Speed up Bitcomet and uTorrent

Written by Ernesto on December 20, 2005 

In a previous post we advised to raise the maximum amount of half-open tcp connections to speed up your torrents. On itself this is a great trick, however I recently discovered that 90% off all people use the default settings on their client, and that’s a problem.

Both Bitcomet and uTorrent (and probably other clients) limit half-open tcp connections by default. This means even if you hack the max half-open tcp connections in windows xp, your speed will still be limited. So this is what you need to do:

First of all, read this post that gives you some tips and tricks how to speed up your torrents

1. Hack the max half-open TCP connections

Update: this tweak is NOT recommended if you use uTorrent >1.7, it may lead to unstable behavior.

If you’re on XP sp2, your TCP connections are limited to a maximum of 10. This seriously hurts your downloading speed because it wont let you connect to a high amount of ip numbers. It is supposed to slow down viruses because their spreading strategy is to connect to a high amount of ip numbers, but it also cripples your torrent downloads.
A nice way to fix this is to download this patch, it allows you to set the maximum allowed connections to any number you want. Any number between 50 and 100 is ok (more is NOT always better).

2. Configure your torrent client to allow 50-100 max half-open TCP connections

uTorrent: Options > Preferences > Advanced options > net.max_halfopen

tcputorrent

Bitcomet: Options > Preferences > Connection > max half-open TCP

tcpbitcomet

Now you’re ready to go…

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A third point of interest is that some “windows updates” revert your tweaked tcp connections back to 10. So it’s wise to check this every now and then. You can check this by going to (in windows xp) Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer > System… Look for event 4226 (sort by event).

event

If there are a lot of daily occurrences it’s likely that the max amount of half-open tcp connections was set back to 10. Or you’re infected with some nasty spyware…

If you’re done, you might want to try the torrent settings optimizer to check if all setting are correct

If you don't like torrents try MP3 Fiesta. They hold nearly 67,000 albums from nearly 17,000 artists. Prices are around the $0.10 mark for single tracks with full albums coming in at roughly $1.00. Tracks are available from 192kbps and they take major credit cards and PayPal

Previously: Torrent site for sale on Ebay

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416 Responses

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101 Mar 29, 2006 at 06:41 by Danny

Does anyone know if there is a patch available for Windows Server 2003?

102 Apr 01, 2006 at 00:17 by dp30

wicked, installed it, i’m using bitlord and straight away my speed increased…

103 Apr 01, 2006 at 02:21 by fishyboy

In response to:

By Lambros on 02.06.06 10:40 am
I got a 54mbps internet, but only get a download speed below 20kbps. Any Ideas??

Are you sure you aren’t confusing your wireless local network speed with your actual internet connection speed? You should run one of the speed tests to clear it up.

104 Apr 02, 2006 at 06:37 by Noob

hihi….
Can u teach me how to configure my azureus 2.4.0.2 to allow 80 max half open tcp connection..
And other tips to speed up my connection plz.
thx

105 Apr 08, 2006 at 11:17 by vanDivX

I am on WinXP SP2 and I was bucking 250KB downloading speed without this patch or changing the setting in option in uTorrent but I applied it anyway, don’t see any change but that may be because I could only go up to about 300KB with my connection and also I didn’t reboot windows or even restart uTorrent… anyway, how could I have been downloading at 250KBs when I did have that setting in windows set to 10 and in uTorrent to 8.

Of course speeds vary, I don’t always get 250KB but mostly 50 to 100 KB, suppose depending how good your particular torrent is

vanDivX

106 Apr 08, 2006 at 15:38 by wassup

hey guys! i downloaded the tcp/ip.sys patch, but when i try to extract the patch, nothing happens! Basically it extracts a folder with the help file, a url, but no program itself! Any help

107 Apr 10, 2006 at 03:19 by fawlty

hey when i down load the patch nod32 goes off and says there is a win 32 virus in there and deletes the whole file anyway around this ??
thanks all

108 Apr 10, 2006 at 06:39 by Ernesto

disable NOD32 :)

109 Apr 13, 2006 at 20:30 by matteo

when i open the patch from the other site…its empty……what should i do

110 Apr 15, 2006 at 16:03 by Fidget

i have been battleing this problem for months…I ahve a 1.5 meg down 1 meg up connection…I do speed test all the time and never see anything underthat…I use sp1 and I am NOT behind a router. I do use webroots desktop firewall but have tried alot of dl’s with it disabled…I have 2 clients that i use (bitcomet and utorrent) and both of them are extremly slow….I use a private tracker with not alot of seeders, But everyone else on the tracker get desent enough speeds but mine NEVER go above 20kps…I have been through all the settings in bitcomet and everything but the advanced settings in utorrent(most advanced settings in utorrrent i dont even Know exactly what they do)..I dont know what to check from here..sp1 has no connection limatations,
Tracker is not a problem(atleast not for others), port forwarding is not an issue with no router, its not the firewall..Is ther any other explaination besides my isp capping my ports? By the way, i failed to mention when dealing with http downloads i blaze, the only slow speeds i see is with torrents and all other p2p i have tried. Can anyone point me in a direction, i am fresh out of ideas!?!

111 Apr 17, 2006 at 06:07 by Min

I cant find administerative tools in my control panel?

112 Apr 19, 2006 at 17:17 by Happy

Thanks guys, from average 45kb to 280kb.. woooo hooooo

113 Apr 20, 2006 at 02:23 by Game22

This rules!! man ive never had this fast dl speeds

114 Apr 20, 2006 at 02:26 by Game22

forgot to thank you thanx alot!!!

115 Apr 20, 2006 at 15:32 by tyler

hello people..i done the patch and it workd great..but it wont let me sign onto msn..i changed it back to 10 and it will wont let me sign in..can somebody help please..thanks

116 Apr 21, 2006 at 05:11 by Raoul Farnizi

This actully all worked out great. Much appreciated

117 Apr 22, 2006 at 21:56 by err

thanks a lot for this..
i was downloading with 200 and now im downloading with 320kB/s

118 Apr 24, 2006 at 11:51 by softice

thanks this is amazing my torrent went from total download time of 33hours to 6.5 hours

119 Apr 24, 2006 at 21:54 by undroth

where to i go to figure out how to forward my ports?

120 Apr 29, 2006 at 14:09 by coldfax

My TCP connection was already set at 500 when I installed bitcomet. I then decided to see what happens when set the connection to 99999. HAHAHA HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I even pulled a dick move and only allow 1 upload slot, 1 upload task at [no limit]. So there won’t be stealing my bandwidth fuckers

121 May 01, 2006 at 06:13 by amir

looooooooooooove

122 May 04, 2006 at 21:22 by john

Someone help me out, my max number of half open TCP came at 500 when I downloaded the program of the bitcomet site. Is that good?

123 May 06, 2006 at 10:27 by Sarcasm

i dont kow if u been reading, but if u heard u’d know that anything from 30-100 TCP is good, so 500 is extremely good

124 May 07, 2006 at 11:37 by Ict Cramps

I downloaded that patch and set it to 100 then i set the advanced setting (net.max.halfopen) to 100 as well , my downloaded speed went from 0.5 (average) to 3.0 (average). Brilliant. Instead of waiting 1 hour to download it took me 20 minutes.

125 May 09, 2006 at 17:44 by TE

Works great. 10x a million times :thumbsup:

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