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uTorrent Developer Shares BitTorrent Speed Tips

Configuring your BitTorrent client is essential if you want to enjoy optimal download speeds. In our quest to help users get the most out of BitTorrent, we asked one of the uTorrent developers how we can speed up our downloads.

bittorrent speedAt TorrentFreak we have written quite a few speed guides, but we are not as knowledgeable as the people who work with BitTorrent clients daily. A few weeks ago we asked Olivier Chalouhi, developer and CTO of Vuze (formerly known as Azureus) to share some of his BitTorrent speed tips with us.

Today we continue our mission to help people get the most out of BitTorrent, by asking uTorrent developer Greg Hazel to give us his recommendations on how to optimize BitTorrent download speeds. Here are his three suggestions.

Cap the upload speed

Limiting your upload speed is by far the most important suggestion, and was also mention by Olivier Chalouhi in our previous BitTorrent speed guides. The rationale behind it is simple. Your connection is a tube (sort of), if you max out the upload capacity, the tube gets clogged.

Choose the correct maximum number of connections

Too much connections can actually slow down your torrents, instead of increasing the download speed. The uTorrent speed guide (Options > Speed Guide in uTorrent) automatically recommends the ideal settings. For users with a maximum upload speed of 256 kbit/sec, uTorrent suggests a maximum of 35 connections per torrent, and 60 in total.

Run as few torrents as possible

Less is more, sometimes at least. Running fewer torrents will guarantee that your connection can handle all the connections and requests properly. Since BitTorrent rewards people for uploading, the less torrents you run, the faster they will download. Again, the uTorrent speed guide will suggest the optimal settings, which is a maximum of 2 torrents for users with a maximum upload speed of 256 kbit/sec.

These three settings are the most important according to Greg, and configuring them correctly in your BitTorrent client, is the key to faster downloads.

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  • SHv2

    In other words, just let the client configure everything for you…

  • randomguy

    lol, yeah utorrent sets most things up fine

  • Peter Green

    And be patient!

  • hmm

    it doesn’t forwards ports for you though. doing this made a big difference to my speeds

  • ya

    Peter Green hit it on the nail, BE PATIENT. Set and FORGET. Download overnight or put Log Me In on your computer and control your torrents remotley, by the time you get home there done!

    http://www.logmein.com

  • #YLS#

    I’m not a uTorrent user but surely it can port forward through UPnP?

  • blah

    surely you wouldn’t want to be running UpNp ;)

  • Doctor ?

    Using Orac does wonders for speed. Having patients is tough these days, but do or do not. There is no try.

  • Rick White

    uTorrent does UPnP just fine.

  • Anonymous

    Ok, the first suggestion is totally oximoronic. Limit your upload speed? If everyone does this, no one’s downloads will go any faster because everyone’s upload speed will be capped.

    Some people can limit their upload speed and still seed at a decent pace. Most can’t.

  • Anonymous

    get cfos/cfosspeed from your nearest tracker
    it will automatically limit your upload speed depending on your download speed, so if you are not downloading you seed with your full bandwidtch. if you are downloading your upload wont hog the download bandwidth.

  • Anonymous

    @10 you have to limit it to at least a little less than your max upload speed so there is bandwidth for the ACKs or you won’t get any packets downloaded either.

  • Snow Owl

    I’m just patient because I don’t want to cap some of the uploading torrents or I won’t get a proper chance to seed them well later so it’s now or never.

  • mu57i11

    agreewith 12
    @10 – its best to limit your up to about 80% of what it can actually handle so for example, with 256 up, this is not 194.8, for me its about 20.
    As was said, if people have above 256, they can still seed, dl and do some basic http and im before things get slow.

  • FTW BACKWARDS

    uTorrent is fine as it is.
    Try uTorrent WebUI for controlling from browser.

    Set up port forwarding for internet remote control.

    Plus for remote desktop try
    VNC or M$ Remote Desktop

    I think there’s some portals for the PSP to control your torrents too. I for got what its called
    I think its nametaken33 or something

    iPhone try iSlsk

  • Anonymous

    About upload speed, for me I let my upload go unlimited and it works fine. It’s my download that I have to limit at 80% of the total or it halves my upload speed and makes internet browsing nearly unusable.

  • Roflcer of the Lawl

    16 you are totally backwords. Upload is what kills your web browsing and download speed.

  • Anonymous

    You know, these articles on “speed tips” are a little more than redundant by now. Give me a break already.

  • Anonymous

    @18

    Um, don’t click the link that says “uTorrent Developer Shares BitTorrent ****Speed Tips****” then?

  • Anonymous

    i use azureus ;)

  • Jimbo

    Didn’t you ask him when the hell he will make a Linux version??? They were bought by BitTorrent Inc already, are they waiting for a second buyout!?

  • hmmm

    Best speed tip is : get a premium MU/RS account and download stuff from there

    for the rest (if there is) use irc

    and if theres still stuff left well use torrents with settings above

  • me123

    best speed tip is

    don’t use utorrent

  • Jeff

    @ 22: Usenet is even faster than MU/
    RS or even IRC, provided you use a
    premium service like Giganews. You’ll
    hit your maximum line speed every
    time.

    If there’s something recent and
    popular, I’ll check there first,
    usually on an indexing site like
    Binsearch or Newzbin.

    If I can’t wait, or there’s something
    only found on BitTorrent, I’ll go there.

  • 123

    RS sucks ass! and you can only download 5gb a day.. wtf?

  • www.CPUMod.net

    3 kbps upload max for all torrents

    unlimited download speed

    works like a charm for uTorrent

    check out http://www.CPUMod.net

  • Noob Alert!

    @20

    “i use azureus ;)”

    Poor guy. I bet you use 8-track tapes too. Try and catch up with the rest of the class please. :P

  • fogle

    Yeah utorrent has changed a lot. I;ve notice speed changing just from the newest version.

    I’ll stick with Halite/Deluge and their development.. nothing says open like a one legged hooker.

  • sigh…

    what a waste.

  • Anonymous

    THE INTERNET IS TUBES!!!1!

  • cujothemadog (#20)

    @27

    it would take u years to understand my system cause if ur useing utorrent then ur useing windows

    i use linux & azureus ;)
    not for a newbe .. like yourself!!

  • cujothemadog

    @27
    windows and utorrent
    thats a fart in the windstorm

    u could even turn my computer on…u wouldn’t know how

  • HelloWorld;

    Im glad he shared that, but can he also give rtorrent speed tips?

  • Phishybongwaters

    in other words, the same basic generic steps outlined at least a million times!

    I’d like to expand and explain the max connections.

    If you are a windows xp sp2, or server 03 sp1 user, and sp3 for xp, you will NEED to download and install the XP SP2 TCPIP fix (google that exact term)

    xp sp2 limits open tcp connections to 10, with the patch you can specify the number, something around 1000 should be your limit.

    For your client, something like 100 max per torrent would be plenty unless you have a weak connection.

    Look at it this way, because this is how it works. For every client connection you are using small amounts of band width just to keep the connection alive, this is bw that can’t be used for downloading or uploading.

    If you set the max connections, and tcpip limit to over 1000, you are using more bandwidth for just keeping connections to peers, and will suffer greatly reduced download and upload streams.

    As well, with DSL, your upstream severely limits your downstream. Say you can download at 500kbps, and upload at 60kbps (my dsl as an example) you should cap that upload to 80% of 60, according to most guides.

    The problem with that is, if I do that, and say I can it at 35, my remaining bw for downloading drops to 300. If I cap the upload to 5 kbps, I can download at 500.

    My suggestion there is, with utorrent let it try to find the best settings then tweak them. With other clients, keep tryin and making changes until you get peak performance.

    you might also want to take a look at capping the upload severely until you complete the torrent, then raising the cap to seed faster. The problem with that is, you won’t necessarily have the right pieces at the right time.

    If a seeder is seeding until there’s 1 complete copy, that would help. If it’s a standard swarm, you’ll download fast, but finish off and probably won’t be seeding as much as you could be with the cap removed as you get it.

    Anyways, USENET, which is being killed as we speak, relies like everything else, on your isp. I max my connection on every single torrent i download, and I’ve never even hit 50% on rapidshare like sites. Usenet is a 1 to 1 download from your isps network, or from a 3rd party retention site, and again relies completely on your connection.

    When it comes to downloading anything from anywhere, you simply can’t say it will always max, sorry folks the technology simply doesn’t work that way.

    If you properly configure XP and your torrent client, and pick the right torrents at the right time, you’ll see max speeds.

    1 last tip, if you are wondering why your torrent speeds suck and you use xp, open event viewer (right click my computer and select manage)

    look in your ‘System’ event log and look for a yellow TCP warning.

    It might read like this:

    “TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.
    ”

    If so, you need the tcpip fix like i mentioned above. Merely installing that fix and picking the default 50 connections you’ll see your torrent speeds jump.

  • Anonymous

    Pretty obvious stuff.

  • Incubuss

    @21: uTorrent runs perfectly under Wine. In fact I believe it is compiled using a wine dev kit of some sort (I really have no idea tbh) that ensure its runs perfectly under wine.

    Why fix what isn’t broken?

  • Jimbo

    @36 : Are you sure it runs perfectly under Wine? Because i tried, and also you can google lots of forum posts would agree that it doesn’t “run perfectly”, the download and upload speeds are very low when it’s running under wine.

  • doof

    @32

    that sounds real impressive , I bet your raking in the pussy??

  • Noob Alert!

    The only thing 32 is raking in is a bumper crop of hair on his palms. :P

  • Three
  • burris

    Making sure you can accept incoming connections is by far the most important thing. I think GH has been doing this for so many years that he has forgotten. :-)

  • Anonymous

    @21: uTorrent is Wine compatible. It is the first thing it states under the download link under the download tab. It works on any distro of Linux that has Wine installed. It works fine on my Slax.

  • super

    @37

    utorrent under wine is fine. I hit my isp stated speed and my dslreport stated speeds on a daily basis.

  • Anonymous

    @ 38 & 39

    i do ok with pussy and hair

    I was connected though cogeco(can)
    they’re a real bitch

    http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Bad_ISPs#United_States_of_America

    they never kept me from seeding

    azureus !!!!!!

    utorrent ain’t bad either….it’s for the folks who don’t tweak much.

  • printerbest.blogspot.com

    download? me think the faster the better. that’s it.

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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