Everything "right" : Still Slow.

[PeterV1066]

Hullo Everyone,

I am not a newbie but still incompetent! (Experience allows you to make the same mistakes but with increased confidence!), so please have pity and help.

I am using BitComet V 1.8 on Windows XP with SP3 behind Norton Internet Security. My Download speed measued at 9886 kbps and upload varies around 512 kbps.

DHT and WAN are green. There are lots of @Remote@ connections in Peers so I believe my ports are open and forwarded. Listening ports are listening. UPnP is enabled. Global upload and download are set at Unlimited and 250 kb/s respectively.

I am downloading a large, (60 GB), single file so there is no competition for bandwidth. (No other programs accessing the Internet.)

It reports that there are [5/1409] potential seeds and peers but I am only connected to 2/29 respectively. So, my file, which has been downloading for 4 days already, has another 8 days to go. Download Rate of 54kb/s and uploading at 60kb/s with a share ratio of 0.61.

Is there anything I can do to "attract" some additional seeds and peers? It seems a bit paltyr to connect to only 29 out of a pool of 1409 peers.

Any advice would be very warmly appreciated.

Peter

[greywizard]

1. You gave some strange figures. I'm assuming that you speak about v.1.18 instead of v.1.8.
   
2. Then, is it your tested download speed really 9886kb/s or 986 kb/s? Furthermore, are these figures obtained from the test site, in kilobits (kb) or in kilobytes (kB)?
   
3. It is your global upload speed that should be limited, not the other way around (again I'm not sure if you just mis-expressed yourself or if your settings are really inversed). Therefore, for a tested speed of 512kb/s you will have roughly 512/8 kB/s = 64kB/s upload speed. Setting your upload cap at 80% of that will give a value of 0.8 x 64 = 51kB/s, that you need to use in BitComet settings.
   That's because BitComet, like most other clients out there, uses kB not kb for measuring the network speeds. And this is assuming that your 512kb/s is a tested value on your connection, not the advertised one. All this is quite well explained in the settings guide.
   
4. The fact that you have 1500 peers and only 5 seeds, yields a very distinct possibility that you will get very low speeds on that torrent (this is especially the case, if most of the peers do not have many of the torrents pieces yet, therefore they're all competing for connections with the seeds, instead of getting most of the pieces from one another). If you really want to test your client, open a very well seeded torrent (such as Open Office) and watch what speeds you get.
   

[kluelos]

If you have configured everything correctly, then when you download Open Office (or one of the Linux distributions), then your download speed should approach your connection's maximum downstream bandwidth. (assuming, of course, that you aren't using part of it for anything else at the same time). If that's the case, then you've configured your connection properly and have done what you can do on your end -- with the single exception of running too many tasks at once.

[PeterV1066]

Hullo Greywizard,

Thank you for replying.

You are, of course, quite correct. It is BitComet V 1.18.

I measured my Internet Speed using BroadBandmax.co.uk (at http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/) and the actual speed comes back as Download 8559 kbps and Upload at 104kbps this evening. Other times it has been 9886 and 512 kbps.

I tried reducing my Upload Speed just by way of experimenting and found that if I set the Upload at 50kb/s then the download speed went down.

When I go to the Peers tab where it shows I have lots of “remote” connections, it also shows that most of the seeds are uploading at less <1 kb/s.

Just for an experiment as suggested, I downloaded openoffice from the TPB Torrent and it achieved download speeds of 650 kb/s from 20/21 [20/30]..

So why am I attracting so few Seeders and Peers out of a pool of so many when trying to download my file? Tonight I am down to 1/25 [1/1329] and struggling along at only 27 kb/s

Once again, thank you for taking the trouble to respond.

Peter

[PeterV1066]

Hullo Kluelos,

Thank you for your advice. I hope you will take a look at my post to Greywizard.

You were right. OpenOffice raced along with only some 20 odd seeds/peers. So why would the torrent I am trying to download be going so slow when there are so many peers?

Peter

[kluelos]

It's critically important to remember that there is a vast distinction between measurements in kilobits per second, vs kiloBytes per second. Kb/s <> KB/s If you don't keep your units straight, your results become meaningless. Capitalization is vitally important.

Having a large number of peers is no guarantee of high download speed. You must look also at what those peers have actually downloaded, which you can learn from the PEERS tab. IF you look and notice that the great majority of them have exactly the same percentage, and that there is only one peer with 100%, it should be understood that that lone seeder is supplying the torrent at its top speed. Eventually, others will obtain 100% and become seeds themselves, whereupon downloads will speed up greatly because there are more sources to distribute pieces to more peers, which you can download from.

For right now though, the lone seeder offers a piece to some peer, who distributes it to another, and it quickly becomes distributed throughout the swarm. Everyone is limited to the upload bandwidth of that single peer. this is the normal situation at the start of a new torrent. Only time will cure it.