This guide shows how to speed up downloads in the freeware bittorrent client, Torrent.

All
bittorrent programs need to have their incoming and outgoing communications flow freely in
order to achieve the highest download speeds and that is what this guide is about. This guide
will also work for users of the BitTorrent client as the Torrent and BitTorrent clients are
identical.

This guide was put together using information given by the developers of bittorrent programs at
their forums, guides and FAQs. There are no secret tricks, just the real basics of proper set up of a bittorrent
program. Following these simple steps should result in increased download speed.

These are the basic principles of optimizing a bittorrent client, like Torrent, for speed:

Choos e a p rop er p ort to avoid ISP blocks and conflicts with other programs
F orw a rd t ha t p ort through any software firewall and router to allow incoming connections
Ad jus t int erna l s et t ings based upon upload capacity of the internet connection to allow room for outgoing
communications and to distribute upload efficiently.

There are some programs that claim to optimize speed in Torrent.Such programs are a scam and generally contain
adware or spyware. I have seen it said, by the developers of all bittorrent programs, that nothing will increase your
download speed in a bittorrent client more than the basic steps set forth herein.

This guide will work for all versions of Torrent and BitTorrent 6.1 (and later). Screen shots are from Torrent 1.8.2
as the options menus had been changed starting with that version.

If you are looking to increase your download speed in Torrent for Mac, see O p t im iz ing Torrent F or Ma c .
If you are not using Torrent or BitTorrent, there are several other specific guides for other clients and a general
guide here:
O p t im iz ing Bit t orrent Client s

There are several other help articles for and BitTorrent here at Gizmo's. A listing is on this page:

Torrent & Bit Torrent Help

Choos ing A P rop er P ort

To avoid messing up a network connection that is already cleared, first check and see if your communications are
blocked or are already clear. Have Torrent running while you test the port.

The port that Torrent uses is at O p t ions >P references >Connect ion
The port number in your Torrent should be entered at the port test site.
The Randomize port each start option should be disabled as this could affect router and firewall settings and rarely
serves any useful purpose.

Enter the port number from your Torrent here at the test page and press "Check":
Click t o Tes t Your P ort Succes s -just go to Adjusting Internal Settings.
Settings . Error - follow all steps.

If you failed the port test above, then you should first set your port to a proper one.The most important choice here
is to avoid using a port within the 6881-6999 range. This was the range originally used by bittorrent programs and
is often blocked by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). (If your port was in this range, change and re-test).

The safest choice is a port in the 49160-65534 range as this will avoid ISP blocks and possible conflicts with other
applications. This range used to be 49152-65534, but apparently Vista and Windows 7 grabs some of those ports
in between. Vuze-Wiki: Port is Blacklisted

Windows users, if you want to make certain there is no conflict. Go to the command prompt and type in net s t a t
-a >c: \log. t xt and the press "Enter". This will check to see which ports are being used and save a text file called
"log" at C:\. Looking at the log.txt file, you will know which ports to avoid.

F orw a rd ing T he P ort

Int rod uct ion
A router will block incoming communications unless an exception is made. All software firewalls will block incoming
communications and most will also block outgoing communications, unless an exception is made. If you are
"firewalled", then other people will not be able to initiate connections with you (see Why Is Being Firewalled Bad).
Bad ).
As there are many firewalls and routers, this guide can not give explanations as to each. However, there are guides
available, on the internet for most firewalls and routers and this guide will link you to them.

Soft w a re F irew a ll - The permission should be set to allow TCP and UDP in both directions. Generally, you will
have a choice to set permission for the Torrent port or for the Torrent program. Setting permission for the port is
the safer choice.
If you are using Windows Firewall, then all you have to do is go to O p t ions >P references >Connect ion in
Torrent and enable the Add Windows Firewall exception option.

Otherwise, you can check these options for guides:

T he help file of your s oft w a re firew a ll is the best place to look

T he Torrent forum has some guides posted
P ort F orw a rd . com F irew a ll G uid es (choose firewall and then Torrent) also has some guides.

Rout er - There are two choices here. The easier way is to use UPnP. However, this has a possible security issue.
Using UPnP allows any program to create a port mapping through the router without consent of the owner. Not e:
Given the recent find ings of Ra p id 7 rega rd ing s ecurit y fla w s in UP nP , it is generally suggested here
that manual forwarding be used. If you still want to use UPnP, then it would be a good idea to t es t a nd s ee if
your d evice is vulnera b le t o a t t a ck t hrough UP nP.

The other choice is to manually forward the port through the router. This does not have that security issue, but
involves going through several steps to accomplish. Using the guides linked herein, this should not be that difficult
and is the preferred method.

UP nP (NAT-P MP in Ap p le) - T he Ea s y Wa y - Enable UPnP (NAT-PMP in Apple) inTorrent and router.

 O p t ions >P references >Connect ion

Ma nua l F orw a rd ing-T he P referred Wa y

1. UPnP (NAT-PMP) Must be disabled in Torrent (see image above)

2. Use the St a t ic IP G uid e
3. Set permission for Torrent port. This should be set to allow both TCP and UDP communications.
You can check these options for guides:

T he help file of your rout er is the best place to look

P ort forw a rd . com Torrent Rout er Ind ex has guides for most routers

Click Here t o Re-Tes t P ort Succes s -Proceed to next step. Error - re-do steps or seek help in Forums
Forums.
. Have
Torrent running while re-testing the port.

Ad jus t ing Int erna l Set t ings

Int rod uct ion
The most important setting here is to cap upload in Torrent to 80% of your overall upload capacity. Setting upload
in Torrent is a fine line. The more upload you give, the more download you will get from other peers. However, if
upload is set too high, or to unlimited, then download speeds will suffer as outgoing communications
(acknowledgment signals, resend requests etc) will be interfered with. Other adjustments are made here to
distribute your upload so that you receive back the most download from other peers.

Not e: (Thanks to Roderunner for reminding me of this)

Torrent does have a built in speed test and Setup Guide (Options>Setup Guide) that will automatically adjust
settings in Torrent. This is a slightly quicker process than this guide. However, my testing of the Setup Guide
settings versus the calculator of this guide showed better speeds with this guide.

First of all, the setup guide only offers settings for certain upload rates. So if your upload rate falls outside their
offerings, the settings will not be as precise as those in the calculator below. Even if your upload rate matches one
of the offerings exactly, the automatic settings of Torrent for that rate are not as effective as the ones given by this
calculator.

There is not much more involved in entering the settings from the calculator into Torrent and the increase in
download speed will make it worthwhile.

Sp eed Tes t : Sp eed t es t . net (Click for Tes t )

First the upload capacity of your internet connection must be determined by taking an online speed test.
Speedtest.net has test locations worldwide and will highlight the one closest to you.
To take the test you must have Flash installed and javascript enabled.
enabled .

Before taking the speed test, press Settings in the upper right of the speedtest.net page. This will take you to
another page. At the bottom of that page is the "Global Settings" options. Set "Speed Measurement" to kilobytes
and press "Save" . This will facilitate entry into the calculator below and will lessen confusion as Torrent shows
speeds in kilobytes.

You should stop all internet activity, including torrents, before taking the test and the test should be taken a few
times to obtain a reliable average. Results will now show in KiloBytes. It is the up loa d ra t e that is important
here.

Anot her Wa y To Tes t Up loa d Sp eed

For most people these test results will be reliable (Comcast users see Note
Note).
). However, you may wish to do a double
check on real life upload speed. When you are active on a torrent with a good number of peers and you are using
your upload cap, set upload to unlimited and watch for about 5-10 minutes and see where upload settles in at.
Then input that number into the calculator in the kiloBytes section.

Not e: Some ISPs will show inaccurate results on the speed test. If your ISP has anything like Comcast's
PowerBoost,, then your results will show higher than the actual speed of your connection. PowerBoost provides a
PowerBoost
burst of download and upload speeds above your provisioned download and upload speeds for the first 10MB and
5MB respectively. Since the speed test involves relatively small files, this will skew results upward.
If you have PowerBoost, or something similar, my findings from my own results and those of others is that the
actual speeds are 60% of the test result. So if you get 200kB/s for upload at the test, you should enter 120 in the
kB/s box in the calculator. Using Google ("speed result" x .6) will get the proper number to enter in the calculator
and this actually turns out to be very accurate. You should end up with the calculator showing a cap that is about
half of the test result.

Calculator:: Azureus Upload Settings Calculator

Calculator
Once you have an average upload speed for your connection go to the online Azureus Upload Settings Calculator.
Although designed for Azureus, this calculator will work for all bittorrent clients.
This calculator was created by the8472 a contributor to Vuze (fka Azureus) and part of the team that created
Bittorrent Protocol Encryption.
Encryption.

Enter your average upload speed in the appropriate box

 The calculator will automatically give the proper figures to adjust various options in Torrent.

Inp ut Res ult s Int o Torrent - Screen shots of locations in Torrent of settings to be adjusted

P eer Sources & Encryp t ion

Having the proper peer sources enabled, such as Peer Exchange (PEX) and Distributed Hash Table (DHT), will help
download speeds as they will help you find additional seeds and peers for a torrent. Local Peer Discovery should be
enabled as it supposedly searches for peers on your ISP or those on an extended network or on a LAN party. it can
be very useful on a LAN party. I have not found it to make much of a difference when not on a LAN or extended
network.

Encryption was primarily designed to thwart Internet Service Providers interference with bittorrent. Having
encryption enabled and allowing incoming legacy (non-encrypted) connections will provide you with the largest pool of
seeds/peers to select from.

These settings are at O p t ions >P references >Bit Torrent and should be set as in this image:
G ood Torrent s
The general rule here is to choose torrents that have a high seed to peer ratio. Seeds have 100% of the content
associated with the torrent and are only uploading to peers. Peers also upload to other peers, but are also looking
for other peers to upload to themselves and their download capacity is almost always higher than their upload
capacity.

This applies even though one swarm has significantly more active users than another. For example, a torrent with
30 seeders and 70 peers (30% seeders) will generally be faster than one with 500 seeders and 2500 peers (20%
seeders) as the average upload capacity available to the peers will be higher. (TorrentFreak
(TorrentFreak).
).

For more information see Good Torrents