Unusally Slow Torrent Speeds.

[Dreddz]

Something has happened recently which im baffled by. I know how torrents work, Im been using them for years, I know how they work, pretty much. But recently, Ive been having very slow speeds on all the torrents I download. The popular ones only seem to reach 5kb/s max ( 1000 seeders + ) and the unpopular ones dont seem to download at all ( 10-20 seeders ). I dont know what has happened. When I had XP ( running Vista now ) I was able to download a patch and was able to configure my router to let me get very high torrent speeds. Now Im running Vista, I cant do this. I guess thats ok, I usually reach 30kb/s to 40kb/s. Not much of a problem, I download so much that Im usually occupied with what I previously downloaded, thats speed is fine by my books. But slugging on with 2-3kb/s is a problem. Especially when Im trying to download applications that are several GB's.

Just before anyone says this, its not my client. I use Bitlord. But decided to use other clients and its all the same. It must be something wrong with my computer.

I guess theres no surprises what Im about to say next. What should I do ?

[Mirage]

Uninstall Vista ;]

[Baloki]

Which ISP do you use as it is most likely they are shaping your traffic and slowing down your bittorrent bandwidth.

The two ways you can possibly fix it is either use encryption on your client or switch your ISP, both might work or might not.

[Dr Unne]

When I had XP ( running Vista now ) I was able to download a patch and was able to configure my router to let me get very high torrent speeds. Now Im running Vista, I cant do this.

If you don't have a port being forwarded to your computer by your router, this will hurt your speeds.

[Yamaneko]

If your router supports UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) enable it. Then enable UPnP in your torrent client. Otherwise open the port(s) through your router control panel and have your torrent client accept outgoing and incoming connections through that port (UDP/TCP).

[o_O]

As the others have said, if you don't have the correct ports open in your router, you're going to get a NAT error, meaning that only about 10% of packets sent to you actually make it through your router and to your computer.

If torrents have worked properly before, it's quite likely that your ISP is managing traffic. You can get around it by using protocol encryption in some clients (Azureus and uTorrent, no less), but that might not work as most ISPs have wised up to that and set up deep packet detection which renders protocol encrytion useless.
Having worked at an ISP, they won't necessarily tell you if they're managing your traffic, but it's worth giving them a call and asking.