Have you ever wondered why your direct downloading gives you more speed than your torrents? Do you want to know how to increase the downloading speed? The default settings of any torrent client will always gives you slow downloads because your client doesn’t know which type of connection you have. Every torrent client needs to be tweaked so as to increase the download speed. Today we will show you how to increase your torrent’s speed without using any any complex software, you’ll see the difference in downloading speed.
Here we are using utorrent v1.8 as an exemplary client with a 256k connection. We won’t waste more time, lets start changing the settings.
Connections Pane:
Change Your Network Settings
In Connections pane, Under “Port used for incoming connections”, enter any port number. It is best to use a port number above 10000. Mine is 17590 as shown in the pic.
Randomize Port Each Time Utorrent Start
This option randomizes the port each time utorrent starts, which is highly unnecessary, UNCHECK it.
Enable UPnP Port Mapping And NAT-PMP Port Mapping
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.
Add Utorrent To Windows Firewall Exceptions
UNCHECK it if your windows firewall is disabled, try disabling the Windows firewall whenever using torrents, because Windows firewall literally hates torrents, it won’t allow to increase the speed ever.
Bandwidth Pane:
Global Maximum Number of Connections
This option lets you “the number of connections made to your torrent”, it should not be set too low and not too high either, if you’ll set it too low, the torrent wont be able to connect with seeds and peers, if you set it too high it will cause too much bandwidth wastage. For 256K connection 130 is optimal. for other connections you can calculate it by this formula: upload speed x 80%
Maximum Number of connected peers per torrent
70 (for 256k) is optimal for other connections use this formula: upload speed * 1.3
Number of upload slots per torrent
Optimal setting for 256k connection is 3. To calculate your settings, try this formula: 1 + (upload speed / 6)
Use additional upload slots if upload speed <90%
it should be CHECKED.
Maximum Number Of Download Speed
It may sound interesting not to limit your download speed, but it greatly affects the downloading if set to unlimited. To calculate this setting use:
download speed * 90%
BitTorrent Pane:
Enable DHT Network
Its highly recommended to CHECK this option, it highly improves the speed.
Protocol Encryption
It is recommended to either select FORCED or ENABLE for this option, This can help increase speed in many ISPs.
Enable DHT for new torrents
CHECK it.
Enable Peer Exchange
CHECK it.
Ask Tracker For Scrape Information
CHECK it.
Enable Local Peer Discovery
CHECK it.
Limit Local Peer Bandwidth
UNCHECK it.
Advanced Pane:
Net.max_Halfopen
The default setting in Windows XP for maximum connections is 8 which is not optimal enough for torrents to connect to seeds and peers. The best way to increase the number of half open connections is to increase the value for 8 to 50 to 60, too high or too low will decrease the download speed drastically. We will have to apply a patch too to increase the default value (in Windows XP SP2 only), you can apply the patch from here, this patch will increase the half open connections on OS level.
NOTE: Windows update sometimes revert this setting back to default one, so its better to keep checking every now and then.
Peer.disconnect_inactive_interval
Increase the value from default 300 to 600, it also increases the download speed.
TCP Optimizer
Download this free software utility and apply the optimal settings, it will apply the most appropriate setting of your Internet connection. You can download this software from here.
Handling Firewall
If you use any firewall, Go to its Preference or Settings and find an option with tag ‘Allow list’ or ‘Programs’. Add utorrent or any client you’re using in allow list, save the settings when You’re done. In Windows firewall, you can add an exception of your torrent client too.
Port Forwarding
To learn how to forward ports manually, click here.
How To Configure Your Router
- Go to start | run |type cmd, in command prompt type ipconfig, press enter.
- Note down your ip address and default gateway.
- Type in your default gateway into your browser’s address bar, a password prompt may come up. The default username and password are admin for some routers, if you use a username and password to connect try using that.
- Under ‘Applications’ fill out one line for each p2p client you use
- You need to use your ip address, the correct port range and set either tcp or udp
- You can change the ports in the actual p2p client’s settings, just make sure they are the exactly same in the router too.
- Save your settings.
I hope this article will help you to boost your torrents speed, if there is anything I missed, or you want to share some tips, don’t forget to leave a comment.
