uTorrent Configuration Help Please!

[Wigwam]

switched from the original "bittorrent" client to uTorrent.
Looks nice but despite [skim !] reading he FAQ I would appreciate some clarification:

1)at the bottom of the window I get a red exclamation mark and the following comment:

" No incoming connections"

then:
"Not connectable
A firewall/router is limiting your connection traffic"

Thing is, I AM downloading while it says this [upto 50kb/s]
although admittedly at times (until I limited it!) uploading was far faster than my d/l speeds.

in the "logger" section at the bottom it says
"unable to map UPnP port"

Now I have [mildly] twigged about not having Port-Forwarding but again what actually does this mean [given that I do seem to be connecting to some seeders and getting D/L and U/Ls

what are failed hashchecks?

2) seeds 16 (20) (56 in swarm)
peers 45 (208)
DHT: 177 nodes

what does that mean - why am I only seeding from 16 people if there are another 40 around - and what is with the numbers related to peers

3)another question: I am finding that when I first connect to utorrent I can also surf/check email at the same time but after a while I cannot.
Infact I have to close it down and even that isnt enough I have to log out of the user id then log back in for internet/email to work. How come?

Your assistance is greatly appreciated!

 

[fyleow]

..

 

[Wigwam]

I am using Zone Alarm [uTorrent is allowed through] behind a netgear router.
Just read some stuff about port forwarding and it seems somewhat involved and needing me to set up static addresses and manually change/assign DNS server settings etc - probably not a good idea to mess around with at 2am!

 

[Nothinman]

For torrents to work well you need to be directly connectable and if you're behind NAT that means you need to forward at least 1 port, there's no way around that. If your router and the software both support UPnP it should be possible for that to happen behind your back, but I prefer to do it manually anyway.

 

[WildHorse]

Originally posted by: Wigwam
<cut>
3)another question: I am finding that when I first connect to utorrent I can also surf/check email at the same time but after a while I cannot.
Infact I have to close it down and even that isnt enough I have to log out of the user id then log back in for internet/email to work. How come?

Your assistance is greatly appreciated!

That indicates that your download & upload speeds need to be tuned.
There's an explanation on how to do that here.

Test your dl & ul speeds (Site, another speed test site, And another, another site.

Runs the test for both ul & dl several times to different geographic locations, averqag them, use resulting averages to tune uTorrent as explained in the above-posted guide.

When you get the speeds set properly, you can have torrents running while you use e-mail & web browser without noticeable effect.

I think it's give you a helpful shortcut if you'll please read my 2 posts in this other thread.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

I don't know if I can offer any further help than what has already been given, but let me welcome you to uTorrent Once you learn its ins and outs you'll absolutely love it.

 

[TheRyuu]

You need to have a static IP first.

First just get rid of Zone Alarm for now. It's complicating things plus I really think it's not needed with a hardware fire wall like a router.

Second, go to start->Run
Type cmd.
Then while in cmd, type "ipconfig /all"
Find your LAN connection in the list.
Write down the info.

Go to Network Connections then right click on the Local Area Network (I imagine it's LAN) and hit properties.
Then in the list find Internet Protocol.
Select it then hit properties.
Select "use the following IP adress".
Do the same for the DNS severs that should have been listed when you did ipconfig.

Give yourself some simple IP adress that you can remember like 192.168.1.101 (I think thats a simple IP adress and for the other subsequent computers on my network I just make the 101 to a 102 and so on).

Now, go into the router and find the port forwarding area.
Basically make some random port in utorrent and forward the port to your computers IP (i.e. 192.168.1.101).
The static IP is nessasary to get port forwarding to work correctly. Most of the time the default is to let the router assign some IP using DHCP.

Get it?
You can PM me if this confused you in any way

And I've always like the utorrent mini guide:
http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=3912

Never did like the Speed thing that came with utorrent.

 

[Wigwam]

thank you all!
I read some guides last night and tweaked my d/l and u/l speeds somewhat and changed things like number of connections etc and am currently surfing and d/ling.

As for the static Ip. I read the guide on portforward but I got confused.
When I ipconfig I only get 1 DNS listed and a setting for DHCP. The example/workthrough showed 2 addresses for the DNS servers so I didn't know what settings to put where......

 

[xcript]

Originally posted by: Wigwam
As for the static Ip. I read the guide on portforward but I got confused.
When I ipconfig I only get 1 DNS listed and a setting for DHCP. The example/workthrough showed 2 addresses for the DNS servers so I didn't know what settings to put where......

Just leave the second DNS field blank.

 

[Wigwam]

thanks.
will give it ago tonight.
All the assistance so far has been much appreciated!

going back to this swarms issue though:
I currently have "3 of 4 connected (4 in swarm)" for d/l
and "12 of 32 connected (27 in swarm) for u/l)

what is the "swarm" and why are all the ones [seeds/peers] not connected? I assume such are things like being maxed out connections at their end.
How come the number in the peers swarm is smaller than the "of 32 found"??

 

[agentbad]

I have had problems with utorrent even after configuring everything and forwarding ports. If my current computer wasn't such a piece I would still use azureus. Even with half my upload bandwidth alloted to utorrent my internet screws up all over the place and sometimes won't even work. I have had success in the past messing with the advanced options but don't mess with them unless you know what you're doing.

 

[Wigwam]

to be honest once I opened the port and tweaked as per above it purrs along like a charm