Speed up your torrents

Written by Ernesto on November 30, 2005 

Help! BitTorrent is slow… This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions I get about BitTorrent. Unfortunately there’s not some kind of magic trick that makes your torrents go through the roof. But you could take some simple steps to optimize your speeds.

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1. Cap your upload (most important)

Limit your upload speed to approximately 80 percent of your maximum upload rate. You can check your upload speed over here (never trust your isp). Once you know your maximum upload speed, change the max upload (to 80%) speed in your torrent client’s preferences.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone should share as much as possible, but if your upload rate reached it’s max, your download rate suffers significantly.

2. Hack the max TCP connections

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 on this).

3. Check seeds and peers

A simple tip, but o so important. Always look for torrents with the best seed/peer ratio. The more seeds (compared to peers) the better (in general). So 50 seeds and 50 peers is better than 500 seeds and 1000 peers. So, be selective.

4. Change the default port.

By default, BitTorrent uses a port 6881-6999. BitTorrent accounts for a lot of the total internet traffic (1/3), so isp’s like to limit the connection offered on the these ports. So, you should change these to another range. Good clients allow you to do this, just choose anything you like. If you’re behind a router, make sure you have the ports forwarded or UPnP enabled.

5. Disable Windows Firewall

It sucks. Windows Firewall hates P2P and often leads a life of it’s own. So disable it and get yourself a decent firewall, Kerio or Zone Alarm for example.

Last but not least… Buy a faster connection…

Read more on optimizing your BitTorrent Speed.

  • Optimize Your BitTorrent Download Speed
  • How to Solve Slow BitTorrent Downloads

    • Here’s a list of 20 BitTorrent tips and tricks.

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    248 Responses

    Pages: « 1 2 [3] 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 » Show All

    51 Feb 04, 2006 at 01:22 by John

    How Come On My Azereus My Force Start Is not clickable i cant force start my downloadz y not?

    52 Feb 05, 2006 at 10:11 by Soulxlight

    Well some of you might be having problems because of the torrent file you chose to download. Before trying some of these measures go and download a smaller file, under 20mb, and see if you still download at a slow rate. I don’t really have many problems, and I am using a very old computer at the moment. I have uploaded at 1.3mb/s before and download at around 100-200kb/s regularly. I think most XP user’s should use uTorrent and either change the default port or set their firewalls to allow connection through it. And yes I also recommend Zonealarm or some other equally good free firewall. The windows default firewall isn’t all bad for a newbie, since in SP2 it is on by default.

    53 Feb 06, 2006 at 02:00 by reyrod

    hi
    you should try this program “shareaza” it conects to five kind of neighbourt such are kad, limewire, bittorrent, emule and the speed is really nice, it have a powerfull search motor and nices GUI menus, i uset it, and the downloads are fast but it deppents on how much seeds are connected, i’ve reached a speed of 10 KB/s downloading FF VIII game (using torrent method)

    sorry my english,
    bye

    54 Feb 06, 2006 at 19:47 by bob

    do u guys no were i can find ace combat belkan war the newest one.

    55 Feb 07, 2006 at 23:01 by p

    haahaahhahahaah youre right

    56 Feb 08, 2006 at 20:06 by zbu

    why port 1720? i do not know all ports, so can anyone please tell me this?

    57 Feb 09, 2006 at 12:13 by bibra

    how do i transfer incomplete downloads from winmx or warezp2p to azureus

    58 Feb 11, 2006 at 10:09 by maria

    Thank you for such a comprehensive guide. Very organized and straightforward. Thanks!

    59 Feb 15, 2006 at 19:33 by Jay555

    like, ms firewall sucks (see previous)
    zonealarm 6 (wich incidentally is compatible with p2p) has a triple defence system. sygate pro has somthin similar 2, but doesnt say it

    60 Feb 15, 2006 at 21:12 by Harrie Jansen

    Okay

    61 Feb 16, 2006 at 20:12 by Kim

    I alway got my max speed download if the swarm speed is not too low, the better swarm speed are the better speed we get, so everone just plz not limit ur upload speed. :)
    And just fix ur NAT problem first if you have. (70% speed inrease if you fix this problem)

    62 Feb 16, 2006 at 20:22 by Kim

    use norton personal firewall, it’s good, did not slow down my speed DL. With me, Firewall they block but they not slow down, that mean you can’t download or you can download.
    MS Firewall is good if you know how to use them.

    63 Feb 17, 2006 at 21:36 by Anonymous

    i found that when i was trying diff. internet security and antivirus, the antivirus (norton and panda) detected the tcpip.sys patcher as Hacktool. i found that this is only because it has the same binary code as Hacktool, but it isn’t a virus http://torrentfreak.com/wp-images/smilies/icon_smile.gif
    :)

    64 Feb 22, 2006 at 04:25 by Josh

    Hey, I got an issue. I lost all download speed after the patch, Gained upload speed though. was up to around 3megs/s total DL speed with multi torrents but now i’m maxing out at like 40k/s anyone know how to unpatch or what maybe up. Using Bitlord and opened the listening port. Settings set to unlimited DL and 55 UL same as before patch. TY if you got any advise. Was just trying to increase UL for sharing.

    65 Feb 22, 2006 at 04:50 by Josh

    And it’s fixed ~~

    Just uninstalled the patch by running it again and chosing the -u option immediatly my DLs began to increase again. Dunno what happened but this patch was anti-helpful for me. Hope this helps anyone who is haveing similar issues.

    66 Feb 24, 2006 at 00:24 by Stelios

    I can even reach 3kb/s at bit torrent client! i tried evrything! give me some help with ports and settings pleaseeeeeeeee. recently i download swat 4 and it takes me 1 week. :-( helpppp please!!!!

    67 Mar 05, 2006 at 15:19 by Hyperactive Junk

    how do u config the max half oopen tcp connections in azureus

    68 Mar 20, 2006 at 02:47 by Cr7pt0r

    I cant understand this sh*t. I dont have the NAT problem (my health is always green), Azureus is running on port 49155, the torrent I’m downloading have alot of seeds/peers, I’ve done everything right all the good configuration, all the patches sh*ts out there. My connections is 2Mbps/128kbps which means that my download stream is (more or less) 200 Kbytes/sec and my upload stream is (more or less) 15Kbytes/sec… Said all this I cant get downloads speeds over 10Kbytes/sec average… this is crap. 10Kbytes/sec is like 5% of my max download capacity. Anyone have a solution?!?!

    69 Mar 20, 2006 at 02:49 by Cr7pt0r

    One more thing… I dont have routers, I dont have firewall, I dont have ANYTHING !!!

    70 Apr 02, 2006 at 21:31 by Rainy

    I changed them from 10 to 80, and my download speed went from 130KB to 180KB. Thank you, Earnesto, for the helpful little tip.

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