Network drops with Bittorrent

N

Neon01

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 22, 2008
Messages
1,048
I've been Bittorrenting a lot recently (built a new PC about 1.5 weeks ago) and I've been having some problems. For about 4-5 days it worked with no problems - I probably transferred 10-20 GB worth of data (download) and maybe 10+ upload as well. Then about 3-4 days ago when I would start a torrent and leave the computer for work, I'd come home to find that only about 600 MB would have downloaded and all of my transfers had stopped completely. What's more, I couldn't even open up Firefox to get access to the web. Restarting seemed to fix the problem, and the torrents would pick right up from where they were, so I didn't think too much of it.

However, it seems that all of the files (rar mostly) that have been downloaded in this disjointed fashion do not unpack properly. WinRAR will find all kinds of errors with them and they won't work.

FYI, I have Comcast and live just north of Baltimore. I suspect I'm being "throttled", but I'm not sure because it doesn't seem to be capping my download speed, only disconnecting me after a little while. When I suspected this, I tried enabling and even "forcing" encryption in uTorrent, but it didn't seem to make a difference.

Is there something wrong with my hardware? Software? Network? Can this problem be fixed, and how?

Thanks all.
 
could be either limiting by the ISP or router cant keep up with all the connections
 
I should have mentioned, I used to use BT all the time on my old PC with no issues. I don't think I have ever down/uploaded quite so much in so short a time period before, but I don't think anything else had changed (aside from the PC hardware of course).
 
Could your router be struggling with the number of connections? You mention you've been doing more recently than before?

What router do you use and how many torrents did you have going/connections allowed?
 
I guess it's possible. My router is a little older - a Zyxel p335wt. I usually have no more than 2 (usually 1) torrent going at a time, and I don't manually limit the connections in uTorrent, so I'm not sure what the default is. I never limited it before either though, and I would sometimes run 3-4 torrents simultaneously with no issue.
 
Comcast isn't actually throttling your connection, they're spoofing packets that cause the connections to be reset. From a users point of view, it could be seen as an unresponsive host or a slow connection. Check out this page for more information, but here is a clip from it:

- If the application senses that outbound P2P traffic is higher than a threshold determined by Comcast, Sandvine begins to interrupt P2P protocol sequences that would initiate a new transfer from within the Comcast network to a peer outside of the Comcast network

- The interruption is accomplished by sending a perfectly forged TCP packet (correct peer, port, and sequence numbering) with the RST (reset) flag set. This packet is obeyed by the network stack or operating system which drops the connection.

In eDonkey connections, for example, queued UPLOADS (to others) will not be honored to some percentage of non-Comcast P2P users. Immediately after the peer requests ranges to be transferred, the connection is dropped in the above manner. Gnutella transfers are similarly affected in the same manner.

In BitTorrent connections, the RST message is sent well after the handshake, and often after some data has been exchanged. The Sandvine filter interferes during lulls (NOOP and HAVE commands) as well as the moment of transition from the ending of sending one complete piece. When I am not using Comcast, BitTorrent disconnections due to peer resets (RST flag) are 3%. Using Comcast, 39% of connections are terminated using the RST flag.

In Summary: The Sandvine filter has taken steps to try to make the filtering experience innocuous (nearly invisible) to the user. Some transfers are allowed, the interruption seems to come from the distant peer, and it relies on the P2P protocol being used to either find another peer (hopefully a Comcast one) or retry that peer later.
Click to expand...

You should be able to check your program logs (assuming it has the feature?) and see multiple disconnects.
 
Demon10000 said:
Comcast isn't actually throttling your connection, they're spoofing packets that cause the connections to be reset. From a users point of view, it could be seen as an unresponsive host or a slow connection. Check out this page for more information, but here is a clip from it:



You should be able to check your program logs (assuming it has the feature?) and see multiple disconnects.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I read through the thread but there doesn't seem to be any mention of a fix, except maybe the VPN connection he mentions. Any tips?
 
I think the torrent connections is the problem. Are you connecting to very popular torrents as opposed to before...the reason I ask is if you are getting a TV episode from a while back you might have 100 connections...if you are downloading a movie release that just came out, you might see 1K depending on what site you are at.

There should be a setting in your client to change/limit the connections. i would try that and see if that changes anything.
 
sh0rty said:
I think the torrent connections is the problem. Are you connecting to very popular torrents as opposed to before...the reason I ask is if you are getting a TV episode from a while back you might have 100 connections...if you are downloading a movie release that just came out, you might see 1K depending on what site you are at.
Click to expand...

Well seeing that this is a possibility, is there an easy way to check for it? Like should I go home and limit the connections and try that? If so, I imagine that's relatively easy to do in uTorrent?

Thanks again for the help all.
 
Have you looked in your Event Log for event 4226? Make sure you're not hitting the TCP Half-Open limit.
 
Sorry guys, you'll have to pardon my ignorance, but I'm not all that familiar with a lot of the methods you're describing.

Is that the uTorrent event log you're talking about? Or is there one for windows network connections? Where do I find that?
 
The Windows Event Log. Right click on My Computer, click Manage and you should see the Event Viewer.
 
Neon01 said:
Interesting. I read through the thread but there doesn't seem to be any mention of a fix, except maybe the VPN connection he mentions. Any tips?
Click to expand...

No, there won't be any fix for it. VPN opens a tunnel from your computer to another network. When the ISP is getting in the mix, there won't be much of a fix except getting a new ISP. ;(
 
LittleMe said:
The Windows Event Log. Right click on My Computer, click Manage and you should see the Event Viewer.
Click to expand...

Wow, I checked that and it DOES look like there are a number of those 4226 errors you mentioned. I went into uTorrent and limited connections to:

300 - global max
50 - max download
4 - max upload

or something like this. They were:

600/100+/6 in the same order

Will this help?
 
LittleMe said:
No, it's Windows doing that. Try this tool, I think I have mine at 100.
Click to expand...

Thanks, tried setting mine to 100 as well, seemed to work fine... Windows didn't exactly want to let me do it, but I told it to bug off (so to speak).

Got a torrent running now, hopefully I'll have good news in the morning.
 
Well, looks like it didn't fix the problem. Oddly enough, I checked the event log like you told me to again this morning after the problem had occurred and it still showed two 4226 warnings. Also, I actually got errors - they showed up as DCOM errors and had a little red sign next to them in place of the yellow warning triangle.

Did I do something wrong?
 
You could increase the setting more, or limit the number of connections your torrent client can make.
 
LittleMe said:
You could increase the setting more, or limit the number of connections your torrent client can make.
Click to expand...

But isn't this just the number of connections allowed per second? After reading up on it a bit it doesn't seem to actually do that much.
 
Yes, but you can still do some tweaking to help get rid of the problem. I had the same issues as you and resolved them by changing my limit to 100 and using this tool.
 
Thanks, I'll try that when I get home. I know for fact though that my ports aren't forwarded properly at this time. I can't seem to run windows firewall and successfully forward them at the same time. I have them open on my router configuration though. I wonder if this could be having an effect.
 
I've had alot of issues with torrenting on my connection with uTorrent. I have to set my max connections low or my connection drops and I have to reset my DSL modem and router. If I leave my connection limit low(i want to say 40 down) I have no issues.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top