Bittorrent=slower web traffic?

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Phantum

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jul 25, 2001
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Can anyone possibly explain to me why when I start Bittorrent my internet bandwidth goes into the toilet? I ran a bandwidth test w/o BT and got 4.5/1 (mbps) and then running test w/ BT I got 241/30 (kbps). hmmmm

On a side note: BT shows both dl's going at 20-30kbps.
 
because of the shear number of connections going to your router sometimes the router can essentially become clogged and would slow your connection remedy = get better router or stop bit torrenting
 
bt likes to upload a lot - it could be saturating your upload bandwidth which kills your download speed. Home connections are generally asymmetric - so you can't upload & download at max speeds simultanously.
 
Yup..the high amount of concurrent connections that P2P software uses....absolutely CRUSHES home grade routers..with their slower CPUs and more importantly....low amounts of RAM and ability to support many concurrent connections.

Some of todays better performance home broadband routers have some entry level QoS features, in addition to more powerful CPUs and more RAM to handle the connections..so they can handle it better.

Or better yet...some *nix distro routers have superior QoS and traffic shaping features. The other day I made a post about giving PFSense another shot with its newer version. In a test...I initiated pulling down 3x big files at the same time...the downloads of those 3 files flew and pegged my 6 meg cable connection. I told PFSense to give P2P traffic "low priority"...and give my game traffic "high priority". In the middle of downloading those 3 files..which were currently pegging at 6 megs....I fired up Battlefield 2..and still had low latency..completely smooth experience. The kid was online gaming at the same time..smoothly, and the wife downstairs surfing the web at the same time, smoothly.

If I tried downloading just 1x huge file..and attempted to play online by myself..using my plain old router, it would have been laggy as hell.
 
Also many ISP's are starting to throttle connections a TON when you use BT applications.
 
So I encrypted BT outbound traffic...And capped my upload @ 15kbps. I'm running a proxy/cache server w/ Ubuntu7.1 & Squid. Would I see any benefit running BT through my proxy?

Side note: I've uninstalled QoS on all machines on my network. QoS=crap, bandwidth reservation is baloney.
 
just opening Utorrent kills my speed even if I'm not downloading or uploading anything thats why I only use it while I'm sleeping and working once I get home I turn it off, I used to snake it from the many unsacure wireless networks in the complex but I stopped that to be nice.
 
UPDATE: Ok so like I said I capped BT upload @ 15kbps, encrypted outbound and made it run through my proxy. That appears to have alleviated my bandwidth congestion...for now...I hope.
 
What kind of crap routers are you guys purchasing? lol.

YeOlde: What linux distro would you recommend to run with PFSense? Thanks.
 
Dallows said:
YeOlde: What linux distro would you recommend to run with PFSense? Thanks.
Click to expand...

PFSense is its own distro, you don't need to install it on top of linux or unix or anything. Just download ISO image, burn to CD and boot a semi decent PC with two NICs, click okay a few times and you are good to go. :D
 
Captain Colonoscopy said:
PFSense is its own distro, you don't need to install it on top of linux or unix or anything. Just download ISO image, burn to CD and boot a semi decent PC with two NICs, click okay a few times and you are good to go. :D
Click to expand...

Sweet. I have a reason now to find some old hardware. Sadly I left a bunch up in NY when I moved. I had the chance to get some too as someone was traveling, but I was like "whatever" :(
 
1GHz PIII with 256MB RAM should be more than enough for PFSense.


Ya know . . . I just happen to have one of those sitting right here next to me . . . its a SFF desktop with two NICs and a 20GB HDD . . . was going to throw Astaro on it for a friend . . . . . .
 
I have the same exact problem. If I open utorrent I can kiss my internet connection goodbye. No FireFox or Instant Messaging until I close utorrent and wait a bit. I've also tried Bittorrent, FlashGet and every other program..

I thought it was my old crappy Netgear router.. so I bought the D-Link DIR-655 but everything is still the same :(
 
That's another problem then. My friend has the same problem. If he tries to download even one small torrent his internet CEASES to work. Not that it's slow, but it ceases to work. So my feeling is that the problem lies elsewhere.
 
Syribo said:
I have the same exact problem. If I open utorrent I can kiss my internet connection goodbye. No FireFox or Instant Messaging until I close utorrent and wait a bit. I've also tried Bittorrent, FlashGet and every other program..

I thought it was my old crappy Netgear router.. so I bought the D-Link DIR-655 but everything is still the same :(
Click to expand...

I had this same exact problem with my Linksys WRT54G, and everyone said it was the router so I went and bought a brand new D-Link. The problem stayed for about an hour then started working out of no where. I didn't do anything to change the configuration, but now I can torrent and surf together just as quick as if I was doing them separately.
 
LoStMaTt said:
Also many ISP's are starting to throttle connections a TON when you use BT applications.
Click to expand...

Or they throttle it during the day regardless of what you're doing.... Verizon has been doing that alot around here. :mad::confused:

Captain Colonoscopy said:
1GHz PIII with 256MB RAM should be more than enough for PFSense.


Ya know . . . I just happen to have one of those sitting right here next to me . . . its a SFF desktop with two NICs and a 20GB HDD . . . was going to throw Astaro on it for a friend . . . . . .
Click to expand...

I'm running Pfsense on a dual PIII 550 w/512 Registered RAM (OLD stuff). Works absolutely great... has been handling torrent traffic great since it now acts as my router.
 
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