Why is torrent downloading so slow.

[TFU] Thegoon84 · 27 Jun 2010 at 16:18

A friend is trying downloading a torrent.... Does BT throttle the download limit? is there a way to remove it?

Xez · 27 Jun 2010 at 16:40

Some ISP's do limit torrents. I think it may be the port that is used. I know on some torrent browsers you can randomize the port and also encrypt the download so shouldn't be able to tell its a torrent.

asim18 · 27 Jun 2010 at 17:02

It may be because the[noparse] seed

eer[/noparse] ratio is too low or people's upload speeds are crap.

Public trackers have always been slow for me. Private trackers have always maxed out my download speed.

.:SAmSuNG:. · 27 Jun 2010 at 17:04

Iv found utorrent to be the best download client and private trackers on invite only sites as asim18 said will normally max out my download speed. My isp has no caps on what i can download though.

marmalade · 27 Jun 2010 at 17:49

Try maxing it out downloading ubunto this will give an indication as to if there is a problem. Other than that the best option is a vpn.
utorrent is now by far the most popular torrent and its small and simple. Check out the Utorents site as there is plenty of info. Bt is one of the worse isps but of course some have to use them

Rroff · 27 Jun 2010 at 18:12

Due to the football and tennis BT are currently using agressive best effort traffic weighting based on overall conditions in the network. Torrent traffic has a very low priority so you will likely see speeds below 384KBit/s in most places during peaktimes and possibly 2MBit/s throttling for 2 hours either side of peak time. Currently my best effort speeds for torrents seems to be 80KBit/s at 6pm :S while HTTP traffic is easily managing 6+MBit/s.

Azuse05 · 27 Jun 2010 at 19:01

Rroff said:
Due to the football and tennis BT are currently using agressive best effort traffic weighting based on overall conditions in the network. Torrent traffic has a very low priority so you will likely see speeds below 384KBit/s in most places during peaktimes and possibly 2MBit/s throttling for 2 hours either side of peak time. Currently my best effort speeds for torrents seems to be 80KBit/s at 6pm :S while HTTP traffic is easily managing 6+MBit/s.

Set torrent's to port 80?

Or use something like BTGuard, which is essentially an encrypted vpn thus bypasses bts torrent throttling.

[TFU] Thegoon84 · 27 Jun 2010 at 19:51

Azuse05 said:
Set torrent's to port 80?

Or use something like BTGuard, which is essentially an encrypted vpn thus bypasses bts torrent throttling.

This sounds about right. We tried it on my virgin 20mb using the same torrent and it downloaded at 800Kb so its defo BT's torrent throttling.

Rroff · 27 Jun 2010 at 20:17

Azuse05 said:
Set torrent's to port 80?

Or use something like BTGuard, which is essentially an encrypted vpn thus bypasses bts torrent throttling.

Port 80 won't help - but encrypting the traffic may.

Azuse05 · 27 Jun 2010 at 21:03

Well then use a BT vpn (like btguard). Unless they throttle vpns...

mcompute · 27 Jun 2010 at 22:23

Likelihood is they are limiting it, try swapping the port(s) from default. Port forwarding may also help.

AtaRo · 28 Jun 2010 at 07:11

If you want to try vpn anonine is cheaper.