BitTorrent Clients

Most people complain that downloading using BitTorrent in the background slows down their PC. This is true to some extent. Generally, it depends on what client you are using. Client like Azureus is based on Java and it takes up alot of memory space; it eats up your system RAM like there is no tommorrow.

Some BitTorrent clients:

µTorrent
Azureus
BitComet
BitLord
BitTornado
G3 Torrent

I have tried various BitTorrent clients, and I found µTorrent the best (screen-shot below). It is light-weight, skinnable and requires no installation; you simply download the executable file from the website, put it in a folder, and run it.

The good thing about µTorrent is that it saves your preferences and data into a file in the folder; it is independent of your system registry and folders. So assuming if you want to format your computer, you need not worry about installing it back and configuring it back. The screenshot below is how my µTorrent folder looks like.

Each of the file serves a purpose, explained below:
µTorrent.exe – the executable file
toolbar.bmp – Skin file
tstatus.bmp – Skin file
dht.dat – uTorrent’s DHT data
resume.dat – your torrent progress
settings.dat – your torrent client preferences

And that is it to your µTorrent client! All in less than 1MB!

P.S. I will discuss more on µTorrent later.

Firewall must allow BitTorrent Traffic

Make sure your firewall do not block BitTorrent traffic. It is of no use, if you properly tweak your BitTorrent client, just to find out that your firwall is the culprit for limitting your BitTorrent client.

If you are using Windows XP’s default Firewall, Go to:

Start > Control Panel > Windows Firewall > Exceptions

Than add your BitTorrent client execute file to trusted programs, and the ports you configured.

I strongly discourage using Windows XP Firewall. Get a decent software firewall like Comodo Personal Firewall, PC Tools Firewall, or Sygate Personal Fiewall (discontinued product). These are free and much better than the one that came installed with Windows XP SP2.

Another way is to use a combination of both software and hardware firewall. The hardware firewall I am referring to is your wireless router (this feature is nowadays found on most wireless routers).

Cap your Upload Limit

Cap your upload Limit your upload speed to approximately 70% of your maximum upload rate.

First of all, test your connection speed. One good website for this is SpeedTest. Here is a screen shot of my connection.

Do note that SpeedTest list its results in kilobits. Since 8 bits = 1 Byte, simply divide the value by 8.

My connection is rated at:

8178 kilobits (download) and 248 kilobits (upload) or

1022.25 kiloBytes (download) and 31 kiloBytes (upload)

From here, change your maximum upload speed to 70% of your upload speed. For my connection, my upload speed should be ~20kB/s. But since I am on cable connection, I limit it further down to 10kB/s.

Do not get me wrong, everyone should share as much as possible. But if your upload rate reached is at its limit, your download rate suffers significantly.

But do not limit your download speed! The logic that by telling your BitTorrent client to reach its limited threshold is nonsense! Doing so only limits your potential download speed.

Also, if your upload is set to 15kB/s and your download is 50 times faster (in my case), do not expect your download to be maxed out every time! In fact, a realistic expectation for a well-seeded torrent (a swarm with many seeds and few peers) would still be around 80% your download speeds, i.e. 815kB/s for mine.

But for most of my torrents found in private websites (like BitSoup, FileList, TorrentBytes), my speed wwill be better than 815kBps. Here’s a screenshot.

Remember that this speed would be reached in an ideal, well-seeded torrent, but unfortunately, this is usually not the case with public trackers; where leechers far outnumber the few poor seeders trying, to keep the torrent going.

For such cases, I cannot help. This guide is only meant to optimize your BitTorrent client, not the BitTorrent protocol itself.