Peer-2-Peer bandwidth issues

[Paul_Canning]

Firstly, if i am mentioning anything frowned upon the t&c's, please edit/delete the post as needed

I am having some issues with p2p and bandwidth. I have an 8mb connection, and I use utorrent for downloading files.

A house mate has complained that as soon as i start up utorrent, the bandwidth available to him is so small, his connection is slowed enough to cause hinderance.

No, I'm not familiar with how p2p protocols or bandwidth works, but I thought that if i limited my uploads speed to something like 20kb/s , it should not make much of a dent in our bandwidth, as i know sort of that uploads are what kills a connection.

Can anyone clue me in on how p2p works and if it can truely penalise the bandwidth as a whole? Also, are there any solutions to try that can allow the use of p2p and still maintain good bandwidth?

thanks in advance.

 

[yashiro]

1 - Download torrents when people don't need net access. ie at night when you're all in bed.
Torrents will destroy your browsing unless you cap up and down to low values.

2 - Get a router with QoS abilities and set your torrent traffic as lowest priority.

3 - Set up a small download box that everyone can access and add torrents to (VNC into it if your housemates are windows retards or you can't be bothered finding a good remote client)

3a - A cheap commercial NAS box (icybox) with a built in torrent client might be ideal for you.

4-Keep off the Warez.

Take your pick.

 

[Paul_Canning]

thank you for your suggestions Yashiro.

Can anyone explain in a semi basic way how turning my torrent downloads on is affecting the whole connection? My housemate was going on about how when i use the torrent protocol, everyone on the network sing the internet gets penalised. surely setting a 10kbs upload when the connection allows upto 360kbs (done with speedtest.net) then there shouldn't be a huge impact?

 

[yashiro]

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/bittorrent.htm

Basically unless you cap up and down rates your connection gets saturated with requests.
On crap hardware this results in modems rebooting (common), on better kit you get really slow connections both in and out.

Now, when you limit your rates it doesn't slow you all down as much as if you uncapped, but it does adversely affect others on the lan. Torrenting over a shared connection while it's in use is the cause of many a fight.

Download off peak or implement my other suggestions.

 

[Dist]

the number of connections can also cause problems. Old routers and even some new routers were not built with torrents in mind, and the hundreds of connections that torrents can cause can simply overwhelm a router, causing it to slow down and drop connections, or fail to establish new connections.

 

[doozer]

Easiest way is to check your router model on google and see if others have similar issues.

It might be that the router is an old one or simply not a decent one to handle p2p traffic.

I had an old router that used to always die when torrents were used even when I altered the number of connections.