BitTorrent secrets

[Peter Garrett]

On Fri, 29 Sep 2006 09:30:40 +0100
Tony Arnold <tony.arnold at manchester.ac.uk> wrote:
> > (talisain wrote)
> > Said encryption -might- help with your download speeds - some ISPs are
> > known to throttle bittorrent traffic. The ethics of avoiding this
> > throttling is a contentious issue, so I'll leave the decision up to you.
> 
> Yes, it turns out my ISP (Pipex) throttles BT traffic to a measly
> 20kB/s. Apparently they've been doing this since March 2006. Pointless
> as I all I'm doing now is downloading using HTTP and getting full
> bandwidth!
> 
> I'll look into encryption, but reading about it, there seems to be
> compatibility issues between clients, so I'm not sure it's quite ready
> yet.
> 
> Azureus, seems to be a heavy weight client, as many Java apps are!

Whether you decide to use Azureus or not, there's a very informative wiki
about bittorrent in general (of course with emphasis on Azureus)  at
http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

The page on "good settings" is particularly useful - but no matter which
client you use, similar principles apply. It appears that the maximum
upload speed should be limited to around 75-80 % of your theoretical
maximum to avoid throttling yourself ;-), and that the number of
simultaneous connections per torrent,and globally, should also be limited,
as well as the upload slots you make available. 

http://www.azureuswiki.com/index.php/Good_settings

By following the suggestions in that wiki I have managed to get up to
80-90% of my maximum download speed in good torrents ( Ubuntu torrents are
usually very good, with plenty of generous seeders :-))

As others have said, choosing non-default torrent ports can also help - in
fact some torrents actually ban 6881. Personally I use a port high up in
the range around 60000, which works well. Azureus uses the same port for
udp and tcp, so if you go that way, be sure to port-forward both tcp and
udp for best results.

Peter