How to configure uTorrent for maximum upload and download speed.

This provides a short guideline on how you can configure uTorrent to squeeze the best performance from your Internet connection.

FOR ABSOLUTE BEGINNER TORRENT USERS ONLY: BitTorrent is a P2P protocol. Unlike HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) there is no centralized server distributing data. Instead, files and folders are stored on regular PCs just like yours. People choose to let others download these files directly from them. Any user who has fully completed the download, and is only uploading to others is called a seed, any user who has a portion of the file and is downloading the rest and also uploading whatever he has is called a peer. And any user who downloads more then he uploads is called a leecher. The beauty of BitTorrent is that the more people uploading/downloading, the higher the speed will be for any individual users, whereas with a central server, more users downloading would mean more bandwidth consumption and lower download speeds. This is why BitTorrent is the protocol of choice for sharing large files.

Important Note: Leeching destroys torrents and is completely against the BitTorrent sharing ideology. Whenever your PC is idle or you're not uploading anything (you normally aren't), then leave a torrent or two to seed so that others may benefit from it.

More details on the BitTorrent protocol can be found in the Wikipedia article here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent_(protocol)

For more tweaks on significantly speeding up your PC's performance, visit my website, the address is:
http://www.computersandgaming.piczo.com

Step 1 Testing your connection speed

Since you will always be uploading at your maximum speed, torrent clients need to be configured according to maximum upload speed in order to avoid choking your connection. So you will need to test your connection:

http://speedtest.net/ (recommended)
http://www.pcpitstop.com/internet/bw.asp
http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest .

Perform the test a number of times and select a mid-value (not the highest or lowest). The value needed to proceed with the configuration is the upload speed (or upstream, or up-speed) expressed in kilobits per second (kbits, or kbs, kb/s) not kilobytes (kB, kbytes, etc).

For more tweaks on significantly speeding up your PC's performance, visit my website, the address is:
http://www.computersandgaming.piczo.com

Comments

[coolvimal]

There are many sites available to check the speed of the internet connection..But i usually test my speed using the IP-Details.com .It shows the uploading and downloading speed of the connection.

[XxDEATHxX]

use torrentz to find what ya need it has it by seeds as well !HeLP! im using bitcomet speed was 121kb/s or kbps i dunno the on under mb now 50 WTF help plz

[atomic1269]

sounds like you need some help with improving speed. There are a couple possibilities that could speed up your torrents, found on this guide a-how.com/archives/4

[sharlston]

anyone on vuze?

[Ali_Athar]

Not really......uTorrent is superior to Vuze in every way. Faster, much more customizable, more feature-packed and most of all, very low on resources, unlike Vuze which is a Java memory hog lol

[dudemanparrish]

uh, Unless your on a mac - then uTorrent is practically useless. So "superior to Vuze in every way"...?  Not really.

[Ali_Athar]

I think there's a good reason 80% of the BitTorrent community uses uTorrent. Less BS and a nice, simple UI.

[devenda]

hmm when i download and open the file do i get a error (you are not authoresised) even in admin-mode doesn't it work can you help?

[chibiwind]

i had the same problem i just swapped to bittorrent

[Ali_Athar]

your ISP is probably blocking the traffic, try talking to them. Sometimes, even enabling or forcing protocol encryption doesn't help.

[psyvanz]

WHERE I CAN DOWNLOAD IT?
TELL ME THE SITE? EMAIL ME AT [e-mail]
PLEASE TELL IT THANKS

[Ali_Athar]

uhh....troll?

http://www.google.com.pk/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&source=hp&q=download+utorrent&meta=&btnG=Google+Search

[sunshine64sm]

I like uTorrent

[joehadac]

i heard demonoid is one of the best torrenting sites is that true?

[alex-sharetskiy]

true it is

[Ali_Athar]

I just use Bit Che (see step 10 for link). It is soooo much easier then going to a hundred torrent sites and searching for something.

[alex-sharetskiy]

ya, but you can get viruses!

There are NO viruses on demonoid

[Ali_Athar]

You need to know which torrents to download. If there's a keygen and it has like 1 seed in it, then there's a 99% chance that it's gonna be infected. All the torrents I've downloaded have at least 100 seeds, and normally over 300. Plus the comments and feedback is positive and the one who posted them are trusted people.

[joehadac]

ya i trust them too because you need to be invited to even register, every thing is air tight

[alex-sharetskiy]

demonoid has torrents with like 2 seeds, and i trust them

[rsdxzec]

too many viruses

[alex-sharetskiy]

0 viruses

[joehadac]

he's right 0 viruses ive torrented so many discographys off demoniod and no viruses, i have downloaded the game call of duty 2 with no viruses i trust demonoid enitrely

[the.mask]

Great work man! All of your tips worked well for me! I have a suggestion for you: I´ve mencioned the question of copyrights but Ithink that I´ve read someplace that the downloader could prevent getting prosecuted by using Peer Guardian! Could you make a tutorial about this? Thanks again!!! Peace!

[Ali_Athar]

lol I installed that, and I got all confused just by looking at it; removed it immediately. Maybe I'll try understanding it in my vacations and then make an instructable :)

[Angadgsingh]

This worked well i was at a 20 - 40 k download but now im 30 to 60 ish if any one has any more tips please share... btw i am running xp sp 3 is that ok for the TCP speeder uper thingy that you mentioned in step 6

[Ali_Athar]

If it worked on SP2, it should work on SP3 as well, I say give it a shot.

[Angadgsingh]

thanks this worked great
my speeds are now 40 to 100
my best was a 400 =)

[blakeredfield]

I have never seen such an enourmous difference in my download speeds. I was freaking out on 5-10 k now I'm at 50-150k, I'm not even kidding. Thank you so much - 5 stars and fave.

[heathsieler]

I would not use utorrent they sold out and now snitch on people to WB and other movie company's

[blakeredfield]

That crap happened to me too. I figured its the ISP selling me out however. This is how it went down. My internet stopped. It stayed stopped the next day. I called the ISP helpdesk. They tell me there's a ticket reporting abuse, by downloading Sopranos episodes. I freak out on the tech guy, telling him my router is open and I dont know how to configure it (its not and I do) and that in any case I'm paying for HBO anyway. He turned it back on, on the spot and told me that WB forces them to make out these tickets and issue warnings and that all he'll do is close the ticket and report it as false. My ISP was TimeWarner, Roadrunner at the time. I cancelled with them anyway and have GrandeCommunications now.

[Ali_Athar]

UPDATE: New step has been added. You don't need to completely alter your current settings or anything, its just another tip which proves helpful at many times when download speed gets slow all of a sudden. It's in Step 9

[fwjs28]

all the computers i try (xp and vista) start out with a good speed and then they say no incoming connection and yet its still downloading and when i try to forward the ports i get a totalllllly different screen then whats on portforward.net or w/e its called.....help!

[Ali_Athar]

I always have the red icon i.e "Not Connectable" as well, yet it seems that the speed doesn't change regardless of whether it's a red, yellow or green icon. And as a general tip, torrents do get slower as they near completion. The reason for this is that more of the data is already with you, and the remaining data is not readily available amongst the peers and seeds. As a rough estimate, if your download speed is 100kbps at the starting, then expect it to decrease to 30 - 50kbps on the 90% mark. And, don't bother with port forwarding if it already runs fine. Use a firewall that allows you to list software and port exceptions so that you can keep the port uTorrent is using open at all times.

[boognishmofo]

I get completely different speeds at each site. Pitsop Iam up around 23629 for dwn and 2229 for up and dslreports it is 2302 dwn and 773 up. One test at dslreports said something onetime like isp compression has been detected for your upload results may not be correct, but only once. WTH!! I guess I will try it in the middle and move on to step 2.

[Ali_Athar]

Personally, I have always used PC Pit Stop, DSL Reports was just an alternative. What kind of download speed do you get when using a download manager like DAP. In my case, it was in perfect coherence with the result from PC Pit Stop.
Anyway, you take the download speed (e.g 100 Kbps) and multiply it with 8 to get your download speed in kbps.
Note that Kbps means Kilo-bytes per sec while kbps means kilo-bits per sec.

[joejoerowley]

Nice Instructable!
Here is a link to mine for some more reference to bittorrents.
Thanks
Joe

[OverUnity]

Thank you very much, it helped me a great deal.