Speed Up Your Torrents, Tips from a BitTorrent Developer
Written by Ernesto on July 19, 2008BitTorrent is without a doubt the best way to share large files, as long as you follow some basic rules, that is. We asked one of the leading BitTorrent client developers for some tips and tricks so you can speed up your BitTorrent downloads.
There are several ways to optimize your BitTorrent download speeds. One of the easiest ways is to join a private torrent tracker, but there are others.
Since there’s always a lot of debate about what works and what doesn’t, we decided to ask an expert to share his thoughts with us. Olivier Chalouhi, developer and CTO of Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) was kind enough to give us some of his own tips and tricks. Since Olivier was the person who initiated the Azureus Open Source project in 2003, which went on to create one of the most popular BitTorrent clients ever, if anyone knows how to get the best out of your torrent client, he does.
Here are some of Olivier’s tips for optimizing your torrent download speeds. There tips work with every BitTorrent client, except for the last one.
1. Seed.
Downloading speeds will be sub-optimal for everyone unless everyone plays their part and seeds. Private tracker sites are a great example of how the overall speed of the swarm increases when everyone is seeding and downloading in equal measure. So, play your part in seeding and tell others to as well.
2. Be connectable.
Make sure you’re not “firewalled” by opening up your incoming ports or by enabling UPnP in your router, otherwise you’ll be leaving bandwidth on the table.
3. Manage your upload speed.
It is all about striking a balance. You don’t want the upload speed to be too high, nor do you want it to be too low. Ideally you want to set your upload speed to be 80% of the maximum possible line speed.
TF note: Want an easy life? Try this handy settings calculator, works for all clients
4. Select the right torrents.
Your download will be faster if you choose to download a torrent where there is a good balance of seeds and peers. For instance, Vuze ranks its search results according to the number of seeds and peers to make this easier.
5. Be realistic.
Check the swarm average and if you’re already above average, then you just need to be patient. If you’re below average, go back and check some of these other things I’ve mentioned.
6. Get a Friend Boost.
I wouldn’t be a Vuze developer if I didn’t give a plug for the Friend Boost feature we recently developed :). When you create a network of Friends on Vuze, you agree to seed content to each other on a preferential basis. That is, if one of your friends has a torrent that you want, you will be able to directly use a portion of their bandwidth to get it. In most cases this will increase your download speed.
Obviously, ways in which to actually implement some of these tips will differ from client to client. If you want to find out how to do it on Vuze, you can check out our wiki.
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50 Responses
Yeah.
I think most people have their clients optimised past maximum by now :). I’m getting 2.3mb/s on utorrent 1.8 beta on a 20meg VM connection (2.5 mb/s)
Already knew all of it. But I don’t use Azureus, so the ‘friend boost’ won’t work. Tribler has the same kind of feature if I remember correctly.
Point 5 is quite worthless. There is always a group that downloads below average, if everyone would download above average the average would shift to a much higher value.
dont need to use this as i get around 13MB/s down and up.
SEEDBOXES RULE if you want one check out the link below
http://www.ovh.co.uk/
Friend boost = traffic shaping = evil? :)
friend boost.. interesting.
Although this article is the same ol for most of us, you would be surprised how much this helps noobs.
Although I doubt noobs will even understand half the terms on there.. lol.
Arrg, don’t get me started about todays “noobs”.
I suppose we all began as something different, were ‘noobs’ ourselves, a long time ago, at some point in time in the last millenium.
But somehow, noobs back then were different, we hated being noobs, wanted to leave this embarrasing state behind as quickly as possible and change into something better.
Today, it seems, being a noob doesn’t bother people anymore.
Maybe because it involves actual brain activity, which is “inconvenient” and not “user friendly” ?
Well, i gave up on current noobs some years ago, but it is nice to see once in a while, not everyone gave in into cynical sarcasm …
Not yet anyway … :)
sounds to me this article is just advertising for Vuze
Points 4 & 6 only apply if what you’re looking for is fairly popular. Search for something rare or obscure and you’re likely to find a single torrent with maybe 1 seed and 3 peers.
Friend boost sounds like an awful idea, promoting cliquiness in an already cliquey field.
2. Be connectible.
should be connectable
bittorrent simply discriminates against obscure content fewer people share, i guess, by its very design – if you’re looking for rare stuff, be prepared to get trickles and wait for weeks – better that than nothing! btw I have never been able to not be firewalled, even trying a bt client on a network directly connected to the Internet with no restrictions at all
You assume we use Vuze. Most of us dumped Azureus after the last update.
#7: I agree. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing things, but people should try to help themselves and learn. There’s no point asking “HOW DO I OPEN RARZ FILEA????/?” when the most basic tool of the internet, Google, can help. Another thing I think is that they think “I CNT GAT DIS TO WURRK, ITZ FAK OR BRAKEN, FUK Z UUU!!”.
“bittorrent simply discriminates against obscure content fewer people share, i guess, by its very design – if you’re looking for rare stuff, be prepared to get trickles and wait for weeks – better that than nothing! btw I have never been able to not be firewalled, even trying a bt client on a network directly connected to the Internet with no restrictions at all”
It’s not discrimination. It’s simply inherent to the fact that your speeds depend on how much other people upload to you.
Seedboxes are nice, mine works great, then I can focus everything on FTP connection back to my PC.
if you want a faster download of a file, spend some dollars on your own internet connection and buy a faster connection to the net
> “if you want a faster download of a file, spend some dollars on your own internet connection and buy a faster connection to the net”
Thanks for the tip! Now I can… Oh, never mind. I already have the fastest available in my area.
Nice tips..
Seedbox are better alt..
http://www.alphaboard.co.cc/blog
Thanks anyway.
yeah all this info is just torrentfreak rehashing old articles, nothing we don’t already know.
Discrimination? How can you reasonably expect people to seed something nobody wants, forever, on the off chance someone may want it in 18 months time? Thats just plain retarded. Supply and Demand, look it up.
Dude there is nothing like a lightning fast BT. Heaven!
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
19 Jul 20, 2008 at 04:32 by Takashi
so what’s your contribution?
Encryption?
I’ve gotten better speeds when I use Peer Guardian.
> “Discrimination? How can you reasonably expect people to seed something nobody wants, forever, on the off chance someone may want it in 18 months time? Thats just plain retarded. Supply and Demand, look it up.”
Pretty much every thing is wanted by someone. There are those of us who download more obscure things too; I actually find it one of the best parts about P2P.
“Encryption?
I’ve gotten better speeds when I use Peer Guardian.”
Peerguardian isn’t encryption, if that’s what you’re saying.
i’m curious if there has ever, in all of history, been a link on torrentfreak’s comment section that wasn’t just spam for the commenter’s blog?
@ #25
dont know
http://www.h33t.com
Kinda offended, this seems like a total advertisement of Vuze. Get that crap out of here…
yeah… these tips are all fine and good, but really nothing here you won’t find on google or any torrent site’s forums. the big one missing out is use google before asking stupid questions… worst ever is reading comments at tbp to figure out if a torrent is decent, and every second one is “OMG HOW DO U OPENN .ISO FILEZ? THIS IS FAKE FAKE FAKE” and “I DOUBLE-CLICKED THE FILE AND NOTHING HAPPENED” on multi-part rar archives. when i was a noob, i googled. learn it.
@29 Chris,
I agree with that 100%. A perfect example was a couple of tools the other day were complaining they couldn’t change a .dll file on a completed torrent when the original u/l even explained how to do it on the torrent page/description…fcuk! how annoying and then carried on about how it was a fake etc, etc. Like they would have a fcuking clue anyway. People who can’t be bothered to even take 20 seconds to read some instructions or look something up shouldn’t be allowed to own a computer.
The more “user friendly” computers and their operating systems become the more people are using them and the more the average computer users skills DECREASE.
It is almost like a law of nature.
“Be ready for the noob invasion, buy noob shelters now.”
;)
Get down from you`re high horses, I`m sure the term “noob” is relative. Unzipping a rar file wont exclude you from appearing like a newbie at some point. There are always things to be learned.
A java based developer talking about speed? Don’t make laugh.
yeah yeah whatever, since vuze that client is shitzer. does not work right since and you ask him hahahahaahaa
@32,
very true it is indeed relative but when a person/s is too lazy to even attempt to look something up or to read something that is right in front of them, explaining the answer to their question, where they’re posting it becomes a little more than simply being a “noob”. Then to start whining that the file is a fake etc, etc when they simply don’t know what they are doing is taking things to a new level.
@31 LOL!
Very lame advice, almost anybody involved with torrents know that, we need solution
Do any of the major torrent clients use geographic information to speed torrents?
This might be a more open version of the Vuzereus friendship thing.
Physical friends are likely to be closer geographically so in a way Vuzereus has branded a geography-boost feature as a social feature when really it’s about speed due to proximity.
What am I getting at? Seeds that are closer physically will be faster for those in close proximity.
Do torrent clients follow this logic by prioritising peers from closer geographic proximity?
As an experienced bittorrent user none of these points were new to me but they can be very helpfull n informative for n00bs…
None of this is helpful if it’s main point is VUZE.
WAIT WAIT WAIT!
As to Tip #3: 3. Manage your upload speed…Ideally you want to set your upload speed to be 80% of the maximum possible line speed.
If your ISP is a cable ISP, then too many people share the uplink for this advice to be practical.
For Cable ISPs, it would be more effective for all if the uplink speed was about a third, particularly during peak surfing times.
As you all know, I’m involved in major legal action regarding Comcast and their secret attack on BitTorrent. Although they were wrong to do what they did, it is a fact that Cable ISPs have failed to manage their bandwidth and that our upload line speeds are no longer low enough to keep us from interfering with one another.
For example, most of Comcast has been “upgraded” from 384 Kbps to 1 Mbps. This “upgrade” is a modem upgrade only. The network itself has not been improved.
@8
you are correct, sir!
PLUG
PLUG
PLUG
PLUG
PLUG
PLUG!
this advertisement brought to you by your corporate overlords at Vuze, the soon to be owners of TF
@blast_from_the_past and the “anti-noobs”
Society moves forward by the number of activities it can perform without thinking (expending excess energy). The hacker manifesto states that redundancy is the enemy of progress/efficiency. Yea, you guys are the pioneers, capable of things that the mainstream can’t even understand, and we appreciate that…but not everyone needs to be a pioneer/expert. You play the role so that others don’t have to (and remember we play roles for you too).
In order for torrent tech to achieve it’s full potential and have a widespread impact (and I think we all agree it could be even more massive than it currently is) these programs have to be “user friendly”. What would it be like if we were all punching in letters on a command line instead of using an intuitive OS? Wouldn’t it be slow and frustrating? Somebody had to build that, to make it so that you didn’t HAVE to think about tasks that could be simplified. Right now we’re all involved in building something that we give to the next generation of computer users, whose abilities will probably embarrass ANY of ours by comparison.
So that’s my position. If I came off as an ass let me make clear that you guys are fantastic and on behalf of all noobs I thank you for being the early adopters and the experts. I’ve really got to get to sleep but thanks for the tips everybody, and I’m going to look into seedboxes. :)
Should be a #7. Move to sweden, we got 100mbit! :D
> this advertisement brought to you by
> your corporate overlords at Vuze
Actually, it was Ernesto who was contacting developers to get feedback – I got an e-mail (though never got round to replying to it). No idea who else got it though.
this site is becoming a bit of a joke. every other comment is a link to some sh**y blog that no one reads and the ‘articles’ are becoming more like adverts every day!
Does the XP SP2/Vista issue with half-open connections merit a mention here? I know it’s not about speed as much as slowdown when using other Internet apps.
This will all end with crying
here’s a better tip than those above…. what a douche…
this works best on large, large swarms on public trackers (stfu to all you losers who rail against public trackers – being a real torrent user means knowing what is available, when, and where – including on public trackers, assholes.)
use azureus to kick-and-ban very low or non-sharing peers. azureus will only connect with a certain number of peers, and then usually stops looking for more, even if your ‘number of connections-per-torrent allowed’ is very high.
so, sort connectable peers by ‘total uploaded’ (or is it total downloaded? both, ironically, are counter-intuitive) and kick and ban the peers who haven’t uploaded you anything. there will always be about 10 or 15 upload-capping shit heads that you need to get rid of. then hit “update tracker” a few times, get some more peers and repeat. three or four times, and you should be connected to some of the best-sharing peers in the swarm.
anything that uses java sucks, including azureus.
utorrent till i die!! =P
Technically, BitTorrent’s design does discriminate against unpopular files after a fashion.
It’s much easier to share uncommon files with a Gnutella/Napster/Kazaa/eDonkey/SoulSeek-style “What folders do you want the world to see?” approach.
middle finger upp
-_-
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