Topic: Are BitTorrents Just a Bandwidth Thief

[chorleydave]

Does anybody actually have the patience to wait for weeks to get a file, while their bandwidth is being stolen?  I used to think that by allowing unlimited uploads I would get good download speeds, but it doesn't work like that.   For example, I started to download a 3.5GB file.  It was downloading at no more than between 0.2KB/S and 4.3KB/S and the estimated arrival time was weeks, not hours, and yet it was thieving up to 250KB/S back.

Needless to say, I have now stopped the file as I don't give something for absolutely nothing, which is always the case with this scam.  I am now using another method to get the file and am getting around 100KB/s download (not brilliant but better) and am only having to give back around 10KB/S.

[Sandra]

They usually work fine for me Dave.
In fact I have just started downloading this weeks Prison Break episode, its 349 mb and is coming in at over 600kb and is due to complete in just over 9 minutes so that would be around 12 minutes since clicking on the download button. Only 9 seeds but as there are no peers then nothing is being uploaded at the moment.

Hve you set the port forwarding correctly to allow your BT client to work at the best speed 

Edited to add :

It finished in 9 minutes and 9 seconds Dave and no one wanted to upload it 

[chorleydave]

Hi, Sandra.

Not being a big downloader (this file is probably the biggest thing I have ever downloaded) I am not familiar with changing settings to get the best speed.  I use UTorrent, with the default settings in place.  If you can recommend any adjustments I could make to improve things, I would be most grateful.   

[Sandra]

I am not sure what the ports are that Utorrent uses but if you look in the settings it should say or give you the option to change to the ports that you want.
I use Bit Tornado and those ports are usually set at around 6000. I usually change mine to allow a range of about 10 ports then set the router port forwarding to the same.
In Bit Tornado it has a traffic light system that goes green if you are getting the max speed avaliable and your firewall and/or router is allowing the files through. If it stays yellow for a few minutes after you start it then it usually indicates a firewall problem. Blue means that no one has the complete file but you may still get it ok if the people that are currently online have the complete file between them. Red means that no one has connected to you at the moment but may do later and black means that the tracker is probably unavailable.

I think Simon uses Utorrent so he may know where the settings for that are.

[chorleydave]

Thanks, Sandra.  I might just have a look at Bit Tornado.

[Simon]

Dave, in Utorrent, if you right click the item you're downloading, you can select Bandwidth Allocation, then you can Set Upload Limit.  I usually set mine to about 25kbps, on a fairly speedy download, otherwise, as you say, it hogs all your resources.

[Reno]

What happens sometimes with torrents with a low seed count is that a large number of people have parts 1-7 and a small number of people have parts 8-10. So after you've finished downloading parts 1-7 your speed drops, because there just aren't allot of uploaders for the rare parts which forms a bottleneck of people trying to download.

I normally cap my upload at around 20kps. I've noticed it doesn't effect my download that much.