Cable Forum - Ridiculously low speeds on BitTorrent

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Ridiculously low speeds on BitTorrent

Hey all,

I'm having a really frustrating time with BitTorrent and I'm wondering if maybe anyone here can please shed some light on the situation possibly.

I'm a student in Leeds at Leeds Met University where in my accommodation I had myself a 750K NTL connection installed after the setup we had there was becoming more of a hassle for me than a benefit.

Basically we had a 1.5mb connection shared between 6 people over a Linksys 8 Port Router, and because I was the most knowledgeable person there regarding PCs, I was assigned the task of keeping everything running. I swear that I must have monitored that connection like a hawk for a year and a half before finally getting sick and tired of my housemates bitching at me.

What they didn't seem to understand was that if they all had 50 bittorrent downloads running at once that they would have crappy web browsing capabilities. They also couldnt seem to grasp the concept that no matter what settings I assigned to the router, what ports I forwarded and what tweaks I made, they couldnt ALL get maximum download speeds, browse the web AND play games online at the same time.

Needless to say, a year and a half of this takes its toll on you.

So I told them all to deal with it themselves and got a 750K connection installed (Silver Cable Modem). Back in March when the free upgrade came, it beefed up to 2mb as planned and works fine, absolutely top notch.

This summer I brought all my kit home with me (we got burgled twice last year so I'm not taking any risks) and here at my Dad's I'm using my PC with my settings to access the Internet on his silver Samsung Set Top Box here in Burnley.

Here's a "list" of things that I've noticed seem to be wrong with the connection here, maybe someone can point me in the direction of what I can do to solve them please?:

* Downloads from Fileplanet spike and fluctuate like crazy!: I'm getting as high as 250kb/s and then dropping to zero, then back again, all in the matter of a few seconds, where as in Leeds I get a solid 250kb/s all the time, rain or shine. I'm a Fileplanet subscriber, and I usually download from the East Coast Fileplanet Subscriber servers, so I know that it's not the FP servers at fault, as they NEVER lag for me in Leeds.

* BitTorrent downloads never go higher than 60kb/s and average at 20-30kb/s: I've tried all manner of settings, clients and tweaks and NOTHING has worked so far. Torrents start out slow as usual, then the download will spike to 60kb/s and drop down to 20kb/s after a short while, then maybe go up to 30kb/s and then either spike or drop. I've not had a top speed download since coming home at the beginning of May.

I get most of my Torrents from TorrentSpy and in Leeds I've had no problems at all. Sometimes I can be downloading from a tracker that has 12 seeds and 35 peers and get a solid 100kb/s+ speed, and it only gets better from there, but here in Burnley on my Dad's set top box connection, it doesn't matter how many seeds or peers on the tracker, I always get stuck at the same low speeds stated above.

Last night for example, I was downloading a Linux release, the torrent had 267 seeds and 1254 peers, and BitLord (as I said, I've tried loads of clients, and BitLord just happened to be the one I was on at the time) said I was connected to all 267 seeds and roughly half the peers (I've NEVER been able to get any client to connect to all the peers) and STILL I was only getting 15kb/s.

Before people start saying things like "Check your Firewall" and "Forward your ports", here's the things I've actually got/done.

* PC is running on Windows XP SP2.
* I've run the patch to increase the number of connections that SP2 allows, I've tried 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 and 300, it made no difference to the speed.
* All clients were set up to accept a decent number of seeds and peers, and I'm aware that too many connections can drown the connection.
* All clients were limited in their upload speeds to 10kb/s, it's a setting I've used for a long time, it's never failed me and it doesn't drown the download speed or the connection on the 2mb connection.
* Windows XP SP2 Firewall is OFF, I have never seen the need for one
* I do NOT connect to the Internet through a router, thus no ports need to be routed.
* When running BitTorrent clients, I have no other Internet reliant software running in the background, no MSN Messenger, no other download software, just BitTorrent.

I've heard rumours that the Samsung set top box may be to blame, but I'm wondering if there's anything I may have missed on my PC that may be causing the problem.

Would contacting NTL and getting a replacement set top box help? How would I go about blagging NTL for one? BitTorrent to many people is a demon and a pirate's haven, but I dont tend to download anything illegal on it, it'll either be music I already own (I've yet to find a decent mp3 ripper program) or releases of legal free software (such as Linux) but I have a feeling that the second I open my mouth and say the words BitTorrent NTL will spaz at me and cut me off. If that fear is unfounded please let me know :P

I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the Pace box, it may have frozen TV a lot, crashed the net more times than I can count and looked ugly doing it, but at least BitTorrent worked properly ;)

If I've missed anything important I'll reply with it here, but I think this covers it. If anyone can help me please I'd appreciate it, as I'm lost and stumped.