Horribly slow speeds compared to few days ago, despite 20+ seeds and forwarded port :s. [details inside]

BitComet BitComet General Discussion
1

Hi!

Just started using BitComet today after having used a certain other popular client up until now :P. Did some research, and it appears certain features of BitComet’s means it has the potential to download faster, which is always good :).

For some reason, all my torrents suddenly stopped downloading at their optimum speeds, but I don’t mean it’s dropped by 100kb/s or so, it’s actually dropped from just under 2mb/s down to <50kb/s, despite the large number of seeds. Is there any setting that may be causing this?

Thanks,

Justin

2

Justin, the speed of your torrents will greatly vary depending on the peers you connect to, and your ability to upload to them. To get the best speeds, you not only need to upload a good amount of data to them, but you also need to reserve enough bandwidth to assure your fast to respond to peer requests.

Please thoroughly read the topic in my signature (I’m sure you can figure out which one you should have read already) :stuck_out_tongue:

When you reply with all the requested info, then we can help you find the best settings for your connection.

ps. The features like LTseed and emule support that give BitComet a distinct advantage over the competion can greatly increase your download performance, but these resources won’t be available on every task. If a task is limited to only bittorrent peers, then BitComet will perform exactly the same as any other well written client, but when additional resources are available, you can find tasks downloading much faster then any other client, and in some cases even download tasks that would never have finished if using another client.

3

Ooft sorry =P. Okay, I’m using

BitComet version: 1.28 Stable for 64 bit computers

Connection: Mine is an Australian ADSL2+ connection, I would put it at an average of 9mbits download, and 0.7mbits upload.

I use a router that I’m connected to wirelessly, and I forwarded the port for the I.P. I set my laptop, so my port is currently forwarded.

I’m just using windows firewall, and the most recent version of Microsoft Security Essentials, neither of which I’ve found to have interfered with anything I’ve ever done on this computer.

The particular torrent I’m downloading is Deus Ex Human Revolution-CLONEDVD. As ironic as it is that I’m explaining this here: I actually bought this game but not from Steam, and since this is a complete rip off the real one with no cracks, I was hoping downloading it in advance would mean I can play it as soon as the files have been verified upon me getting the key, without needing to wait for a 7gb download which can take several hours with my connection.

My settings in BitComet are unchanged from default ones, except for where my files are downloaded, the port being used (I used 50008, which is forwarded for the right i.p. address), and the upload speed which I capped at 45kb/s which I found to result in the most efficient download speed:upload speed ratio.

Thanks!

4

One problem I see is we’re using two different measuring units here. Your isp’s speed is measured in “b” bits, but BitComet uses “B” Bytes, which are a very different unit.

Now, your upload speed that you report as 0.7mbit/s, is this a confirmed “tested” speed, or advertised speed? You should use a confirmed tested speed for these calculations because adjusting to a faster “advertised” speed can result in all your available upload bandwidth being consumed, in which case all the best peers will assume you’re too slow to be bothered with and you’ll be passed up. In order to attract the best peers, you need to upload as much as possible, but also reply to requests immediately.

So, we need to convert from bits to Bytes, then reduce to about 80%, in order to get a good starting point. A shortcut you can use is to divide the bits by 10. In your case 700kb/s divided by 10 would be 70kB/s. This is a good starting point, but I’ll do all the math so you know how I reached this.

0.7mbit/s = 700kbit/s

700kbit/s divided by 8 = 87.5kBytes/s

If your speedtest is accurate, then this figure (87.5kB/s) is the fastest you can upload.

87.5 x 80% = 70

Set global max upload to 70kB/s

You should also keep in mind that your download speed will reflect this figure. On a torrent that isn’t saturated with highspeed users or a large number of seeders, your download speed will run at more or less this level. If a task has a good number of seeders or high speed users, then you will see speeds averaging twice this (70kB/s from peers who reciprocate and another 70kB/s from seeders). If a task has a large number of LTseed peers, then you could see the speeds over 2000kB/s that you reported prior, however for there to be LTseed peers available, that means that bitcomet peers have already downloaded this task and it’s moved into LTseed status. If this is a brand new release as you report, then it isn’t likely to have a lot of LTseeds.

So basically, some tasks will be super fast, some will be slow, and the best you can do is get your setting to the most efficient levels to match your connection. I’d recommend as a test you should try downloading OpenOffice torrent. Besides being a good torrent to test your speed (they are seeded by high speed servers), it’s also a great (and free) product.

http://distribution.openoffice.org/p2p/

One of their recent releases should download at your maximum download speed, assuming you’ve correctly setup bitcomet. You should also see improvements in other torrents, but some will be better then others, that’s just something you’ll have to live with being you have a very limited upload speed.

5

The results are from the speedtest net. I did one again with no one else using the internet, and I got 9.8mbps for download and 0.86mbps.

Okay, with the openoffice torrent, I can at least confirm that my download speeds still went up to 1.2Mb/s, with 16 seeds at the time. The other torrent I’m downloading has 10 seeders and high availability, but yet it has under 300kb/s (kilobyte, not bit) download speeds :(.

6

I did one again with no one else using the internet, and I got 9.8mbps for download and 0.86mbps.

I’d change your global max upload rate to about 86kB/s.

The other torrent I’m downloading has 10 seeders and high availability, but yet it has under 300kb/s (kilobyte, not bit) download speeds

Considering your only able to upload at a steady rate of 86kB/s, downloading at 300kB/s is quite good. With Bittorrent protocol, you get according to your ability to give, and downloading nearly 4 times as much as you can upload is above average. With the open office torrent, at least some of those seeders were highspeed servers that can upload far faster then you can download, but on most common torrents, you’re connected to people just like you who have slow upload speed.

Your system seems to be working at near optimal levels.