Something a bit odd going on here...

[Milliesdad]

First of all this isn't another 'Oh no my speed is rubbish' thread although it may seem that way at first.

I've been having trouble with my torrents and I don't understand why. Here's the deal, with history:

XL BB at 10MB - never had any issues at all, always maxed out on torrents (1.14Mb/s) and showed constant 7 - 8MB on speedtest.net. Really happy with the service

XL BB at 20MB - slower, like everyone else and much more unreliable. Shows anything from 1-7 MB on speedtest.net and torrents never above 500Kb/s.

Now the odd bit.

The other day I was downloading from my favorite private torrent site using Azureus (as always) and the download speed was 70Kb/s. Pretty damned slow I'm sure you will agree. At the same time I carried out a speedtest to check that this was also showing a slowness of the network and it gives me 11MB.

I had over 20 seeder connections and was not uploading.

The question that arises from this is 'Do VM detect and choke torrents?'

For info I run through a WRT54GS and a Motorola 4200, never been a problem on 10MB and from what I can gather from these forums is a pretty good pairing of hardware to get the full 20MBs.

Even stranger than this tonight I thought I'd connect straight to the modem to see if the router was the bottleneck.

1st speedtest with router - 11MB
2nd speedtest with modem only - 1.5MB
3rd speedtest with router plugged back in 8MB.

:confused:

Anyone got any ideas? The ports on the router and the firewall are open, hardware checked, no spyware, viruses, etc.

btw I'm connected to cable.ubr01.bath.blueyonder.co.uk

thanks for reading, sorry it took a while to get here.

[dev]

getting a speed on one site doesn't mean you'll get the same speed on another site. how much were those seeders uploading to other people?

[Milliesdad]

It was a popular torrent with over 4000 seeders in total and about 300 leechers. I had 20 seeders connected to me, with the 10MB connection that would have max'd out at 1.14Mb/s now it's nowhere near. 70Kb/s was extremely slow and a one off but it's usual now to get speeds around the 100 - 200KB/s.

I can't believe that for no reason torrents are suddenly downloading much slower than the network connection allows which is why I asked the question.

I also have RC4 transport encryption enabled, which supposedly helps to stop ISPs from limiting the speed. If it's anything like Peerguardian then it'll just be another placebo.

[Richy99]

encryption wont help get around the STM

[Mr.X]

Someone needs to do a sticky on this subject.

[Milliesdad]

encryption wont help get around the STM

STM doesn't come into force at 7am, which is when I always download, before going to work.

[fatassmichael]

IMO, judging d/l speeds by torrents is worse than judging them by speedtest sites, go to http://gamefiles.blueyonder.co.uk and download multiple files, then add the rates together.

[Mr.X]

Try going to this site and doing a few download tests http://gamefiles.virginmedia.com click on blueyonder games and then demos, pick a few large files and download them and make a note of the transfer rate. If your downloading several files (and you should be) you will have to add the transfer rates up to get the total. you might want to try this both with your router connected and with a direct connection to the modem.

This site is hosted by virginmedia and will give you a true indication of your download speeds.Running speedstests across different networks is a waste of time.

If you ring tech support this is the test they'd get you to carry out.

[Rik]

The question that arises from this is 'Do VM detect and choke torrents?'

No they definitley do not, ive been downloading from my fav private tracker today at 2.31MB/s until i got shaped down to 5MEG ;)

[AbyssUnderground]

No they definitley do not, ive been downloading from my fav private tracker today at 2.31MB/s until i got shaped down to 5MEG ;)

I read that as getting shaped down to "smeg" :D probably right as well :p:

[Milliesdad]

Thanks for the replies. I'll try them when I get home later and update.