Is Bittorent supposed to be this slow?

[starseeker]

I've been using bittorent but its being really slow. It rarely does more than 6KB/s download. My upload rate is about 25KB/s. I was wondering if this is normal?

[Roto13]

Get BitComet. BitTorrent was really slow for me, too.

Of course, it could have something to do with the numbers of seeds and leechers.

[starseeker]

I think its the seeder/leecher issue. I'm in Europe so I miss most of America. I have the internet on all the time (broadband) and the computer's on all day so I'll just be patient.

[crono_logical]

If you know your max upload speed of your connection, tell bittorrent to not use more than about 80% for upload - if you let it do as it likes, it will saturate your upstream and slow down your download speed due to the way TCP/IP works.

I'd also suggest using a different client, namely utorrent/Azureus/bitcomet (first two are my preferences), since they also make use of encrypted connections to bypass throttling done by some ISPs, either yours or of the person you're downloading from. :p

[starseeker]

Where can I get those clients? I really don't want to get rid of my current client because I've been downloading something continually since Sunday and don't want to lose it.

[Roto13]

www.bitcomet.com for bitcomet. If you move what you've been torrenting into BitComet's destination folder (or set your current destination folder as your BitComet folder) you can keep what you already have.

Or you can finish what you've started with BitTorrent and use BitComet for any new torrents.

[NeoCracker]

I use UTorrent myself.

[Hawkeye]

Azureus works extremely well. One thing that may be the problem could be if you have firewall enabled, so you would probably have to disable firewall from your program completely, but as it has been noted out, the leechers/seeders issue may be slowing your download speed, which is pretty much out of your hands.

[starseeker]

Well, the log appears to say that the other peers have similar download speeds so that's probably it. I'll stay with Bittorent for a bit.

[Mirage]

There really is no set speed that BitTorrent is supposed to provide. It all depends on how good upload the other peers and seeds have. However, the number of peers you can connect to may be limited by a firewall or NAT, you might want to try enabling UPnP if your client supports that. I know Azureus do, but if yours don't, you'll have to manually forward a port to your computer and then make Azureus listen to that port. Don't use the standard port.
I also doubt changing BitTorrent client will fix that problem.
Oh, and I use Azureus myself. Works great for me, though it is a bit of a resource hog.

[starseeker]

UPnP is already enabled and the firewall is letting everything through. I don't want a resource hog because I don't want my parents to notice.

[crono_logical]

utorrent (http://www.utorrent.com/) is the one to get then, since it uses probably the least amount of memory out of all the clients I've seen, especially considering the features it has :p

Plus you can hide it when running so it doesn't appear anywhere on the screen, in either the taskbar or tooltray - you get back to it by re-running the program and it detects it's still open in the background :p

[Necronopticous]

You also may look into forwarding the port range your BitTorrent client is using. It's a little bit complicated, here is a good site to help you through it if you've never done it before:

http://www.portforward.com/english/routers/port_forwarding/routerindex.htm

[starseeker]

I might do that. I'm currently coping so its no big deal.

[ZeZipster]

http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=32459
Replace that port with your port and follow the link. Also:
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest
While it's unlikely, it could be your internet connection that's going slow. Most likely though you're downloading a rare file. I get about 6kbps when downloading rarer files when I have ratios like 1 or 2 seeders to about 3 leechers. You really just might have to tough it out...

[starseeker]

Its a rare file.

[Xaven]

Its a rare file.
That doesn't change the ability for any of the clients to be able to share/download it. The .torrent or whatever file is all they need.

But, what with it being a "rare" file, it will be harder to find seeders to get it from, mind you.

[ZeZipster]

That's what I meant, it's in more of a demand I guess you could say?

[Xaven]

That's what I meant, it's in more of a demand I guess you could say?
If it's in more demand, there will be more people with partial completion of the file. :3 More seeders as well. It's the unpopular things that are hard to get. :D