How to Speed up your torrents, Five steps that will help ....

Help! Bittorrent is slow… This is probably one of the most frequently questions asked about Bittorrent. Unfortunately there’s not some kind of magic trick that makes your torrents go through the roof. But you could take some simple steps to optimize your speeds.

1. Cap your uploads

Limit your upload speed to approximately 80 percent of your maximum upload rate. You can check your upload speed over here (never trust your isp). Once you know your maximum upload speed, change the max upload (to 80%) speed in your torrent client’s preferences.
Don’t get me wrong, everyone should share as much as possible, but if your upload rate reached it’s max, your download rate suffers significantly.

2. Hack the max TCP connections

If you’re on XP sp2, your TCP connections are limited to a maximum of 10. This seriously hurts your downloading speed because it wont let you connect to a high amount of ip numbers. It is supposed to slow down viruses because their spreading strategy is to connect to a high amount of ip numbers, but it also cripples your torrent downloads.
A nice way to fix this is to download this patch;

CODE

http://www.lvllord.de/?url=downloads〈=en

it allows you to set the maximum allowed connections to any number you want. Any number between 50 and 100 is ok (more on this here)

CODE

http://blog.davidkaspar.com/archives/2005/04/windows-xp-sp2-and-event-id-4226.php

3. Check seeds and peers

A simple tip, but o so important. Always look for torrents with the best seed/peer ratio. The more seeds (compared to peers) the better (in general). So 50 seeds and 50 peers is better than 500 seeds and 1000 peers. So, be selective.

4. Change the default port.

By default, bittorrent uses a port 6881-6999. Bittorrent accounts for a lot of the total internet traffic (1/3), so isp’s like to limit the connection offered on the these ports. So, you should change these to another range. Good clients allow you to do this, just choose anything you like. If you’re behind a router, make sure you have the ports forwarded or UPnP enabled.

5. Disable Windows Firewall (or at least configure it to allow exceptions)
It sucks. Windows Firewall hates P2P and often leads a life of it’s own. So disable it and get yourself a decent firewall, sygate or outpost for example.

Last but not least… Buy a faster connection… :P

I'd like to make 2 additions to this...

First, when capping your upload speed, remember that the BT protcol favors the faster connections. Basically, someone is more likely to give you the pieces you need, if you are giving them the pieces they need. Upload faster, download faster. So when capping your upload speed, don't think that setting REALLY low will help, because it won't. It will slow your downloading down as well. The 80% rule is just that, a RULE. Do it for the best performance.

Second, regarding the Windows firewall, I agree, it is not the best. Even after you disable it, it has a tendancy to turn itself back on from time to time, usually after you install Windows updates. So it is best to allow your BT client as an exeption, and/or add the port(s) you will be using to the exeptions, to allow for situations where it turns itself on without you knowing. That way, if it does, your torrenting can continue unabated.