Increase bit torrent downloading speed - Tutorial

Posted by Junaid July 19, 2010



The latest file sharing protocol bittorrent has modified everything when it comes to file sharing. It is a nice platform for downloading large files. Sharing of files include movies, images and MP3 songs. Bittorent is mainly famous for illegal file sharing.


The Bittorrent system can be slow at times due to heavy traffic. so let us tweak bittorrent sharing program a little bit.

There are a lot of different bittorrent clients that you can download. I think the best are BitCommet and uTorrent.
Here are a few tips to speed up uTorrent Client. Similar can be implemented on any other torrent clients, which you are using.

Step 1: Increase TCP connections
You need to increase the number of TCP connections that are allowed at max.Windows XP Service Pack 2 came with the number of allowed open connections to 10. This is to stop any piece of spyware(in our case bittorent client even) from totally taking over your internet connection. TCP connection allowed should be 50 for optimal performance. The best way to increase the maximum number of connections is to apply patch that is available at www.lvllord.de. A nice way to fix this is to download this patch.

The little tweak to the torrent client works great in certain times. If you’re using uTorrent go to Options menu then Preferences. In the Preferences go the Advanced Options. In the advanced options change the net.max_halfopen connections to 80. In the same section change the max half open TCP connections to 80. Once your done click on OK and you are all set. This tweak will let the maximum TCP connection available for the bittorrent client. Now start downloading you’ll realize a little difference in the download speed. Port forwarding technique is more effective than this.

A third point of interest is that some “windows updates” revert your tweaked TCP connections back to 10. So it’s wise to check this every now and then. You can check this by going to (in windows XP) Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer > System… Look for event 4226 (sort by event).

If there are a lot of daily occurrences it’s likely that the max amount of half-open TCP connections was set back to 10. Or you’re infected with some nasty spy ware…

Step 2:Torrent Client Configuration

In order to apply these tips you must know your maximum up- and download speed. You can test your bandwidth over here (stop all download activity while testing).

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 uploads speed

so if your maximum upload speed is 40 KB/s, the optimal upload rate is 32kB/s But keep seeding!

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