Browsing heavily affected by torrent

[TooNice]

I was wondering if there is anything that can be done to stop the "Operation timed out" issue when I am torrenting. I can understand the browsing would be affected to some extent, but I find it puzzling why it would do so even when the download speed is only a fraction of the bandwidth available: At the moment, I am downloading at no more than 60k/sec. On a 2Mbit line. The torrent is pretty slow, with a large number of peers. Is it possible that the number of peers I am connected to could cause this? And more importantly, is there any tweaks I could apply to improve on this? Bandwidth throttling doesn't do much (as I've mentioned, I -should- have quite a bit of free bandwidth to spare).

Thanks.

[Tobeman]

What about the use of upstream speed? Thats what you need to be careful of. On my NTL 2mb line I ususally cap my upload to around 10-15kb/sec to leave me enough to do other bits.

[TooNice]

I capped it at 20k. I thought 8-10kb upstream is enough for making page requests...

[javalord]

Could be an issue with your connection or its equipment then.

[herulach]

Youre on adsl right? SO you ve prob get 500 up, call that 400 after inefficiencies, did you actually throttle everything to 20k? or individual torrents? If its individual then thats your problem there. If its NTL then you only have 200k up to start with.

[TooNice]

Yea, I am using Azureus. After upgrading my connection to 2Mbit, I increased the number of connections (doubled). Now I put it back as it was when I was on 512Kbit, and I dropped another 2k from my upload (overall throttle - I only throttle the thing as a whole). Seems more usable.

I guess it really was an issue with the upstream. Thanks, I'll call this issue solved for now

[mark22]

Weird, I have 2 Mb down and 256K up and leave the global upload in azureus at 25K with no problems browsing. Something was probably maxing your upload but are you sure it's only Azureus.

Ps all torrents I get seem to go a lot faster uploading around 20 - 25K on it. I think its because you upload to more people so more do the same to you?

[BEANFro Elite]

I'd say its an Azereus thing, munches system resources like a fat man in an all you can eat buffét...

I personally recommend Bitlord as it is very system friendly, you can leave it downloading in the background whilst you play a single player game..

[TooNice]

Its true that Azureus is not resource friendly. But it works well enough for me to play a SP game too (usually - my GFX card is getting dated, so I don't play too much of the latest FPS).

To be honest, the problem still persist, but just isn't as noticeable. Maybe I'll do a full reformat at some point, even though I am pretty sure thats not the problem.

I've heard positive things about µTorrent. I might check it out in a few releases.

@Mark: Yea, your download is usually faster when you upload more too. But there is a delicate balance. I noticed that when everything is untrottled, I can still get 220+ kb/sec on a single torrent, but the upload drops to maybe half that.

[jamena]

having had similar issues with torrents and browsing my guess would be the number of connections to peers your torrent client makes. My router (netgear 834g or something) used to crash sometimes due to the sheer number of connections, and my computer (completely independently, using Shareaza, would become totally ususeable with a large number of peers (3000+ for one file and I was almost having to reset the pc...) Azureus worked better, but was still clunky. So, might be worth reducing "max peers" if your client can do that?

[Lee H]

The issue is with the concurrent connections. Even though you are limiting the datastreams to sensible speeds to allow browsing, the torrent is still trying to connect as many peers as possible and this usually causes the issues with slow browsing and whatnot.

If you also reduce the amount of connections and connections each torrent is allowed - this should make surfing much better.

[Kumagoro]

im on 2 Mbps NTL and i limit the upload to 15 kB/s if i stick it at 20 web browsing is much slower.

[neonplanet40]

Set your upload to 80% of its total bandwidth. Using a programme like netlimiter.
then your speeds will go full.

Neo

[mrchu]

From my experience with heavy file downloading, I've had to limit my upload rates quite greatly in order to prevent a bottleneck on the download speeds...you will definately get timeout errors if your upload bandwidth is being capitalised by torrents etc...

Just limit to 10kb upload global and I think it will be far better. It is for me anyway.

[zhenboy]

Do you have a firewall or router?
If so, open the ports it required or re-direct the ports in router configuration menu.

[Howard]

The issue is with the concurrent connections. Even though you are limiting the datastreams to sensible speeds to allow browsing, the torrent is still trying to connect as many peers as possible and this usually causes the issues with slow browsing and whatnot.

If you also reduce the amount of connections and connections each torrent is allowed - this should make surfing much better.

Bang on. Cable seems more affected by this for some reason... It will kill browsing speed if there are so many connections all sending packets back and forth. Then again limit the connections and you'll get slower torrents. Can't win