JanthanR

Good afternoon, Hardware Heaven Members,

This is my first post to the forums, although I have been coming to Hardware Heaven for news and advice for years.

Anyway, I have an issue with my router whereby anytime someone is running a bit torrent (my roommate uses UTorrent), our ping will increase from a normal value of about 33ms to 1000ms and beyond; this renders the connection pretty much useless. As of right now, the only solution to the problem is to disconnect my roommate's system from the network altogether. However, I have been searching for another workaround. This morning, I even tried to reconfigure the router so that it will block HTTP and FTP access for my roommate's system between the hours of 10:00 AM and 12:00AM, seeing as that is when most people in my house use the high-speed connection. The settings on the router are all correct, but I still cannot leave my roommate's system plugged in without it having a negative impact on our connection.

Has anyone else discovered a workaround to this most-annoying problem? I am quickly starting to despise UTorrent and all other bit torrent services.

mkk

Most welcome!
If the router has Quality of Service(QoS) settings then you could use that to prioritise for instance HTTP traffic. The setup may look a bit different between routers but it's relatively simple on my D-Link. Here's a shot of the two rules I have for that. (port 80 is http and port 433 is HTTPS) In this case I happen to have set the rule for just one machine (single local IP) but that's not necessary.



And if the router is anything like mine (a DIR-655) a simpler workaround could be to turn QoS off on the router. As QoS without a specific set of rules tend to prioritise the smallest packages which for the most part benefits HTTP traffic. It's just that when major torrent traffic is also present it mixes things up since it's primarily made up of a stready stream of small packages.

EZero

I think a better way to do this is to just ask him nicely to change his utorrent settings.

Namely lower the number of connections and limit the upload speed.

Pics are linked from here: Optimize uTorrent Speeds Jatex’s Weblog

>GSXR<mrbusa

for sure, the biggest culprit is the amount of concurrent connections.
torrents can kill throughput and latency even on the fastest of connection if the client is allowed to auto configure based only on isp rated speed.

jasperchc

Ask him to apply for his own broadband line if he wants to us torrent. Or you can apply for your own broadband if you want to play online games.

Matth

It's not only expensive routers that can control this, got a very cheap one from Ebuyer (UK) and that has quite versatile bandwidth control.

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