Guide to downloading torrents & uTorrent speed tips
7 October, 2008
Torrents are the best way to share files as they do not load up the servers, since everybody who is downloading contributes to the sharing, torrents are the future of P2P. P2P is a wonderful new technology, mainly because it uses decentralized file transfers, that means every client connected in the network acts as a server as well as a client. There is no Server-Client issues and rarely any load issues.
The best softwares to download files shared in the form of torrents are called torrent clients. There are many torrent clients available like uTorrent, Azureus, BitComet, etc., but when compared with ease of use and memory usage uTorrent is the best out there.
- Download and install uTorrent.
- Download a torrent file from one of many torrent sites found on the net. Sites like ThePirateBay.org, ISOHunt.com, Mininova.com, Superfundo.org, etc. this is a small file (usually the size is in KB) with an extension of .torrent.
- Double click the torrent file downloaded in step 2, and it will open in your client and start downloading.
- To stop third parties collecting info on what you are downloading, make sure you use the uTorrent?s built in IPFilter, or for XP users you can easily use Peerguardian. For Vista users you can Manually download the blocklists from BlueTack.co.uk (await a post on this soon, as this is bit complicated) and add it into the uTorrent ipfilter.
- That?s it. Happy downloading
follow the uTorrent speed tips below they will really help you get the maximum out of your connection. - After downloading please seed and help others.
uTorrent Configaration Tips (the boost for speed)
- Set the Incoming port to higher than 45000, I have found that 47532 is a nice selection.
- Then make sure you set the max upload speed to at least half of your connection upload speed (this will ensure faster downloading) because high upload speeds are the main cause for slow downloads.
- Do not use randomized port on every startup, as this will have problems with your firewall and this is highly unnecessary.
- Choose the correct number of maximum connections, too much connections can slow down your torrent download speed instead of speeding them up. For best results use uTorrent?s speed guide found on Options ?>Speed Guide, and it will suggest you the best settings. For users with a max upload speed of 256 Kbits/s uTorrent suggeests 35 connections per torrent and 60 in total. Check the total speed guide for your type of connection here.
- Run as few torrents as possible, this means that your connection can handle and deliver maximum speed for the running torrents. I suggest running 2 torrents if you have a 256 Kbits/s upload speed connection and 1 torrent at a time if you have a 128 Kbits/s upload connection.
- When selecting from similar torrents select from the best seeds/peers ratio as well as swarm speed. Here is a guide on how a perfect torrent should be.
- If you are using a DSL router then enable port forwarding in your router. If you are using a DSL Modem this is unnecessary.
- Enable UPnP Port Mapping And NAT-PMP Port Mapping, (found on Options ?> Preferences ?> Connection)If you are manually forwarding your port than keep it UNCHECKED, but if you dont know what port forwarding is or you?re not forwarding the port manually than CHECK it.
- Do not use windows firewall, windows firewall simply hates torrents and you will have a truckload of speed problems with it. Disable it permanantly, and use a secure firewall such as Comodo Firewall or Eset.
- Manage your upload slots per torrent, usually it should be 2-3 per torrent. More than that will reduce the download speed of your torrents.
- Increase the Net.max_Halfopen Connections to 50-60 in uTorrent Advanced configaration panel, there is also a patch for windows XP to increase this limit. In Windows XP increase the limit to 100 connections.
- Enable the following, they greatly improve your download speed.
- Enable DHT Network ? It improves your download speed.
- Enable Protocol Encryption – It is recommended to either select FORCED or ENABLE for this option, This can help increase speed in many ISPs, if the ISP uses some kind of traffic shaping techniques (most ISPs do this).
- Enable DHT for new torrents.
- Enable Peer Exchange.
- Enable Ask Tracker For Scrape Information.
- Enable Local Peer Discovery.
- DISABLE Limit Local Peer Bandwidth.
Thats all, add any more tweaks or settings you have found in your downloading experiences in the comments below.
Categories :
Tutorials
Thanks, this is useful. I’m a torrent user myself and I really like the torrent network. And I don’t like the stereotype that it can only be used for illegal purposes. The µTorrent performance guide also in most points works similarly in other clients.
I suggest FlashGet 2.0 as a better torrent client. It supports torrents as well as http/ftp links, and it is faster. A tech guy I know explained this to me, but I forgot why exactly is it faster than other clients. Some kind of different technology
on October 7, 2008
Nice
Thanks!
on October 7, 2008
Forgot to say, there’s also PeerGuardian for Vista. but it’s a resource hog, so I leave it on only over night.
on October 8, 2008
thanx mate……of all the utorrent speed guides on the internet u’re is working truely fine for me thanks
on October 9, 2008
Thanks so much, all these tips helped speed up my torrent downloading by 100 kilobytes per second. Thanks for all your speed tips and other great articles DotNetWizard! Keep Up the great work
on November 13, 2008
I have a question about the uTorrent config tip #1 “Set the Incoming port to higher than 45000, I have found that 47532 is a nice selection.”
The port 47532… do you have to register with IANA for that?
I went to look at some (other) port number I could use and first thing I’ve read was (sorry for the long quote):
“The port numbers are divided into three ranges: the Well Known Ports, the Registered Ports, and the Dynamic and/or Private Ports.
The Well Known Ports are those from 0 through 1023.
DCCP Well Known ports SHOULD NOT be used without IANA registration.
The registration procedure is defined in [RFC4340], Section 19.9.
The Registered Ports are those from 1024 through 49151
DCCP Registered ports SHOULD NOT be used without IANA registration.
The registration procedure is defined in [RFC4340], Section 19.9.
The Dynamic and/or Private Ports are those from 49152 through 65535
A value of 0 in the port numbers registry below indicates that no port
has been allocated.”
This was on http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers
Frankly, I don’t quite understand why one should have to “register” the use of their own computer’s port with some organization… I find this utterly confusing…
Can you shed some light on this, please?
on November 27, 2008
@bendis:
I NEVER REGISTERED ANY PORTS WITH ANYTHING, Hey man these are local ports in ur pc, u don’t need to or have to register with anybody to use the local ports found on ur PC. This is an INCOMING port which gives good speeds (there may be others, but this works fine for me, so I thought to share).
on November 28, 2008
i dint understood half of the tip but thanks budy next time make clear with pictures ok bye mama
on August 26, 2009
thanxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
on August 26, 2009
By the way this is not good at all
increase the Net.max_Halfopen Connections to 50-60 in uTorrent Advanced configaration panel.
It will slow down your browsing a lot. Its better to set it to 4 if you experiencing slow browsing.
Port is even better to be over 60 000
DHT is no good for private trackers, coz then upload does not count properly, its going behind the tracker.
on September 1, 2009
@DigDeep:
but it doesn’t.
trust me dude that does not work very well, many firewall apps block it, as its a malicious attempts. U just think it works
and your trick might work on XP, but XP is due to extinction.
on September 1, 2009
Does anybody know how to restore the default settings? The suggestions did not work for me
on December 16, 2009
Merci beaucoup, all these tips speed up my torrent downloading from 330 ko/s to 995 kilobytes per second today. But I have problems with PeerGuardian, some web sites do not display …
on January 14, 2010
yes peerguardian blocks several websites/organizations involved in anti-piracy as level 1(p2p) or level 2 blocklists include them. To stop this from happening use “Allow HTTP” in peerguardian.
on January 19, 2010