Topic: Why does uTorrent hate me?

[Quemaqua]

Whenever I have the thing loaded, net-related activities slow to a crawl.  It takes forever to load pages, etc.  Sometimes when I'm download, uTorrent can't pick up new URLs to grab, either.  I can't figure out why.  It did this a bit when I had it before on my old drive, too.  It concerns me somewhat.  I really dig the prog, but this is starting to drive me a bit nuts.

[Xessive]

I used to have that problem with Azureus and the classic BitTorrent client. I find that uTorrent is very leanient and benign when it comes to my connection.

In your case maybe there's a setting that tells uTorrent to take priority.

[iPPi]

I rarely rarely use torrents, and when I do, I just use Azureus.  I don't really like it, but it runs on my other machine so it doesn't bother me on my primary machine.

[Xessive]

I used to love Azureus, but I hate Java. Java applications are quite often unnecessarily heavy, and Azureus takes up about 40-80MB of resources, as oppose to uTorrent which only takes about 5MB. Oh, and uTorrent has scheduling and idle connection options as well, so that's pretty handy.

[Cobra951]

I don't use uTorrent.  I use ABC.  But I had similar problems, which I solved by limiting the max number of connections the client can make.  I looked at the opened connections on Kerio Personal Firewall's status applet, and the damn thing could be scrolled down a mile.  Hopefully, you can exert similar control over uTorrent.

[ScaryTooth]

How is Utorrent? I was thinking of trying it out. A friend at work told me about it. I still use Azureus.

[Quemaqua]

I definitely like it better than anything I've tried, with the exception of this little problem.

[Antares]

Why does uTorrent hate me?

Because you touch yourself at night.

[Quemaqua]

You lie.  Only in the morning.

[scottws]

I also have uTorrent.  When I'm using it, the Internet is a lot slower, but I expect that because of how many open connections bittorrent uses, which slows down the router and the NIC not to mention the high bandwidth use.

[Quemaqua]

I'm thinking of switching.  I never had these problems before and I like to be able to seed constantly while I surf, since a lot of what I download is obscure and hard to get.

[Xessive]

Hmm, have you tried ABC or BitComet? I haven't used them, but I hear they're pretty good too.

[scottws]

I have tried several bittorrent clients, including the main one, Azureus, and ABC.  uTorrent is by far my favorite.

[Quemaqua]

Mine too!  Which is why I don't want to switch.  But it's really getting annoying, and I can't seem to find any options to change anything and improve my general net speeds when it's on.

[Cobra951]

I have a special problem with torrents now.  It seems that the ISP here are Nazis about torrents, and we got a letter about it.  This happened a couple of months ago, and I've pretty much stayed away from any kind of P2P since.  If it was my place, I'd be less shy about it, but I can't do that here.  I started to look into proxying stuff, but it's complicated with P2P.  Any ideas/pointers?

[poomcgoo]

I used to use ABC faithfully, but uTorrent is worlds better.  I'm a convert.

Anyways, Que, your internet is going slow because your upload speeds are probably close to the cap set by your ISP.  Download barely affects internet speeds, but if you're on cable and your uploads are going over, say, 35 k/sec (maybe lower, maybe higher depending on your ISP) then the rest of your internet will crawl.  I have comcast, the upload cap seems to be around 55 k/sec, because I've never seen it go higher than that, and my internet is practically useless at that speed.

So, check your torrents, see which ones are uploading and right click > properties on them.  Change maximum upload rate to something small like 5.  You'll still upload, but your internet won't take nearly the same hit in speed.  Know that sometimes torrents go slower when you upload less, though, so if you want something fast, set upload to unlimited, or 15 or something.

[Cobra951]

Here the cap is high.  I've seen upload speeds of over 200 KB/sec on torrents.  That still is generally OK.  You only need dialup speeds on the up pipe to keep things running smoothly on internet browsing.  The thing is that torrents will eat up every bit of that pipe if you let it.  ABC lets you limit connections, and set caps on download and upload speeds.  I can't believe that something which is being touted here as better (i.e., uTorrent) doesn't let you set these at all.  (?)

[Xessive]

Uh uTorrent does have the option.. It's under Options|Preferences|Connections.. You'll see a section titled "Bandwidth Limiting" at the bottom of the window.

You can also set the bandwidth for each torrent individually.

[Pugnate]

For some reason Azureus gave me the same fucking problem.

[Quemaqua]

I guess I'm just a dumbass.  Somehow I missed that.  Didn't know you could set individual torrents, either.

Anyway, hooray.  But apparently my upload rate is fucking shit.  At like 35kb/s it was slowing me to a crawl.  I don't remember it being that bad before.  I checked on dslreports.com and it says my upload rate is worse than like 60% of Comcast users, though my download speed is quite a bit better.  *Shrug*

[scottws]

I have a special problem with torrents now.  It seems that the ISP here are Nazis about torrents, and we got a letter about it.  This happened a couple of months ago, and I've pretty much stayed away from any kind of P2P since.  If it was my place, I'd be less shy about it, but I can't do that here.  I started to look into proxying stuff, but it's complicated with P2P.  Any ideas/pointers?

You can do a couple things.  First, you can use a non-default port for bittorrent.  Secondly, Azureus has the option to like encrypt bittorrent traffic so that it doens't look like bittorrent traffic.  uTorrent might have that feature as well.

So what is Comcast saying about bittorrent?  I think it's a pretty sweet technology.  Really good stuff for things like the release of highly anticipated demos.  Sure, it gets used for piracy, but it actually has some really great uses.

[Cobra951]

But if the traffic gets encrypted, how do the peers participate?  See, the problem with P2P is that you have to expose your system to the outside world.  Without sharing, you're going to get blacklisted in no time, even if you find a client that will let you do that.  As long as anyone can jump in and see the IPs and actual files being shared, you're screwed if anyone decides to bitch at the ISP, and the ISP is all too happy to tell the bitches your personal info.  (I know I can pull up a window on ABC, and look at the IPs of everyone participating, even though I did not originate the torrent.  Obviously, I know the contents of the torrent as well.  So I know that anyone out there can do the same to me.)  I have read a bit about anonymous P2P, but I'm too green in the whole thing to jump into it yet.  Plus it seems the tech itself may not be ready for prime time? 

I torrented my ass off in Cinci for years.  I come here, and within a few months I get a complaint.  I hate NY.

[scottws]

Well, I'm not sure Cobra, but still I suggest you look into the feature.

[DrSbaitso]

I just use Opera. Its torrent downloading isn't very advanced, but it's pretty easy to use. Just click a torrent link and it starts downloading.