[Klug-general] Bittorent and slow internet

[Karl]

Hi,

While limiting the upload (and download) speeds will leave more
bandwidth free for your other uses, the main culprit, especially if
you're running many torrents or torrents with large numbers of seeders
and leechers is the number of connections and therefore the number of
packets.

You've already mentioned you have a router and I'm going to assume it's
a commercial router, as opposed to a computer you've setup as a router.
These routers (unless you're willing to spend hundreds or even thousands
of pounds) have operating capacities which limit the number of
concurrent connections they can support. My ZyXel router (mid-range) can
support somewhere in the region of 200-300 connections before additional
packets are dropped and you notice slowness or, in extreme cases, no
activity at all.

Most torrent programs have a limit on the total number of connections
and the connections per torrent. Have a play with these settings and see
how they affect the problems you've been experiencing. You'll notice
that your torrents won't download quite as fast, but there probably
isn't going to be much in it, as the torrents would have been coming up
against the same slowness you were experiencing.

I'm now using a dedicated Linux box as a router and this appears to give
you much greater throughput when it comes to packets/connections.
There's obviously still a limit that an ADSL/Cable line can support
though.

Apologies if I've told you something you already know.

Karl

On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 09:27 +0000, Dan Attwood wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I've recently set up Torrentflux on my home server and overall it's
> really good - however it's murdering my internet connection. Whilst
> the torrents are running the web is unusably slow. It also means I
> can't getting into my web site during the day - which defeats the
> object.
> 
> The quick fix solution to this was to use a script that pauses all
> python scripts on the server. This then runs as a cron job so that
> when my partner arrives home in the evening she can check her emails
> without me being shouted at.
> 
> I have also
> 
> Opened and forwarded the relevent ports on my router
> Throtled the download and uploads speeds to a quarter of my total bandwidth
> Limited the numbers of down/uploads
> 
> I wondered if any one has any idea what might be causing this slowness
> and how I can fix it? are there any gui traffic shappers avaialbe
> 
> Dan
> 
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