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by Saikat Basu on Feb. 20th, 2009


î agine being on the autobahn with the accelerator down and then you realize that you are
driving a wrecked car. The plight is not so unco on on the infor ation superhighway too.

Torrent users would attest to the fact that half of our ti e is spent looking for µhealthy¶ torrents
and the other half trying to download (and a bit of upload too) at the axi u speed. The
for er is andatory; the latter thankfully is within the real of tweaking.

îf you are the one who thinks that your torrent download speeds could do with a boost then keep
reading. Below, you¶ll find a few tips on how to speed up torrent download speed.

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uheck the axi u download and upload speeds allowed by your îSP. Most îSP¶s have
specific bandwidths for both uploads and downloads. Obviously your torrent download
speed won¶t cross the cap set by the îSP. Go over to this article on Speed.io for
broadband speed test and this one by Tina on ways to increase your connection speed.
There are any other bandwidth testers like DSLReports which is included in the speed
test within uTorrent.

 u
     

àse the better clients out there like uTorrent, Vuze or the BitTorrent client itself.
Wikipedia lists about 51 of the supporting the BitTorrent protocol. The choice of client
used should always be updated to the latest version. The screenshots here depict
uTorrent. The settings should be si ilarly configurable for other clients too. Mac users
shuld also check our Trans ission vs. uTorrent post

-  º 

 


D peer is any co puter participating in the download and upload of a torrent file. D seed
(or seeder) is anyone who has one co plete copy of the file being shared across the
torrent network. D leech (or a leecher) is the person who does not have the co plete file
yet but has joined the network to download it. D leecher beco es a seeder when he
downloads the entire file and then shares it across the network.
 For high torrent speeds, the best bet is in nu bers. The greater the nu ber of seeders, the
healthier the torrent and the better the chance of higher speeds. The rule of thu b says to
choose the torrent files with a high nu ber of seeders and preferably lesser nu ber of
leechers i.e. a higher seed-leecher ratio.

‰  º    

Firewalls can block all inco ing BitTorrent connections co ing through. To ensure
otherwise, a firewall should be anually configured to accept the connections and let it
through the client. Windows XP has the Windows Firewall. uonfigure the firewall
installed to accept the connections by checking the BitTorrent client on the allowed list
i.e. £




 

 ± check 



.
Dlso, check the 



 (if you keep it enabled) in your client too.
Shutting down the firewall is not reco ended as it leaves the co puter open to attack.



 îf the ho e co puter is behind a router, it also should be configured through the
feature called 

   to enable torrent traffic. The router docu entation
should have specific infor ation on this.

     

D peer to peer network is all about sharing alike, but an unli ited upload rate hits the
download rate too. àsing the speed tests, find out your axi u upload speed and then
set your client¶s upload rate (Global àpload Rate in uTorrent) to about 80% of your
axi u upload speed. You can also try varying your upload speeds ± keep it high
initially and then gradually bring it down towards the iddle of the download.

Note: Mind the speed units ± it ay be given in @   per second (kb/sec) or @ 

per second (kB/sec). c
@ 



@  

o  º   
 The default port for the BitTorrent protocol is any between port nu bers oco .
îSPs throttle traffic on these ports as BitTorrent sharing involves high bandwidth usage.
ît¶s easy to configure a different port in your torrent client. àse so e nu ber above
c to get around îSPs and also avoid proble s with other applications. By default, the
uTorrent port is rando ized each ti e it starts. Set a specific port by not enabling the


setting.

]   
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This figure specifies how any connections a torrent client should atte pt to establish
si ultaneously at any given ti e. Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or newer,
li its this to a default of 10 as a barrier against virus ultiplication. But that¶s a bu er
for torrent speeds as torrents too need a large nu ber of si ultaneous connections.

D patch has been available for a while fro LvlLord which odifies the  file
in Windows to allow a higher nu ber of TuP connections.

Dfter running the patch, you have to set the nu ber of connections in your torrent client.
For exa ple, in uTorrent go to £







 !
.
Set any nu ber fro 50 to 100. But see that net. ax_halfopen is set 
than the value
set in TuPîP.SYS. Dlways check if it is still patched because Windows updates
so eti es overwrite it.
       

So e îSPs love to act like Big Brothers and constrict bandwidth for P2P protocols.
Protocol Encryption in ost of the torrent clients helps to override this bandwidth
shaping. Enable outgoing protocol encryption and put a check ark on "
#
$ 

.

With protocol encryption, îSPs find it difficult if not i possible to detect that the traffic
is co ing fro BitTorrent. Experi ent with enabled, disabled and forced options
because you could be getting better speeds with encryption disabled. Non-encryption
akes a torrent connection co patible with so eone who is not using encryption but as a
inus it akes the torrent detectable to an îSP with a bandwidth restricting policy.

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Your BitTorrent client¶s settings options will let you enter figures for ±

º%%


 gives the axi u nu ber of connections that
a BitTorrent client can ake for any P2P exchange. Setting this too high does NOT ean
higher speeds. Setting it too high would take up useless bandwidth and too low a figure
would iss out on peers. For y 256kbps connection, î have a setting of 130.

&%









gives the axi u nu ber of peers
that a BitTorrent client can connect to for any P2P exchange. Experi ent by setting this
 nu ber close to the available peers for a particular torrent. For y 256kbps connection, î
have a default setting of 70.

%
 




gives the axi u nu ber of peers that a BitTorrent
client will upload to for any P2P exchange. D low setting ay affect downloads. For y
256kbps connection, î have a setting of 3.

uTorrent has a Speed Guide which handily calculates the figures for a particular
connection.

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Most BitTorrent clients allow us to view the individual files in a download. You can
selectively disable the download of files you don¶t think necessary.

Fa iliarize yourself with the custo ization settings of your particular client available in
the Help files or at the website FD s.