Wednesday 9 March 2011

How To Speed Up BitTorrent Downloads Part 2

In How To Speed Up BitTorrent Downloads Part 1 we covered the basics you need to follow to achieve a good download speed.  If you haven't read it yet go and do it now (link above)! Here in part two we will look at configuring your BitTorrent client to maximise your download speed and achieve optimum performance.

To begin, you need to know your maximum up and download speed.  Go to speedtest.net to do this but make sure you stop all internet activity first to get an accurate reading.

Note that there’s a difference between kb/s (kilobits/second) and kB/s (kilobytes/second). To explain; kB/s is kb/s divided by 8. This guide will refer to kB/s as most torrent clients do. This means that you might need to calculate your max speed in kB/s yourself if the speedtest only gives you the results in kb\s (divide by 8 to do this).

Go into your BitTorrent client's settings and adjust the following:

1. Maximum upload speed
Probably the most important setting there is. Your connection is like a pipeline in that, if you use you maximum upload speed there’s not enough space left for the files you are downloading. So you have to limit your upload speed. Set your upload speed to 80% of your download speed.  So, for example, if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal upload rate would be 32kB/s.

But keep on seeding!

2. Maximum download speed
Although setting your maximum download speed to 'unlimited' may sound great, ultimately it will not help your connection. If you still want to be able to browse properly, set your maximum download speed to 95% of your maximum download speed. So, if your maximum download speed is, for example, 400 kB/s, then the best download speed is 380kB/s.

3. Maximum connected peers per torrent
This is another setting that's all too tempting to max out on. However, going to extremes (too high or too low) here will slow down your torrent. This is one you may need to experiment with but I am running an upload speed at 1.3.  Again, the example is coming up:  If your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the best amount of connected peers per torrent is 40 x 1.3 = 52.

One of the biggest problems for many BitTorrent users is ISP throttling, which will affect your speeds throughout the day depending on your usage.  In upcoming articles we will looks at how to encrypt your BitTorrent traffic and other options to fileshare anonymously.


20 comments:

  1. i did not know this...thanks!

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  2. Thnaks man, i love torrenting :D

    Btw, please comment on my new DJ tips :)

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  3. Awesome blog, thanks a lot for sharing

    I need help setting up a proxy on my mac and I've tried but to no avail. If you'd like to help me out I'd really appreciate it, you can get me at anonisanon13@live.com

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  4. thanks for speeding up my download :p will be checkin here daily keep up the work :)

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  5. Thanks for this, I was looking for a reason whilst my download speeds were so low

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  6. Hmm, interesting. Will def look into this more later. Following and supporting :)

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  7. Awesome tips again.
    Regarding yuor question, there is an icon that looks like a broken page, it says "Insert jumb break" that will make the "read more" appear.

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  8. thx ^^ even though this is really old technology

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  9. Thanks but the important speed is seed :D

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  10. Hey great tips... this will be of great use to me because I have a really poor connection e__e

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  11. Woah nice, aha will keep this for future reference (;

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  12. i tried it and oh god EXCELLENT it was a life saver i was like lol WOOHOO i doubled my speed xD
    tnx alot man

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  13. wow thanks for the info! helped a lot!

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