Difficulty Downloading and Seeding Files

[Jellyfish]

I'm using qBittorrent 3.1.1.1 on Windows XP SP 3.  I've tested it out on a few torrents, for example Linux Mint:

http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=106

The issues I have are:

1) When downloading files (such as the above), sometimes the download speed will be great (over 300 KiB/s), but then will drop suddenly to just a few KiB/s, a few bytes per second, or stop completely.  The above file did eventually download though.  Is there anything wrong here, or is this normal behaviour?

2) When seeding files (such as the above), very little uploading seems to occur (most of the time not uploading anything).  I have been seeding the above file for almost 4 hours, but only 46 MiB has been uploaded (way less than the 801 MB I downloaded).  Is there anything wrong here, or is this normal behaviour?

My qBittorrent settings:

Download speed: Unlimited
Upload speed: 50 KiB/s
Port: 6881
Use UPnp / NAT-PMP port forwarding from my router: Selected (tried unselecting it, but did not seem to make any difference)

I also added a port forwarding rule to my hardware router for port 6881.  Windows Firewall has qBittorrent listed in exceptions list.

Typical Overall Internet Speed:

Download Speed: 2.78 Mbps
Upload Speed: 0.60 Mbps

Thanks.

[Nemo]

Hi and welcome ,

Can you try to use the new version v3.1.3: http://sourceforge.net/projects/qbittorrent/files/qbittorrent-win32/qbittorrent-3.1.3/qbittorrent_3.1.3_setup.exe/download.
Changelog if interested: http://qbittorrent.sourceforge.net/news.php
This behaviour has been discussed here if you want to read: http://qbforums.shiki.hu/index.php/topic,2236.60.html.

About the uploading: Sometimes if there are seedboxes active or people with high upload speeds the torrentclients from the people who are downloading will prefer them above the low upload speeds users. So to give a small example; if you are uploading with 50KB/s and there is seedbox active maxing his speed your upload isn't needed. He can max his speed with 1 user instead 10 so in this case you can't upload to him most of the time, or only few KB/s. I've tried your torrent and there is indeed enough seeders available compared to the leechers .

I would advice you to change your port from the standard 6881 to something else, for example 40000. Any random number will do.

[Pyro]

UPDATE on SEEDING only for latest version:

Putting NO LIMIT and seeding a hungry public torrent resulted in MAXXING out my connection AT LAST! First I put unlimited upload slots, then I limited to 10, still maxxing
proof:

Qbt for the win !! thanks, gonna report more results on downloading soon.


UPDATE on WINDOWS 8 stability: SO FAR [10 mins.] no stability issues on windows 8 x64 [core parking turned OFF], ram at 230MB, no changes in automatic caching [60s, auto]. Is this a miracle?

[Nemo]

Nice Pyro .

[Pyro]

OK, update on downloading so far. Speeds vary, overall good, was "not responding" a bit when the disk was loading... meaning, when the disk is overloaded for example, qbit might crash! Maybe something can be done about that?
Increasing cache fixed it apparently. 
While downloading speeds seem good, uploading performance decreases significantly, still testing though, I suspict uTP doing that.
proof:


Still, I think it's a major improvement so far

[Jellyfish]

Thanks for your replies.  I'll have another look at this shortly.

[Peter]

@Pyro: If you just press "wait" when something is not responding, nothing will crash.
Crash means qBittorrent just disappears to nowhere.

[Pyro]

Yea, of course, I did wait and it worked again after a few seconds, but the program still freezes if you will. uTorrent says disk overloaded 100% but doesn't enter the "not responding" mode for example, which I find much less distressing. Vuze for example allows you to EXACLTY specify how many MB can be read at the same time, thus mostly avoiding this disk error altogether!
I'm just saying there is a more elegant solution out there than just waiting...   

[Jellyfish]

I have updated qBittorrent from 3.1.1 to 3.1.3, but I am having the same issues.  I also tried changing the port to 40000 (and updated port forwarding rule on router), but did not notice any difference.

For example, as a test I downloaded the OpenOffice.org torrent from http://www.openoffice.org/distribution/p2p/.  This is the variant I tried to download:

Windows (x86) (with bundled JRE)
OpenOffice.org 3.3.0
English (en-GB)

It starts to download, but is very slow, typically about 5 KiB/s, sometimes dropping to just a few bytes per second.  My Internet connection should be capable of a few hundred KiB/s.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Pyro]

LOL, yes... read this http://wiki.vuze.com/w/Good_torrent
I tried the same torrent you mentioned, got like 1-2 seeders

[Jellyfish]

Thanks for your reply.

I've tried 3.1.3 some more, and most of my torrents have downloaded.  Speed varies a lot, sometimes going over 300 KiB/s, but at other times just a few KiB/s, or even a few bytes per second.

Not much data seems to be uploaded though (even for torrents where the download was mostly not fast and could do with my share).  I know users should try to at least upload as much as they download, but that is difficult as my highest ratio for a torrent is currently 0.05.

I've noticed that sometimes even when there is not much downloading/uploading going on and little bandwidth is used, other web browsing is slowed down.  Is this normal?  For example, if I have only one download going at 5 KiB/s, should this slow down normal web browsing to any significant degree?

Lastly, I just wondered what the main benefit is of changing the port number?  Does using a specific port number make transfers faster, or make it easier to communicate with other sharers?

I like the user interface by the way.  Very clean and tidy.

[Nemo]

Download Speed: 2.78 Mbps = 347,5KB/s
Upload Speed: 0.60 Mbps = 75KB/s

These are your max speeds, so if you are getting 300KB/s or up thats good enough for you. I would set my upload to 25KB/s while downloading and when seeding you can set it to 50-60KB/s. It shouldn't slow your internet down if you are at low speeds but the other question would be the quality of your line or your router. As I said earlier if there are seeds with higher upload speeds the leechers would prefer them instead of you.

I (personally) always prefer clean install of any version of qBittorrent. I don't know if you did that or if it would make any difference but I always choose to be sure that it is 100% clean installation, even when updating. This to minimize any conflicts with old releases of any kind.

The default port for BitTorrent transfers is port 6881, with some clients using different ports within the range of 6881-6999. As a result of ISP interference, all clients allow you to change the port number (or port range, sometimes) used for BitTorrent transfers. The main reason why to avoid the default port 6881 for torrenting is that this port is mostly being throttled by isp's, they know that this port is being used for torrenting. So any number besides 6881 is choosable. In this case 40000 is good.

[Jellyfish]

Thanks for your helpful reply Nemo.  I'll try reducing my upload speed to 25 KiB/s when downloading.  I installed 3.1.3 over the top of 3.1.1.  This probably will not make any difference, but when I install future versions I will uninstall the old one prior to installing the new one, just in case.

[loki]

A clean install is different from just uninstalling.

[Jellyfish]

Could you please advise how to do a clean install on Windows XP?  Thanks.