Why Are Torrent's So ****?

[Concept]

Torrents are resumeable so you wont have to start over again.

All good.

You'll have to forgive my naivety with torrents. Up unti recently, I didn't pay them much attention whilst on dial-up.

[Dirty Sanchez]

I'm currently downloading a few TV episodes of a program whose title includes the numbers before 3 and 5, but although I've got a 1MB connection, the torrent's download only seems to be around the 35/40kb mark, with my upload at around 30kb. Now, I'm new to Bit Torrent so I haven't really much of a clue what I'm doing. I'm using the standard client from the Bit Torrent website, and I've put the settings at DSL/Cable fast.

Considering some of you seem to be regularly boasting about 60kb downloading on a 512MB connection, any idea as to why mine is currently so slow?

There are currently 60 peers and seven seeds (with it being around that area for some time), and my upload rate is set to 40kb with a max upload of 6. Are they handy tips from some of you frequent users of Bit Torrent who can help me increase the speed without restarting the torrent? Or am I just going to have to sit it out?

Try sliding that upload back to around the 20 mark, the number of uploads requests can swamp your download speed.

[Concept]

You sir, are a star. I've just got it up into the 50kb download range doing that.

[Concept]

Pardon my language... But holy ****.

I'm in the 90kb range now.

Edit : Now 110kb. Much, much better.

Thanks Dirty Sanchez.

[bungle]

Where is this magical option screen (I'm using original bit torrent too) where you can select the upload amount? I searched for it on windows but all it does is link me too the homepage.

[Concept]

At the bottom of my client's front screen there's a slider next to a numerical box to manually or automatically change the upload rate. It's pretty hard to miss.

Maybe your version of Bit Torrent is different to mine.

[bungle]

Just checked the bit torrent homepage, and 3.5 is out, probably has been for a while now and I've got 3.4. Lets see if it makes a difference....

[Concept]

I just checked my version out for you and it's actually Bit Tornado I'm running. I'm pretty sure I downloaded a client from the Bit Torrent website on top of this as well, so when the icon 'BT' came up on the taskbar during the initial download I presumed it was the client I'd first installed upon going to the Bit Torrent website.

Apologies for the confusion.

[bungle]

Thats cool. I was only confused for a little bit

So, get bit tornado or are there faster clients out there?

I'm impatient and bored so I'll start with bit tornado.

[bungle]

hmmmm, using bit tornado and getting 1 kb.....interesting.......

[Concept]

hmmmm, using bit tornado and getting 1 kb.....interesting.......

It depends what you download, what type your connection is, where you're downloading from, and the number of people involved, as to the speed of your connection.

With regards to my download, I seem to have hit a file that has had a fair amount of seeders and peers for it.

If it's any help I'm using Bit Torrent T-0.2.0.

Although I'm sure there are newer versions out there.

[Super Stu]

If you're getting that sort of speed over prolonged time periods, I'd double check your ports.

I've lost count of the number that have kicked off in the 1k/sec region, only to burst up to 40k or more if you give it half an hour or so.

Patience

[Concept]

Exactly. For the first few hours I was only getting 40k. Then after Dirty Sanchez's suggestion, and waiting for a while, I managed to get up to 110k consistently.

Only took me 10 hours in the end, when I thought I'd be looking at nearer 20. Now... I've got the last few episodes of season three to check out.

Thanks for all your help guys.

[bungle]

I have only ever had one bit torrent that was consistently at about 40 k/b. Normally thye jump from between 0 and 20. The thing I was downloading currently had 212 seeds and went up to 20 kb for a while then dropped to 1 again. Bit tornado seems to be as fast as my old bit torrent but it has a nicer user face so I shall kept it! I have a 512 connection by the way.

[Moodmon]

Sounds like a firewall problem. Make sure you have opened whichever ports your client uses, then try it.