conditions. However, perfect conditions are rarely perfect especially with torrents. Your 68-70 KB is already pretty close to your max throughput.

In all honesty, your connection is slow to start with.

severedsolo · 18 Jul 2010

pyro said:

from my experience with the torrents just check the listening port try to check if these ports are open in ur modem or not if not u can open the range 6881 to 6889 in the modem and choose one to set it up in utorrent it might help. Plus i agree with edee not all torrents are fast downloaders.

The Listening Port is obviously open, because he has the green tick in the Status Bar, Utorrent gives you a big red exclamation mark if it isn't open.

Just for reference, you can actually open ANY port with Utorrent, it doesn't have to be one of the "normal" ones (ie 6881-6889) as long as it isn't a "standard" port for something else, (for instance Port 80 is HTTP or Web browsing traffic)
I for example, use port 100 because my ISP monstrously traffic shapes anything on port 6000+

If you want to double check your listening port just in case, open utorrent and then go to http:/www.canyouseeme.org and put the port number in.