Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

BitTorrent - why bother?

<< < (8/9) > >>

Deozaan:
I used uTorrent before Azureus and uTorrent would break my connection to webpages (hogging all the bandwidth, I suppose). That was unnacceptable to me (I had used BitLord previous with no throttle and did not have that problem) so I looked for somethign else and found Azureus, which is practically identical to uTorrent, at least in appearance. Occassionally I get good download rates of about 30Kbps, and rarely I get higher rates, but most of the time it is between 5-20KBps. I've set my router and firewall, DHT is enabled (whatever that is) and my NAT is okay. And still if I don't have a global throttle of about 5k upload speed my internet browsing is basically dead.

I never throttle my download speed as it has never affecting my browsing.

I would much prefer to download via http, so I can get at least 80KBps+, but files are much easier to find using a BitTorrent search site and for those truly big files, it's a major plus that it can resume right where you left off with no extra software (that doesn't always work) necessary.

When I made the switch to Azureus from uTorrent I found that I liked Azureus better. Still my download rates are usually much slower than anyone using 1.5mbps broadband should get.

I also heard about a tit-for-tat thing. Where if you don't upload as much as you download you get slower download rates. I only skimmed over the messages after reading so many of them, but did anybody else mention that? I try to keep my share ratio at about 1, but with having to throttle my upload to 5k all the time it doesn't work out so well.

moerl:
What I really like about µTorrent is that the developer, ludde, is a nice guy who's very open to suggestions. You can usually find him on IRC/EFnet in #winprog. Torrents (and the .torrent file) can be moved from your "in-progress folder" to "download done" automatically, very suitable for automatic extraction tools or remote checking (if you can't do remote desktop but have ftp access, it's still easy to see if a download is done).

I don't think it has "auto-launch .torrent files from <this folder>" yet, but ludde would probably not mind adding it (it's a feature I use a lot in rTorrent on my linux box - fire and forget like). Oh yeah, and there's a web-based control interface coming.

All this while *still* keeping it LEAN_AND_MEAN :)

-f0dder (April 05, 2006, 05:39 AM)
--- End quote ---
It does :). I agree. I really like uTorrent. But I also like Azureus. I never had problems with Azureus and always loved it. uTorrent has only been cool since v1.5. Before that I can't say I liked it, and I tried it out. I didn't exactly actively ditch Azureus for uTorrent either. I just happened to reinstall Windows recently and when the question of torrent clients came up, I tried uTorrent, liked it, and stuck to it so far. Azureus is an excellent torrent client and the main reason it is so much more complex and big than uTorrent is because it has more features and is FAR more customizable. So for those who are into heavy customization, Azureus is your answer. For everyone else, uTorrent does extremely well :)

moerl:
Another great thing about Azureus is that it comes with a load of cool plugins. uTorrent has no plugins at all AFAIK. Azureus plugins are found here: http://azureus.sourceforge.net/plugin_list.php

I used the Autospeed plugin and it worked great. I have no idea if it ever affected my download speeds, but it just worked and my download speeds were mostly good. One extremely important thing you have to realize about download speeds is that they depend on the quality of the torrent you are getting. If you get a "healthy" torrent and your network setup is correct, you are more or less guaranteed to get good speeds. If you get "sick" torrents, you can be on a 100Mbit connection and you'll still get shitty download speeds. The combo of correct network setup (possibly also network tweaking) + healthy torrents is the single easiest way to make sure you get good download speeds. Of course other factors are in the equation as well, but if you stick to this simplified equation, you should never have problems really. For me, it works that way.

For Azureus, this is a must read as well: http://azureus.aelitis.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Make sure to read the following two Wiki entries: "Why you need Good settings for high download speed" and "How to further increase your download speed: find out all about the Average Swarm Speed and Availability and Good Torrents in general"
There's a ton of other very useful information on that Wiki, but the above two are MUST reads as they don't just tell you some basic and some advanced stuff on torrents in general but also because they tell you just what to do to maximize download speed.

f0dder:
Deozaan, the whole torrent protocol and client software is structured to "penalize" users who don't upload much. But at the same time, you will *always* have to throttle your upload rate a bit if you have ADSL, since maxing out your upload will *kill* your download. Finding the sweet spot between up and down can be a bit difficult.

And yeah, HTTP will usually give you better speeds than torrents, unless you use some of those nasty illegal semi-private torrent sites, or some of the better linux/bsd torrents. That's just life in an egoistic world where people want to download but not upload.

Btw, for the up/downstream issue, it's worth looking into cFosSpeed (http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/cFosSpeed/1103571841/1). Rather than just "choking" applications to throttle your upstream (and thus maintain downstream), it can also do some packet reordering ("deep stuff") that will make everything flow smoother. The result is download speeds somewhat below your theoretical maximum, but still with a good upload speed at the same time.

Deozaan:
Btw, for the up/downstream issue, it's worth looking into cFosSpeed. Rather than just "choking" applications to throttle your upstream (and thus maintain downstream), it can also do some packet reordering ("deep stuff") that will make everything flow smoother. The result is download speeds somewhat below your theoretical maximum, but still with a good upload speed at the same time.-f0dder (April 05, 2006, 04:25 PM)
--- End quote ---

Is cFosSpeed built into Azureus or is it one of the plugins? If it's a plugin, where can I find it?

I went to the Azureus wiki and changed my settings according to their Good Settings wiki page. It suggested I put my upload throttle at about 19k, which immediately destroyed my browsing. Downloading torrents doesn't seem to be affected by my upload speed, but browsing the internet does. So I've got it reduced to 10k and it seems to be working well. I'm not downloading anything right now, so I can't tell if my download rates have improved, but at least my upload is twice as much as before. That should help keep my share ratio higher.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page