adsl bittorrent speeds troubleshooting

[John Mills]

Hi, eodyna -

I'm trimming this message to the bittorrent references.

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004, eodyna wrote:

> Im a newbie with this, im having trouble with my
> download speeds with my adsl modem, and i just wanted
> to elimanate that the problem isn't my computers
> configuration. This is my first time with adsl so im
> not 100% that the configuration is correct.

There are direct ways to test your ASDL speeds, such as web sites with
tests you invoke from a web browser (i.e., [http://www.dslreports.com]).

> I have reinstalled 5.1-release.(i haven't changed any
> of the configuration) The adsl modem is a billion
> 5100. the modem is configured with the following:

 [modem and net setup elided ...]

If http and ftp downloads go well from reasonably responsive servers, and 
if a raw speed test (see above) comes out OK, I wouldn't blame the modem 
setup without more evidence.

> Im getting decent speeds with http downloads(90kbps),
> but when i run the bittorrent client i average speeds
> of 30-40 BYTES. its enough to make me cry.  Is there
> anything i should be looking at or doing or should
> configure?

Your speeds _are_ remarkably bad (I've found myself at 1-200 By/sec), but
bittorrent has quite a few complaints against it for this type of
behavior. I have seen notes that bittorrent can work better when it has 
access to certain additional ports, and that it is courteous to leave your 
client (peer?) running when you're not actively downloading (so others can 
establish connections through your host to download things you may have 
on-hand). I am too cautious about my system's security to do the first, 
though I try to leave the peer running for a while after a download.

I don't use 'bittorrent' when I can avoid it, which may have slowed my 
learning rate.

There may be a way to develop a list of candidate peers to try for 
connections - that's just a wild guess, however.

Perhaps some satisfied users will kick in some 'how to make it work, 
_really_' suggestions.

> i run bittorrent
> 
> /usr/local/bin/btdownloadcurses.py torrent_filename.

DISCLAIMER: I'm an infrequent 'bittorrent' user, for just this reason.

 - John Mills
   john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu