Bittorrent slows down web surfing

[perdomot]

I wanted to ask if there was a way to minimize the slowdowns that occur with bittorrent clients. The reason I ask is that I've noticed that when I download a large vid file directly at around 800/Kbps, there is no slowdown while I surf the web but a 175 Kbps bittorrent download makes web pages take forever to load. Can anyone explain why this is and what can be done about it? Thanks.

 

[Thor86]

Reduce the number of peer connections in your bt swarm.

 

[Poulsonator]

Check to see if your router allows QoS, and if so, set it up to give http traffic priority over your torrent traffic. I have a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 with Tomato, and the QoS on it works perfectly (no noticeable slowdown while surfing and torrenting).

 

[LuDaCriS66]

limit your upload speed to about 80% of it's maximum

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: LuDaCriS66
limit your upload speed to about 80% of it's maximum

This is the simplest solution, and usually a very effective one. What's usually happening is that all the uploading you're doing by torrenting is choking up your ACK responses to sites - tiny little TCP responses that tell the web server that you've received your packets and that it should continue. ACK's barely require any bandwidth themselves, so limiting your upload to 80-90% usually does the trick. If you experiment a bit you may even find a sweet spot where increasing the upload percentage actually decreases your torrent download, not to mention web surfing and other traffic on the machine.

 

[BZeto]

Or get a higher quality router if any of the previous suggestions dont work. I had the same problem as you, even with my upload set to minimum and limiting connections it was still almost impossible to browse the web while torrenting. Switching from a buffalo dd-wrt soho router to an old computer running smoothwall and all problems are gone. Often times the small consumer routers are poor build quality with less than optimal components.

 

[p0lar]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
This is the simplest solution, and usually a very effective one. What's usually happening is that all the uploading you're doing by torrenting is choking up your ACK responses to sites - tiny little TCP responses that tell the web server that you've received your packets and that it should continue. ACK's barely require any bandwidth themselves, so limiting your upload to 80-90% usually does the trick. If you experiment a bit you may even find a sweet spot where increasing the upload percentage actually decreases your torrent download, not to mention web surfing and other traffic on the machine.

Correct answer!

+1 prioritize your ACKs over all other outbound traffic or reduce your bittorrent to some arbitrarily lower percentage of your total outbound bandwidth. Also, bear in mind an increase in latency that can come from overutiliziation of a given circuit and can drastically reduce per-session TCP traffic.

 

[perdomot]

Thanks for the suggestions. How do I limit my upload speed to 80%. I use bittornado for my torrents so if there is a guide or someone can tell me how, I would appreciate it. Thanks again

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: perdomot
Thanks for the suggestions. How do I limit my upload speed to 80%. I use bittornado for my torrents so if there is a guide or someone can tell me how, I would appreciate it. Thanks again

Should just be a setting in the program. Look around.

 

[WildHorse]

Well I really would uninstall your bitornado and instead put on µTorrent. That's thee way to go.

In µTorrent the dropdown menu Options has a Speed Guide that helps.

Some more excellent tuning advice is found here.

 

[ScottFern]

Is it the maxing of your total upload bandwidth or the sheer number of peer connections that bogs the internet? I have always wondered this.....

 

[dfnkt]

While you're on BT your also uploading, uploading will kill your browsing (and ping in online games). If you happen to have SBC internet (some other ISP/modems may have the option as well) you can go to gateway.2wire.net/mdc (assuming you have a 2wire modem)- from here near the bottom you can select traffic shaping and limit your upload rate in kbps. Please be warned that will effect all aspects of uploading ie- uploading photos to walmart.com/shutterfly.com/deviantart.com. This may also cause your downloads to slow down with some trackers as they want you to maintain a certain share ratio / upload rate.

I also agree with scott, using utorrent, and limiting your upload rate in the program is a better solution that limiting the upload rate at the modem.

 

[thespeakerbox]

Try Utorrent's scheduling setup. You can set peak hours , etc. It's very useful if you dl a lot.