Very slow Internet with DLing with BitTorrent (1 Viewer)

[Adam Sanchez]

Hey guys.

Got a problem I thought and hoped you might be able to help me with. I will try to explain my situation the best I can so I can hopefully get some input on what to do.

First my setup:

I have Comcast High Speed Internet in the SF Bay Area. I have a Linksys WTR54G (I think that's the number) wireless/wireed 56G router hooked up to it.

I have:

1. Desktop PC wired directly to the Router via ethernet. This PC is set up with a static IP address.

2. Laptop with automatic IP connection via wireless G.

3. Second Desktop in another room also on auto IP connecting with wireless g.

I occationally use Bittorrent to download files. I have some ports open for BT in my routers config to make downloads come through better. But the problem is when I download ANYTHING it brings normal internet broswing literally to a standstill. I get "the operation timed out when try to blah blah" messages." It affects all the computers, including the one I am downloading on.

At first I thought maybe the BT's are just taking too much of my bandwidth so I slow down the max download... but it did not help at all. The only thing that helps is stopping the downloads alltogether but I am of course trying to fix this problem so I can download AND surf normally.

One odd thing is I play World of Warcraft and even when I download, it doesn't affect the games connection or my latency at all. I dont know why that is.

I beleive my problem lies somewhere in my port forwarding, though I admit I don't know much about networking. It seems by having the port open for the BT program (azeureus) whenever that is "In use" it like shuts down all other access. I don't have any firewall active let me also mention.

What can I do to fix this? Would another Bittorrent app work better? I have only ever trie Azureus so I don't even know what else is out there. Do I have something set wrong?

Thank you for any help!

-Adam

 

[Patrick Sun]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=bit+torrent+client

 

[Rommel_L]

http://azureus.sourceforge.net/faq.php

 

[Mike Fassler]

azureus is about the best bittorent client there is,unfortunately even if you do have things set correctly, they arent always speedy.

 

[Adam Sanchez]

You guys might of misunderstood me. My INTERNET, as in web browsing is very slow when I have BT downloading in the background. No matter how much I limit the DL speed, it drastically affects my simple web surfing.

My BT itself is fine. I just mentioned wondering about an alternate client if that might help my problem?

 

[Francois Caron]

Just out of curiosity. Who is your service provider?

 

[Adam Sanchez]

Comcast. Could that make a difference?

Thank you for the replies so far.

 

[Jason Harbaugh]

The download usually isn't the problem, it is the upload. Do you cap your upload b/w in your bittorrent program? If you don't, it will easily max it out and that will cause all of your timeout errors. And it is a lot easier to cap out your upload than it is your download. Infact most of the times, it just takes one person to max it out.

 

[Adam Sanchez]

My mind is going blank on what b/w is? And yeah I did cap my upload to 10k. I couldnt imagine that being the problem.

It doesn't have anything to do with my port forward settings? Is there a general web browser/internet port I should open?

 

[Rommel_L]

Try uTorrent.

 

[Carlo_M]

Same problem with torrents on the mac side. Even if I cap upload speed, and the actual UL speed is only 4-10kbps, my internet bogs way down. Having two other PCs in the house which my gf and her bro use, I always do my torrenting late at night when everyone's asleep out of respect. If I do it in the day, no matter how slow the UL/DL speeds are, it makes the other PCs internet speed slow to a dialup speeds.

Will be interesting to see if I take it to work and try it there, if the results are the same. Especially since we are connected to the university backbone and should be about as fast as it gets. When I DL software at work from big throughput servers like MS, I get 3MBps downloads or faster...

 

[Tekara]

What is the modem that you are using to connect to your internet service?

Does this happen if you bypass the router and connect directly to the modem?

 

[Mike Fassler]

of course it will bog down,torrents lag the heck out of any connection, all depends on how good the host is your connected to.

 

[John_Bonner]

I found Azureus brought my surfing to a crawl when active.
I agree with Rommel_L go with uTorrent. It barely uses any system resources when running.

 

[Sami Kallio]

Definately upload problem, it can/will happen even with upload limited. Cable modems give you 128-256kb/s of upload which really isn't much. I am now on 2MB/s upload and that has solved the connection problems (not that I use peer-to-peer programs that much anymore) while downloading.

 

[Adam Sanchez]

Oops I almost forgot to come here.

I got it fixed tonight. I downloaded a new firmware for my router, the WTR54G v.3. They released a new firmware very recently. This was something I was not keeping up on!

It actually made a light on my router go on that I didn't know I have. Actually it's a button. I think it is what's called "Easy setup" in later versions of the router. It's undocumented in mine though. I did not use it, in any case.

But after getting the firmware and having to redo all my settings (Unfortunately) I am able to download AND surf now. I still limit my download during the time I am at home, but least now I can do both. And I still have my uploaded limited as well.

Thank you for the input guys. I am all set.

 

[John_Bonner]

I'm still on version 1.1.7 of uTorrent. It's worked so efficiently I never bothered installing any newer versions.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

I was just about to point out that some routers go nuts (with older firmwares) when you use Bittorrent. Bittorrent usually opens up massive amounts of connections going in and out, and that can wreak havoc with some routers.

Glad it got sorted out with new firmware, though.

 

[Rommel_L]

If that's generally the case, wouldn't limiting the connections (10 in/out, for example) would minimize the problem?

 

[Francois Caron]

Not necessarily. Even when you reduce the maximum allowable connections, the combined number of connections from all the torrents may still be enough to screw up most home-based routers in a few days or even a few hours.

I'm surprised so many cheap router products have this much trouble handling multiple connections. Whoever are programming these things aren't doing a very good job.