Bittorrent cripples browser speed

[SEAL62505]

I am no bittorrent expert, but I definitely know a little bit about it. My problem is that things can be downloading just fine in azureus or utorrent, but trying to access sites from a browser is very painful. Sometimes sites wont even load. I have a 512 up cable connection so to be safe I configure bittorent programs for 384 up (so that upload isn't pushed to the max). Anybody have ideas on what the problem might be?
router - wrt54g v3.0 (just put on dd-wrt to see if that would solve the problem - but no change)
ports are forwarded - utorrent and azureus each have a port assigned and properly forwarded

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[TheRyuu]

Yea I had that problem.
I think what fixed it is the number of half-open connections.
Get it here:
http://www.lvllord.de/

Make it like 50 (the default) and give utorrent about 30-40 of those.
Then see how your browser speed is.

I THINK that the half-open connections fixed it for me.
If it doesn't just do everything in this guide till it does:
http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=3912 (were I got the half-open thing from)

Also on dd-wrt, go to the admin page, scroll down to were it says "IP Filter Settings (adjust hese for P2P), and make max ports 4096, and the next two timeout things 120 (the dd-wrt guide says to do this).

ALSO, make sure your utorrent port is forwarded correctly, AND make sure it's using one of those radomly generated ports (NOT the re-generate eachtime thing, just one)

Edit: And yea, limited upload speed don't do crap either (I have mine set to 10kB/s with a 2mb/s connection)

 

[Lonyo]

Limit your upload more. Set it to maybe 15kb/s max upload.

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Limit your upload more. Set it to maybe 15kb/s max upload.

Read my post. Tried that too, didn't work.

 

[dBTelos]

So you want to be able to download large files and surf the internet quickly on a cable connection? Doesn't sound like a problem, sounds like reality.

 

[Atheus]

Bittorrent cripples browser speed

Of course it does, you are making hundreds of simultaneous connections...

The only way to 'fix' this is to get a business class router and a better internet connection, although there are a few things to do like change the number of connections windows allows, and the number bittorrent uses - read wizboy's post.

 

[Mojonba]

Set up upstream QOS (Quality of Service) on you router and give torrent traffic a lower priority than http traffic. Im not familiar with dd-wrt but im sure there is plenty of info at ther website/forums. You can also try Thibor 15c firmware which has a somewhat user friendlier interface than dd-wrt. Also remember that your actual upload bandwidth may differ from the advertised one. The actual may be determined with a bandwidth test (www.dslreports.com). Take several measurements and average them.

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Bittorrent cripples browser speed

Of course it does, you are making hundreds of simultaneous connections...

The only way to 'fix' this is to get a business class router and a better internet connection, although there are a few things to do like change the number of connections windows allows, and the number bittorrent uses - read wizboy's post.

Business class router?? Pfft, dd-wrt makes the router a business class router!

His internet connection is rather slow but the half-open connections thing should speed things up as well as allowing more IP's to connect and lowering the TCP timeout thing as well.

And also as Mojonba said, QoS also helps. I (personally) have no idea whether or not it's working. But I have it set up anyway.

I had the SAME PROBLEM and it always bothered me. I used Azureus and the problem when away, but I loved utorrent so much (Azureus ate up 100mb of ram) that I did the guide and I THINK the half-open connections is what allowed my browser to now brows just as fast with utorrent as without.

So instead of giving utorrent 8 or 9 out of 10 ports, it gets 40 out of 50 which gives your browser a hell of alot more to work with. And the only reason windows closed all the half-open ports (as I've read) is security, but your behind a router so that shouldn't matter anyway.

 

[Nothinman]

So you want to be able to download large files and surf the internet quickly on a cable connection? Doesn't sound like a problem, sounds like reality.

Your reality must be different from mine because I can do both easily.

 

[WildHorse]

the uTorrent tuneup tutorial mentioned by wizboy11 is the way I increased my torrent downloads from 15 kB/s to 80. That's with no perceptible effect on web surfing or e-mail or downloading of other files.

Your "384 up" should be drastically lower, or else it'll choke your downloads (web surfing, etc). That right there's probably your main problem.
My DSL connection is vastly slower than your cable connection so I can't advise you on an actual upload speed, but I'd expect it to be more in the range of maybe 30 or 40 instead of 384. Mine's a humble 8.

Work through that tutorial ftw.

 

[duragezic]

I wouldn't say for sure that raising half_open connections can prevent those problems. See here.

To me, sounds like your upload is still too high, as Lonyo said. Your 512kbit per second upload is maximum/best possible upload. Anywhere near that with BT will cause just about every connection to have major problems with other internet use. And overall, yes many routers do have major problems with several hundred connections that are common to BT. Trust me, my old Linksys 802.11b takes a punishing crap when 2-3+ people on the network are using BT. We have a 5mbit/512kbit connection, yet since it is shared we only do 6-10 kbyte/s each for upload. When a roommate knowingly set his upload to about 40 k/s, the internet was trash. It was ~2x faster than dialup, and that was from our ISP bandwidth test!!! So it wouldn't hurt to set the upload to 15 kbyte/s or so. I don't believe you get majorily restricted downloads until you drop your upload below 6 k/s or so.

Also see here.

 

[Bateluer]

This happens to me as well, you can alleviate it somewhat by limiting your DL/UL bandwidith and using a good BT client. Personally, I can't stand Azureus, no matter what I do, I cannot get it to DL a single KB. uTorrent is my client of choice.

 

[gorcorps]

Use what wizboy said. That little app he linked to does wonders to your connection when you're running torrents.

 

[43st]

It's dd-wrt issue, search there forums. It's a default setting that needs increased, I can't recall which though. I had the same issue when I went to dd-wrt.

 

[ManBearPig]

if you set your upload rate to 0 will it hurt your downloads?

 

[TheRyuu]

Originally posted by: 43st
It's dd-wrt issue, search there forums. It's a default setting that needs increased, I can't recall which though. I had the same issue when I went to dd-wrt.

I think what your thinking of is the number of IP connections and the TCP timeout thing in the admin tab. Covered it in first post and after a while it does help.

Originally posted by: Heen05
if you set your upload rate to 0 will it hurt your downloads?

Trust me, doesn't really help

My first post just about says it all.

/thread

 

[KoolDrew]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

So you want to be able to download large files and surf the internet quickly on a cable connection? Doesn't sound like a problem, sounds like reality.

Your reality must be different from mine because I can do both easily.

Same here.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: Heen05
if you set your upload rate to 0 will it hurt your downloads?

Yes, your connection will choke. You must limit it to about 90% of your actual upload speed. For most cable connections limiting to 35-45 is pretty good. Some can do better but in general that's what you'll want.

 

[wb182]

I just started having this problem in the past few days also. I use UTorrent and have bell south's top of the line DSL (something like 6 down, 1 up?).

I noticed obvious slowdowns before, but I could still very much use the internet while having 3-4 torrents going capped at 10-15 kbps.

Now, in the past few days, with just 1 torrent downloading at less than 20 kbps, and capped upload of 10 kbps, I cannot use the internet at all. It's very weird. Pages just refuse to load or take nearly 30-45 seconds.

Going to look into it more today, but I can't think of anything that would have caused this change.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: Atheus

Bittorrent cripples browser speed

Of course it does, you are making hundreds of simultaneous connections...

The only way to 'fix' this is to get a business class router and a better internet connection, although there are a few things to do like change the number of connections windows allows, and the number bittorrent uses - read wizboy's post.

decent (or excellent rather) bittorrent clients will allow you to reduce the number of connections and will even boot ineffective connections to free up room for potentially effective ones.

You can select a global max number of connections and even per torrent if you want.

Another thing you should consider is that, after you set such connection limits, you could should even limit the number of active torrents - keep them in a queue.

I had this problem before, but it was always solved by limiting upload speed and number of active connections/torrents.

 

[SEAL62505]

Just in case anyone searches on this with the same problem I wanted to update my situation. wizboy11 nailed this issue. All I had to do was use the utility he mentioned in the top of his post. I also made the dd-wrt tweaks he suggested. However, I did notice that I have to undo the dd-wrt tweaks to play bf 2142 otherwise I get "Disconnected from master server" all the time! Bittorrent works great now. Thanks everyone!