Torrent download speeds

[Mick-Kelly]

Question - I have broadband and im tentatively putting my toes into the world of bit torrent dowloads. What speed should i set it at for fastest downloads???? It gives me a choice between dialup 56k and 100Mbit with everything in between?? I'm not a very computer literate person just want to make sure it is operating at maximum efficiency.
cheers
Mick

[ladas]

Question - I have broadband and im tentatively putting my toes into the world of bit torrent dowloads. What speed should i set it at for fastest downloads???? It gives me a choice between dialup 56k and 100Mbit with everything in between?? I'm not a very computer literate person just want to make sure it is operating at maximum efficiency.
cheers
Mick


Have you got ADSL 1, ADSL 2, or cable

ADSL I would set at between 208 and 512, if it's ADSL 2 then 5 - 8 Mbit,

If it's cable then you will be goverened by how many people are on line on 'your' leg of the cable

[walker]

Have you got ADSL 1, ADSL 2, or cable

ADSL I would set at between 208 and 512, if it's ADSL 2 then 5 - 8 Mbit,

If it's cable then you will be goverened by how many people are on line on 'your' leg of the cable

Yes it is but cable is still faster then ADSL :D

I thought that it would not matter what you chase, it would just download at whatever you ISP can handle at the time.

[Mick-Kelly]

Thats a very good question and the answer is I dont have a clue. I got a box from bigpond broadband with a modem in it, plugged it into the computer and hey presto the internet :D :D . Ive set it at 156mb after some online speed test thingys recommendation.

[dmdigital]

Even if you do set it faster it's not going to mater as the speed will throttle back to what you system can handle and what the seeding and downloading peers can supply.

Just remember you are metered with Bigpond on what you download and upload so (an yes this does go against the idea of Torrents) when you've downloaded something make sure you stop it from seeding to others or it may start using up you monthly quote just that bit faster. Thankfully we don't have great upload speeds in Australia so it's not as bad as it could be.

What Torrent software are you using? Is it Azureus??

[Mick-Kelly]

Cool, its uTorrent 1.6 how do I restrict the upload bit? Only got started on this today following the "a 4wd is born' thread. It is saying it will take about three days to download the series which is 2.53gb.

[dmdigital]

Cool, its uTorrent 1.6 how do I restrict the upload bit? Only got started on this today following the "a 4wd is born' thread. It is saying it will take about three days to download the series which is 2.53gb.


Sorry Mick, I haven't used uTorrent for ages (I've even un-installed it). With Azureus you can do a number of things to limit speed when seeding. Most Torrent tools won't let you stop seeding altogether when downloading but when finished you should then remove it from the seed list.

[tombraider]

Yes it is but cable is still faster then ADSL :D

I thought that it would not matter what you chase, it would just download at whatever you ISP can handle at the time.

Not guaranteed faster...

Cable is pooled... More people on slower it goes...

ADSL guarantee line speed.

[dmdigital]

ADSL, Cable etc all are a switched network but the true speed is all to do with overall load (for ADSL that starts at the exchange, for cable its a shared service).

General rule of thumb for any network is you won't get better than 70% burst rate throughput.

[incisor]

Cool, its uTorrent 1.6 how do I restrict the upload bit? Only got started on this today following the "a 4wd is born' thread. It is saying it will take about three days to download the series which is 2.53gb.
hope you got the "so called unlimited plan" and not the normal 29.95 200mb plan... or you are heading for the bill from hell at 19 cents per mb :P

[Mick-Kelly]

Thats a very good point and i think i'll stop downloading till i find out. Dont see what the fuss is really if its going to take three days to download may as well just buy the damn thing.

[Sandtoyz]

As mentioned it will depend on your ISP plan too.
If you're charged for upload as well as download, this will consume your monthly allowance quicker.

We are on a 1500k Download/256k upload, 20GB per month (shaped), free uploads. This is for our home network, shared by 3 pc's at times.

I'm not using torrent software as much at the moment (using Azureus),
but generally you need to upload and get your share ratio close to 1:1 to make the most of fast downloads.

I've normally set upload speed capped at just under half our connection speed, and download is either unlimited or capped around 2/3 - it depends a bit on how good a torrent swarm is, what time of day i've set for downloading, etc.

This still gives good performance for the other users, and a fast torrent download too.

and our monthly downloads vary greatly, from 5G to 15G, depends if there's torrents we're after!

[Phoenix]

On utorrent you right click on the torrent and select properties to set the limits for any one download. I've got a couple of topgear torrents downloading at the moment, and because the plan here charges for uploads as well as downloads i've kapped my uploads at 3kb/s each to keep the upload levels down. It can be very fast to download on torrents, it just depends how many uploaders you can connect to. leave it running for a while and you will be surprised at how much you will get downloaded.

[Mick-Kelly]

Ta muchly Phoenix, are these torrent thingys a mess of viruses like limewire etc. or are they safe. BTW I'll be in Lonnie tonight :p