Speed up your torrents !

[Chaitanya]

1. Cap your upload (most important)
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 are using Windows XP, you must have noticed all the fuss about Service Pack 2. It introduced an array of security "enhancements": dual direction firewall, several long overdue IE improvements, memory protection and the crippling of the TCP/IP stack.

Hang on, how is crippling of the TCP/IP stack a security enhancement?

Windows XP SP2 limits half-open connections (SYN) to a maximum of 10 (the previous limit was over 65,000). This is supposed to slow down certain viruses because their spreading strategy is to try to connect to a high amount of random IP numbers.

The drawback with this connection limit is that other legitimate network intensive applications can be slowed down as well. Applications like security network scanners, peer-to-peer (P2P) applications or a combination of network applications that a power user may be using (VPN, FTP, p2p, RDP, SSH, "Firefox on steroids" and more).

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, it allows you to set the maximum allowed connections to any number you want. Any number between 50 and 100 is ok . (i m using 1000 tcp connection limit)



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
It sucks. Windows Firewall hates P2P and often leads a life of it’s own. So disable it and get yourself a decent firewall, Kerio or Zone Alarm for example.

[Chaitanya]

Vista TCP/IP and UAC AutoPatch 6.0

TCP IP Limit AutoPatch description
Removes the limitation of your half-open (incomplete/syn packets) connection attempts per second that the system can make
As you may have noticed Microsoft still limits your half-open (incomplete/syn packets) connection attempts per second that the system can make. Microsoft has done this since Windows XP Service Pack 2 to keep your computer from being used by dangerous programs such as worms that scan the internet to infect more systems and to keep your computer from being a host of a Bot that connects to IRC that accepts commands to launch Distributed Denial Of Service Attacks (DDoS) against other people and companies they do not like.

Unfortunately for us and companies, this limit effects our internet by limiting the capability of P2P (Peer 2 Peer) applications like µTorrent, BitTorrent, BitComet, Azureus, BitSpirit, eMule
(eDonkey network), BearShare, Direct Connect, DC++, ApexDC++, or even P2PTV such as PPLive, PPStream, Sopcast, TVAnts, Peer to Peer, Web server, FTP, and many other applications we love to use but cannot take full advantage of. Basically, you will make uTorrent faster as well as all these other apps you need. So Speed up your Vista downloads, If you dont believe me try it and tell me what you think.

When the limit is hit, You will recieve a Notice in Event Viewer Saying:

EventID 4226: TCP/IP has reached the security limit imposed on the number of concurrent TCP connect attempts.

This means Vista Has maxed out our connect attempts.

Instructions:
Unpack the archive and run Patch32.bat (for x86) or Patch64.bat (for x64).

Run UndoPatch.bat to uninstall concurrent half-open TCP/IP connection limit patch and restore the original tcpip.sys, and registry setting.

Once installed you can have 70,000 half open connections, these connections
are temp connections anyways, you can change the limit to any setting you want, go to run and type in regedit and navigate to
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesT cpipParameters]
"TcpNumConnections"=dword:00011170 and edit this value to whatever amount of connections you need. By the way, these half open connections are called Syn packets.


I have updated my patch so now it will give you the option to install the tcp/ip
patch as well as disabling UAC. If you dont want to disable uac after you patch
your max connections just press ctrl C when prompted and press y to terminate.

I have supplied uac_admin_on.reg and uac_admin_off.reg to click to easily enable and disable uac for administrators after you patch your connections.

I have supplied uac_user_on.reg and uac_user_off.reg to click and easily enable and disable uac for user accounts after you patch your connections.

Dwnld :
http://defconoii.googlepages.com/vistapatch.zip

[Chaitanya]

Torrent Client Configuration

In order to apply these tips you need to know your maximum up- and download speed. You can test your bandwidth over HERE (stop all download activity while testing). Also make sure that you applied the tips provided in our previous posts.

Note that there’s a difference between kb/s (kilobits/second) and kB/s (kilobytes/second). To be precise, kB/s = kb/s divided by 8. In this tutorial we use kB/s (like 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 (so divide by 8 then).

Settings 1-4 can be found in the options, settings or preference tab of most torrent clients.

1. Maximum upload speed

Probably the most important setting there is. Your connection is (sort of) like a pipeline, if you use you maximum upload speed there’s not enough space left for the files you are downloading. So you have to cap your upload speed.

Use the following formula to determine your optimal upload speed…

80% of your maximum upload speed

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal upload rate is 32kB/s

But keep seeding!

2. Maximum download speed

Although setting your maximum download speed to unlimited may sound interesting, in reality it will only hurt 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 400 kB/s, the optimal download speed is 380kB/s

3. Maximum connected peers per torrent

Yet another setting that you don’t want to max out. I experimented quite a lot with the max connected peers settings and came to the conclusion that both high and low number hurt the download speed of a torrent. The following setting worked best for me.

upload speed * 1.3

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 kB/s, the optimal amount of connected peers per torrent is

40 * 1.3 = 52

I didn’t noticed a difference for fast or slow connections here.

4. Maximum upload slots

1 + (upload speed / 6)

so if your maximum upload speed is 30 kB/s, the optimal number of upload slots is

1 + (30 / 6) = 6

[hahanottelling]

How fun!
Something finally crashed vista for me.
I used to crash XP evry few weeks, but this is first thing I've found to easily crash Vista!
How Fun!

EDIT:No seriously - I wasn't sarcastic
I don't use XP anymore, but when i did Sysmech 6 worked fine for changing tcp setting. I don't use torrent or anything like it anyways, I can't get any antivir other than free.

[Chaitanya]

Working without any problem here.. tested on 5-6 (XP) PC

[Redbear]

Bah..
did everything ya wrote..still the same no matter what..even did a coupla tweaks on my own..didnt help either..I been trying to get 1 friggen torrent fer a week and its still the same..
bottom line now is: I hate torrent's so screw it..

[Chotto]

Here is a Guide I found in PDF form. It was quite usefull:-

http://rapidshare.com/files/125833134/Torrent_Speed_Guide.pdf