[Thanks i7, of our forums]
To start off, I will be using uTorrent 1.8.2 for all the speed optimisations, but it should also work on other builds of uTorrent. uTorrent can be downloaded from here
Ports and Port Forwarding
First off we need to set a port in uTorrent. The default is pretty low so I suggest choosing something between 49152 and 65535 or any port that isn’t taken on this list.
Go into Options > Preferences then go to the Connection tab. Write your preferred port in the space provided.
The next part is port forwarding and this relies a lot on your router, so please take a look at http://portforward.com/ for the appropriate guides on how to port forward, if you’re unsure you could always ask on the forums. Once you have attempted to forward your ports you can test if it has forwarded correctly by going (in uTorrent) to Options > Speed Guide then clicking the button “Test if port is forwarded properly.” If it fails, an error will appear; if you have done it correctly a tick will be displayed.
Port forwarding allows seeds and leeches from the tracker to more easily connect to your computer. It is essential if you are a heavy uploader and advisable if you want to connect to the maximum amount of seeds for the best speeds.
Connections
To get better speeds from your peers and seeds you will need to let more of them connect to your torrents. The settings for this can be found in Options > Preferences and in the Bandwidth tab. Under “Number of connections” you will see that the default is pretty low. I personally change this to over 1000 and below 5000. Having this set to too many can sometimes choke your router giving worse speeds, so set what you think is about right.
Another useful thing to do to not slow down your general browsing speed is to find and correctly set a good maximum upload speed. Use http://speedtest.net/ to find your upload speed. This will be displayed in Mbit/s or Kbit/s so you will need to divide this number by around 8, so an upload speed of 500 Kbit/s becomes 60 kB/s. Then subtract 10 from this number and put that in the “Maximum upload rate” box. So if your speed was 500 kbit/s, the number you put in there should be around 50.
If you’re still getting poor browsing speeds then you could use uTorrent’s in-built speed guide and choose your upload speed there, however the settings that the speed guide give you are quite restrictive.
Evading ISP Throttling
Your ISP might be a nasty one that decides to “de-prioritize” or filter the download speeds of torrents. This can sometimes be fixed by forcing uTorrent to encrypt the files it sends/receives. This can be done really easily by going into Options > Preferences and into the BitTorrent tab and changing the Protocol Encryption to Forced:
Vuze has a list of bad ISPs here.
Other
A few other tips from me about ensuring that you get full speeds in your torrents:
- Public trackers are generally not good for speeds because of the low amount of seeders and high amount of leechers. If you use private trackers instead (Google some private trackers) then you should see speeds jump by heaps
- Do not download other things while downloading torrents. This will clearly slow you down.
- Ensure that your hardware is configured properly so that full speeds are achieved. If you are using a wireless connection, the further you are from the router the lower the speeds you get will be.
- Make sure that your ISP hasn’t capped your speed lower than it should be. This does happen if you download excessive amounts even if you have an “unlimited” downloads plan (yeah, even in the US and UK this happens)
- Make sure others aren’t “stealing” your bandwidth. This includes nasty hacking neighbors, so encrypt your wireless network.
- Do not download too many torrents at once. This can slow down your download speeds by the large amount of peers uTorrent has to track. If you don’t trust yourself, use the included speed guide in uTorrent.
That’s all, I hope this guide has been of some use to you
