HELP: BT Soaking Entire Network!

I've got a small home network here, two CAT-5 wired desktop PCs and one laptop connected using 802.11b, all running XP. They all run into a D-Link DI-614+ Wireless Router (yeah, D-Link, I know, but a good deal is a good deal...).

Now, whenever BT is running (Azureus, specifically), the WHOLE network just comes to a standstill. This is whether I am on 1 torrent or 10. Can't do hardly ANYTHING. Just trying to browse the web gives alternating results, between waiting 5 minutes for a page to load, to just plain old "request timed out" errors. This happens using ANY computer on the network. This is incredibly frusturating, being that I've got my first two seeded torrents up, but anytime I need to do anything else (Ummm... WORK, for instance...) I have to shut down Azureus to get it done, leaving the peers waiting in the dark for me to come back.

So, what are my options here to fixing this? There's no obvious way to throttle bandwidth on a per client basis in the router - Would a software based solution like Netlimiter work? Should I check out a different BT client that handles those packets better? Or just suck it up and get a new router?

I'm on a 3M down / 614K up cable line, so you'd think that'd be enough bandwidth for 3 machines to do their thing...

Any advice out there would be greatly appreciated!

[U2Lynne]

OK, first off we need to get your bandwidth numbers into BT thinking terms..... 614Kb/s up in terms of your ISP is the same as 614/8KB/s or about 77 KB/s in BTland.

Now, in Azureus, in the Options / Transfer tab, see where it says KB/s global max upload speed? You want to put a number smaller than 77 in there. It probably has 0 in there, which is unlimited, which is why it is using up all of your bandwidth. While you are surfing the net (or anyone on your network is), I would suggest putting a number about 60-70% of your max in there. So, about .7*77 or about 54 KB/s. Try that out, and if things are going smoothly for everyone, you can up that number.

That should do it for you!

Holy balls! Ok, so I haven't the slightest clue HOW that worked, but it did....!!!
My downloads are actually going MUCH faster now (100+k/sec now vs. 15k/sec before) And my upload speeds on my speeds has actually INCREASED 3x! I'm not getting timout errors on half the trackers now, either...! How the hell did limiting my UPLOAD speed in azureus actually increase both my downloading and uploading across the network?
Thanks again, Lynne!

(I went and checked out my package at my ISPs website and discovered that I only have 300Kb/sec UP, so I roughly halfed the number from you and used a value of 27K for global upload speed.. Are my numbers correct?)

[U2Lynne]

Yeah, 27 should be fine.

If no one is using the internet and all you are doing it *Seeding*, then you can put the upload back to "0".

If no one is using the internet and all you are doing is download a show and maybe also seeding, then you should use a number closer to about 80% of your max. So, 300Kb/s is 300/8 KB/s or about 38 KB/s. So, you can put .8*38 or 30 in for the max global upload rate. Or even about 34 or so depending on how things are going. Play around with it a few times and you will see.

Your upload is the bandwidth hog. It likes to send packets of info and get confirmation that the info was received. So, it is pretty busy with your bandwidth. Whereas downloading just grabs, grabs, and grabs. (Ok, very simplified, but I like things simplified).

[TheMamba]

How the hell did limiting my UPLOAD speed in azureus actually increase both my downloading and uploading across the network?

Basically, you have the ability to handle a finite amount of bandwidth = upload speed + download speed. By limiting your upload speed, your download speeds were able to increase.

It's a fun thing to play with and I'll do the same thing when I have to work....throttle down my torrent activity so I can actually DO other things involving the Internet.

What's weird about it is that before I limited my upload speed, my global upload in azureus was crap, listed @ ~7K/Sec (this was between 4 files strictly seeding, and another 4 DL/UL) The files I was seeding were getting like 586B/sec, hardling anything at all. Now that I've got the global upload throttled, I'm getting a full 30K/sec Up, AND all of my downloads are faster... I was under the impression that my upload and download pipes were completely independent of each other, and that once each reached their limit, they stopped there, without affecting the other...apparently I was misinformed?
Thanks for all the help, ya'll!

And as a side-ish note, would throttling my global download speed via Azureus have the same effect of improving both, or should I leave it at unlimited?

[jcrab66]

you can leave the download speed alone, it wont have any effect on the up speed...

Ok, so things worked wonderfully for about 2 hours, great download speeds, great upload speed, and I could continue to browse on the other two computers. I left for about a half hour, came back, and the situation is back to where it started, everything's poking along again, really slow downloads/uploads (although upload speed has improved a little bit from the original, although not even close to where it was right after I made the changes), can't browse anything, and lots of tracker timed out errors. I checked the settings to make sure they hadn't reverted back, still at 27k. I lowered it to 23, waited, still sluggish. Lowered it to 20, still sluggish. Restarted Azureus, same problem. Rebooted, still no change....
How could it have worked, and now all of the sudden I'm back to square one without changing anything?

Ok, that's damned strange - I took my Max Global UL down to 10, and my DL speed shot back up, and I can browse the web again - Which kinda suckss for those I'm seeding to. Any reason why 27K worked fine a few hours ago, and now only 10K will suffice?

[U2Lynne]

What was your download speed at when this problem was happening again?

Just as an aside, I know that my max upload is about 52 KB/s and my download is the same as yours. I will seed two shows and have two shows downloading/uploading. So, four windows open at a time, Max. And, if I'm the one *offering* the seed, then I will only seed that one show and download one show, Max. I don't know how many windows you had opened when you were having the problem again.

After the problem started downloading again, my global DL dropped to ~8K (yeah, GLOBAL). When it's working correctly, and I have the globel UL set right, I can get upwards of ~150K Global DL.

Well, that could very well be my problem - I'm seeding two shows, downloading three - But I still can't figure out why 27K worked for awhile, and now (after playing around), the highest I can go is 12-15K.

[U2Lynne]

Have you tried resetting your router? Sometimes people have done that and it resolves the problem.

But, it does seem strange that everything was fine and then it wasn't. What I was wondering was if all of a sudden you had huge download speeds and thus you couldn't maintain your upload speeds, but it doesn't sound like that is the case. If you want though, you can cap your download speed in the same tab as the upload speed. I've done it on occassion when a torrent is really screaming and it bogs down the system enough so that my kids notice it on their computers (they like to play those online games).

I would try resetting the router though and see if that helps.

Sounds good, when I get home from work, I'll power cycle all of my network hardware and let you kjnow how it went...
Thanks again, Lynne!!

[Rider]

Originally Posted by rabble

Sounds good, when I get home from work, I'll power cycle all of my network hardware and let you kjnow how it went...
Thanks again, Lynne!!

It could also be your ISP I had issues for months where my connection would just keep droping to nothing at all.