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uTorrent Developer Shares BitTorrent Speed Tips

torrentfreak.com — Configuring your BitTorrent client is essential if you want to enjoy optimal download speeds. In our quest to help users get the most out of BitTorrent, we asked one of the uTorrent developers how we can speed up our downloads.

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  • cjung89, on 08/05/2008, -4/+48All of this is most useful when you are getting 2-3 kb/s because you don't have the right ports open.
    • lamiaconfitor, on 08/06/2008, -4/+3...not only that you can get this info on forums, though it helps having it from a 'credible' source... I guess... also no hints/help with ports and firewalls/routers. Better off elsewhere.
    • djbon2112, on 08/06/2008, -6/+8Is it just me, or is this all "no ***** sherlock" stuff that you should know if you know anything about networking?
    • etruscan, on 08/06/2008, -6/+2Um, if the port you're using for torrents is closed, you wouldn't be getting 2-3 kb/s... you'd be getting zero.
      • SteveMax, on 08/06/2008, -0/+4No. A closed port means that people can't open connections TO you; you can still open connections to them (at least to those with open ports). For example, your ISP most possibly closes your port 80 (HTTP), but you can still access the Web without problems; the only problem is that you can't run a web server on that port.
        In P2P, not having an open incoming port limits your connectivity. You can only connect to people with open ports, so you lose a lot of possible sources. It's also harder to seed. You can download and upload, just not as efficiently. Heck, even on a 100% firewalled computer (no open ports at all, every one filtered) I kept getting 300-400 kB/s with a good connection.
  • soupcancooloff, on 08/06/2008, -4/+15torrentfreak is great but all of this information is just recycled from other places.
    but it was nice seeing it all in one place.
    • gravityboard, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0Also this has shown up on the front page at least 3 times in the last couple months.
  • spyd3rweb, on 08/06/2008, -16/+3Speed tip: Get Usenet.
    • no_root_toe, on 08/06/2008, -3/+2We're allowed to talk about usenet and newsgroups openly?!?
    • wukillabee, on 08/06/2008, -1/+7well i did have usenet for free untill some lame ass new york lawyer took it down, now i have to use torrents and web forums..
    • no_root_toe, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2@wukillabee http://astinews.de/xtest
      lasts a week or 10gb; which ever comes first.

      btw, they only keep track of the trials by ip address
      • Blandyman, on 08/06/2008, -1/+1***** Bellsouth and ***** my static IP :(
    • zdiddy85, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2Dude, shut up.
  • Halsfield, on 08/06/2008, -10/+24why was this dugg up, this is common sense and known to anyone that has used a torrent more than once. These are found in most torrent client faq files, why is this news or helpful?

    telling people to cap their upload speed should be used with caution, its easy to simply turn off your uploading and then the whole swarm downloading thing stops working. Some clients will cap your downloading based on uploading, but most allow you freedom to do what you want without penalty.
  • zdiggler, on 08/06/2008, -12/+4I never got anything from torrent.. I tried downloading a 800MB file and it got stuck at 600MB range, then for some reason nobody seeding it any more, oh well.
    back to a.b*.*
    • Halsfield, on 08/06/2008, -0/+9so from one incident you completely stopped using a helpful program that millions of people use daily to get files extremely fast?

      in your particular case, a lot of sites have forums where you can request things to be seeded if the seeds quit midway through or a file had no seeds to begin with. Most also allow you to PM the file uploader and ask them to seed the file as well.

      a lot of people seem to use bitorrent once, get a bad reaction, and then quit entirely without thinking, hey , maybe i was the one that made the mistake.
      • 1randomguyO8, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2Exactly when I was first using bit torrent with bitcomet and my old ISP my downloads were extremely slow (2-5kbs/sec) I think it may been a problem with the ports since I had cable internet, either that or it was bitcomet. But now I can download up to 800kb/s no probs if I got enough seeders.
    • Oea420, on 08/06/2008, -2/+2diggthe guy down all you want, but newsgroups will always be infinitely more useful than any torrent tracker.

      Can you stream AVIs directly (these are in rars, mind you) from your torrents? Because with easynews and their autounrar I can :P
  • willynilly, on 08/06/2008, -15/+4"Cap the upload speed"

    And screw everyone else. This works great as long as you're the only one doing it. When everyone else caps theirs, guess what? You're right back where you started or worse.
    • splendid, on 08/06/2008, -1/+16Capping your bandwidth to about 80% - 90% of your upload capacity will improve things for everyone as less packets get dropped.
    • Halsfield, on 08/06/2008, -6/+1exactly, screw this article, the other 2 recommendations were common sense as well. share and share alike, or you might as well not use a torrent.
  • lurker123, on 08/06/2008, -13/+0I'm not following these tips. Especially when I remember it taking all night to download 13MB on my 28k dial-up connection.

    SET UPLOAD TO MAX!

    What obscure torrents are you guys using? My linux isos download in 20 minutes!
    • bagboyrebel, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2Right, we are all downloading massive amounts of "linux".
  • damian7, on 08/06/2008, -6/+22PORT FORWARDING...

    Jesus Christ, once you figure it out it makes a big difference

    But be warned, wrist slitting is to ensue to any and all who embark on the dangerous journey of FORWARDING YOUR PORTS
    • D3koy, on 08/06/2008, -0/+7portforward.com makes the entire process incredibly easy...they have tutorials for just about every application and router...
      • MelroseMan, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1The first time I port forwarded was for starcraft and it took about 2 ***** hours lol. I was so lost. The second time took about 1 minute.
    • Halsfield, on 08/06/2008, -10/+2there's a mom joke in here somewhere, waiting to be awoken to unleash its terrible unhilarity.

      i went forward in your mom's port ?
    • wukillabee, on 08/06/2008, -14/+1HAVE FUN GETTING HACKED BY RUSSIANFAG HACKERS
    • crownedgriffin, on 08/06/2008, -0/+3^^^ Yes. I set up port forwarding the other day and squeezed out about an extra 20k.
    • championchap, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2I used to have to do it manually.. bought a new router a little while ago and UPnP finally started working!
      Having said that, some sites still report me as unconnectable after a little while. Then i have to restart uTorrent.
  • wukillabee, on 08/06/2008, -10/+4this is dumb, all you gotta do is open a port through tcp
    • IllBeBack, on 08/06/2008, -1/+23Everything is obvious when you already know how to do it.
  • WiZZLa, on 08/06/2008, -2/+4This is basically the same information from many other sites that's been available for years, but it's been packaged by a μTorrent developer and (re)-posted on torrentfreak...
  • fokov, on 08/06/2008, -9/+3Its funny that everyone is voting down on any pro-usenet comment. I tried BT, but it sucks if you want or need something right now. It might be great for the people that can upload like crazy, but on my connection I can't get anything above 50K down while I max my up @ 40. I logon to my usetnet account and get anything posted in the last hundred days at full speed (only 720K for me). I like that people share "older" things on BT, but the system is still horrible that I can't get something close to a max download speed while I always upload 10x more than I download at full upload speed. This is why I ripped up DirectConnect and other p2p clients so I would only have to upload BS while getting real speeds.

    I don't want to wait 2 weeks to download something that I can get in 1.5 hours. Or better yet a 23 minute tv episode takes 5 minutes to download on usenet, while it takes hours on BT. Pathetic.
    • aComa, on 08/06/2008, -1/+3I get 800 kb/s+ speeds provided that there are enough seeds... apparently you just downloaded a poorly seeded torrent, or you haven't configured things properly.
    • jamesdew, on 08/06/2008, -1/+7Sounds like a job for port forwarding man!

    • Oea420, on 08/06/2008, -4/+2Thank you! Usenet is so much more useful than torrents will ever be.. granted using RSS to automatically download all of aXXo's releases is real nice and trouble free, but for ON DEMAND, usenet is the way to go
    • kooftspc, on 08/06/2008, -0/+4im not dogging usenet as an option as i have heard many good things about it. but really, maybe you should try and get into a good torrent site
    • Memnochxx, on 08/06/2008, -1/+4I'm constantly maxing my 10mb download speed on torrrents. You're just not doing it right.
    • fokov, on 08/07/2008, -0/+1The ports are forwarded correctly and I guess I shouldn't have listened to all the fansboys about TPB since it seems to be a bad site. However, the argument still stands that on usenet it doesn't matter what I'm downloading or when it was posted as long as it fits within the retention time. So your advice is just that I'm doing it wrong or trying to get something that isn't popular. Different servers and being dependent on what is popular is exactly why BT fails at this stage. It is the same weakness as every other p2p system including IRC.
  • tedrock, on 08/06/2008, -4/+29not even worth reading
  • cwazidorse, on 08/06/2008, -5/+15private torrents ftw
  • zdiddy85, on 08/06/2008, -5/+6Buried as lame. Torrent Freak just needs some hits so they'd regurgitate old info that really isn't much more than common sense.
  • kenkyomausu, on 08/06/2008, -9/+4Why don't you ask him where uTorrent for mac is?! The app is 500kb, shouldn't be that hard to transfer!

    And don't try and tell me that Transmission is just as good because it isn't!
  • TheLastFreeMan, on 08/06/2008, -4/+3Conforming to all these "speed tips" only marginally improves the performance of your torrents. The real difference is whether the tracker in question is public or private. My advice would be to join a private site, even if it's always open, for a real performance boost.
  • neasteflorin, on 08/06/2008, -4/+3How-To: Stop the RIAA/MPAA from sniffing your bittorrent traffic

    If you live in the United States, France, UK, you may be thinking that getting music and movies from ThePirateBay isn't such a great idea anymore.

    Well, you're wrong. By taking these easy steps, you can protect your privacy from the prying eyes of RIAA/MPAA and the gov't. The result? No one will come knocking your door, or if they do, they won't have any proof.
    http://sadgeekblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-sto ...
  • ComradeRikhi, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2"Your connection is a tube (sort of), if you max out the upload capacity, the tube gets clogged."
    WTF!? Ted Stevens was right!?
  • mikesbaker, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2i have a much better solution - find a private tracker and ditch slow ass TPB isohunt mininova and the rest of them. just make sure you keep a good ratio
  • bigt8dogg, on 08/06/2008, -2/+8One word: FiOS.
  • Evi1d33d, on 08/06/2008, -0/+3Get a good router that takes DD WRT or other open source firmwares. This will reduce the chance of your router getting clogged by too many connections.
  • sfury, on 08/06/2008, -7/+1"Run as few torrents as possible"

    What?! I've got like 80-100 of them at any given time.
  • swraman, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2aside from the point, but don't you think its weird that Microsoft chooses to advertise on TorrentFreak?
  • techtvforever, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1I love the reference about tubes. LOL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f99PcP0aFNE or even better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cZC67wXUTs&feature ...
  • CeeJayDK, on 08/06/2008, -0/+2These tips are all about preventing your connection from being overwhelmed by packets and connections and they are useful but there is a better way : Use packet shaping / QOS on your end.

    Install a improved firmware for your router like Tomato f.x : http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato
    and setup QOS using it.
    Or install CfosSpeed : http://www.cfos.de/speed/cfosspeed_e.htm (Trialware so you need to buy it , though I'm sure most here will just download a torrent with it)

    Also optimize your ip-settings with TCP Optimizer :http://www.speedguide.net/files/TCPOptimizer.exe

    I have my uploadspeed set to nearly max with this setup.
    • MrViklund, on 08/06/2008, -1/+1TCP Optimizing is a big myth.
      • CeeJayDK, on 08/16/2008, -0/+1The small increase in throughput I can measure on my connection after using TCP Optimizer is real enough. It really does help.
  • damndj, on 08/06/2008, -1/+2Um, wow. Gee thanks for that great information.

  • xboxing, on 08/06/2008, -2/+2Whatever happened to the Mac version of uTorrent they were supposed to be working on?
  • justice7, on 08/06/2008, -1/+1seriously, Newsgroup binaries; and torrents to fill the gaps.
  • TimeForAnal, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1I really enjoy using my rapidshare account w/ Google Blog search, but unfortunately it is all too easy to max out the 20gb limit in a matter of hours.
  • MrViklund, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1Like using Azureus instead.
  • DontGiveADamn, on 08/06/2008, -0/+1Get a good router like the D-Link gaming router. No more router lockups.
  • ggbs, on 08/07/2008, -0/+0this guide has helped many...
    http://www.bootstrike.com/Articles/BitTorrentGuide ...
  • Philodoxa, on 08/08/2008, -0/+1Awesome tips
  •  

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