Multiple bittorrent clients on home network

uk_sam · 23 Sep 2006 at 22:00

I have utorrent (bittorrent client) installed on two computer on my home network. I get good download speeds when utorrent is being run on only one computer. When utorrent is running on both computers, I get very mediocre download speeds on both pcs.

I've reduced the maximum number of connections in utorrent to 250 and allowed the router (running DD-WRT firmware ) to accept upto 2048 connections so that is not a bottleneck.

Does anyone know what is bottlenecking my downloads when two copies of utorrent are running? Is it too many connections and why is my aggregate download speed so poor?

(I have done port forwarding and the ports used are different for each of the computers)

aceface57 · 23 Sep 2006 at 22:47

I used to have similar problems on my network in the flat (8computers). The problem was that everyone had not set a max upload speed and this was slowing down the connection, you could maybe try limiting you upload speed to 80% of your max upload. So 40% on each computer, this seemed to work on my network.

uk_sam · 24 Sep 2006 at 00:15

Thx for the advice aceface57, unfortunately I have already set the upload speed to roughly what you suggested and it hasn't made that much of a difference. I might try a different bittorrent client on one of the computers to see if it makes a difference.

Steve09 · 24 Sep 2006 at 01:40

Obviously your Router can not handle both of them Downloading at the same time mate

sja360 · 24 Sep 2006 at 02:53

why run utorrent on two machines? surely its best to allow one machine to be the "downloader"?

Luke284 · 24 Sep 2006 at 10:14

as sja360 says, run one pc as the downloader. I think there is a plugin for Azureus that allows you to control it over a web interface. Its looks like azureus in your browser. then just share the folder where azureus downloads to.

another way, which isnt as elegent is to share a torrent folder with write permissions on the downloader. then anyone within the network can save a torrent to that directory and your software will pick it up and start downloading.

hybrid · 24 Sep 2006 at 11:02

You will need to change the near ports which the torrent program uses on one of the machines.

As both machines will more thna likely have default settings, they will both be using the same port number.

Once you have changed the incoming and outgoing port numbers on one machine, log into your router and configure port forwarding.

t31os · 24 Sep 2006 at 11:21

hybrid said:
You will need to change the near ports which the torrent program uses on one of the machines.

As both machines will more thna likely have default settings, they will both be using the same port number.

Once you have changed the incoming and outgoing port numbers on one machine, log into your router and configure port forwarding.

Utorrent chooses a random port, genrally it works without the port forwarding anyway.

Using it here on 3 PC's without a problem.

Luke284 · 24 Sep 2006 at 11:32

its not really down to port conflics. the problem is that the upload is saturated. you need to limit the total upload to around 20k, poss more of your on MAX. this means that if you have 2 pc, limit each to 10k, 3 pcs 7k, etc..

uk_sam · 24 Sep 2006 at 13:08

sja360 said:
why run utorrent on two machines? surely its best to allow one machine to be the "downloader"?

My brother uses the other computer and downloads his stuff. But I can see that one downloader might be the way to go.

hybrid said:
You will need to change the near ports which the torrent program uses on one of the machines.

Thx Hybrid but I've done that already.

Luke284 said:
you need to limit the total upload to around 20k, poss more of your on MAX. this means that if you have 2 pc, limit each to 10k, 3 pcs 7k, etc..

I've tried that already but no luck.

Luke284 said:
as sja360 says, run one pc as the downloader. I think there is a plugin for Azureus that allows you to control it over a web interface. Its looks like azureus in your browser. then just share the folder where azureus downloads to.

another way, which isnt as elegent is to share a torrent folder with write permissions on the downloader. then anyone within the network can save a torrent to that directory and your software will pick it up and start downloading.

Cheers for that, I might give it a go and see how practical it is.

t31os · 24 Sep 2006 at 17:03

Of course if you both download at the same time using a torrent client you're gonna max out the connection.

Upstream maxed out tends to effect latency more then anything since pretty much anything you download requires data to be sent back, but not necessarily as large an amount.

My 4mb NTL line has a crap upstream which means we just have to cap ourselves at about 15-20kbps per pc, and even then if all PC's are sending data (upstream / uploading) then it tends to show when you browse or do anything on the net really.

Do you get any Eventlogs for max tcp connections?...... if you do, off the top of my head i thinks its event id 4226, then increasing that will help. Google for the patch, helped my utorrent speeds.

uk_sam · 24 Sep 2006 at 18:21

t31os said:
Of course if you both download at the same time using a torrent client you're gonna max out the connection.

I get to adjust the option under the router menu. At the moment, I have the router allowing up to 1024 IP connections. With both bittorrent clients running heavily , the router status shows about 900 active connections. I am thinking that even though the router menu allows me to adjust the maximum number of active connections - in reality maybe it can only cope with a small number - 250 perhaps?

Not sure if this is because of the small amount of memory available to the router. I've heard that consumer grade routers aren't really able to cope with P2P that well. Mind you I only paid £35 for it and its giving me reasonable performance for the price - I would definitely like to look at higher end options if only out of curiousity.