Whirlpool

I have noticed recently that i have been getting much slower torrent downloads during offpeak times with iiNet. Downloading the same torrents during peak times gets me really good speeds, which i am really happy with, but as soon as it switches to off peak they slow down, i'll be lucky if i can get 100kb/s on a ADSL2 connection.
I have noticed that a couple of other people have had similar problems, and i am wandering what they have done to fix this, or if it is a common thing with peak and off peak.

I somehow doubt iiNet will be required to do anything about this. Torrents would be one area iiNet would most likely not take any responsibility. The first reason is that there is an extremely good chance that the torrent(s) you are downloading are illegal. The second is that the download speed would depend on how many seeders there are, how many people are downloading the torrent(s) and how much bandwidth the uploaders have allowed.

There's probably also something in your contract that they need to provide reasonable service during the peak, but not the off-peak. The interesting question is, are any Australian ISPs deliberately slowing down the torrent network?

Aronzak writes...

are any Australian ISPs deliberately slowing down the torrent network?

Yes there is. iiNet are not one of them.

You will probably find that the slow down is due to the different international links that it uses for offpeak. It however should not be happening.

Aronzak writes...

There's probably also something in your contract that they need to provide reasonable service during the peak, but not the off-peak. The interesting question is, are any Australian ISPs deliberately slowing down the torrent network?

unfounded/unresearched statements such as this are what have given whirlpool it's rather less than rosy reputation

read the contract
http://www.iinet.net.au/cra
nothing in it about peak/offpeak service difference

also ... read the forums
the majority of folk have no problems getting full speed from torrents, peak or offpeak
(myself included)

it's more likely to be messed up port forwarding or data handling on OP end, or poorly sourced/seeded torrents, or a bevy of other causes. There is no basis for the that iinet slow down offpeak

Now back to the OP's question...

• What is your sync speed?
• are you SSS(adsl2+) or L2 (adsl1)
• are you the only person with network access? (are you sure?)
• does it happen with ALL torrents, regardless of number of seeders (the ten thousand seeder varieties)
• does your volume usage match?
• what program do you use for peer to peer/what are it's settings (what upload rate do you have set etc)?
• do you have port forwarding set up properly/working?
• is it exactly or approximately matched to peak/offpeak timing? (is there a reliable pattern?)
• insert any other relevant information here

Also bear in mind that "off-peak" time for Australia is "peak" time for several other countries.

And you never know what else may be going on with ppl in those countries and what files may have just become available around the world, and what links may be suffering faults or saturation, etc.

e.g. One time when ppl here were complaining of sudden poor performance... was due to XBox 360 Live going, well, "live", and ppl overseas were all suddenly trying to download the initial free 600Mb or more game(s) on offer, saturating the major nodes that Oz connects to.

Sorry im not too good with all the technical talk, but all i know is that i can download certain torrents at up to 700 kbs in peak times, however the same torrents will only download at about 100 kbs during peak times. I am sing utorrent, and some of these torrents have about 10000+ seeders. I have set up port forwarding properley and tested ports. I am the only person with the network connection, and it is ADSL 2.
I have also noticed that if i was to pause one torrent that is downloading at say 50kbs, another torrent that was downloading at 5kbs will jump up to about 50kbs. It feels like i am capped.

enra writes...

The first reason is that there is an extremely good chance that the torrent(s) you are downloading are illegal.

Why should the legality of torrents i am downloading affect the speeds that i am getting, if i am paying for a service.

If you are using a public tracker then you will get slower speeds most times.

Aronzak writes...

There's probably also something in your contract that they need to provide reasonable service during the peak, but not the off-peak. The interesting question is, are any Australian ISPs deliberately slowing down the torrent network?

I agree with womble. These kind of comments are from ignorant people just looking to cause problems. Your comments are unfounded, and unproven and totally incorrect.

RasCas writes...

Why should the legality of torrents i am downloading affect the speeds that i am getting, if i am paying for a service.

Goto Exetel. They will warn you, then cut your connection off i read somewhere if you are caught downloading illegal content. Think i read it on here a while back on one of the news links.

It 'feels like' you have incorrectly configured your torrent client. You've admitted your technical knowledge isnt that good (im not having a dig at you, everyone has to start somewhere) because very few people have the issue you have described. I use utorrent and rarely have any issue maxing out my connection. When i do have issues, i Q up another torrent normally.

Slick007 writes...

It 'feels like' you have incorrectly configured your torrent client.

Maybe i should look into that, you could be right. But if it were incorrectly configured, would i still be able to get good speeds of 700 Kbs during peak times.

Maybe check you haven't capped yourself with off peak scheduling

sounds very much like problem with utorrent, settings or otherwise

download another torrent program to confirm that it has not the strange speed problems, then the easiest way would just be to delete utorrent and reinstall it (you note that you arent technical, much, much easier than trying to work out what is broken.. :o)

edit: typos

hey does any1 know a good setting for utorrent?

btw for some reason i swear my upload is counted as my download quota as i checked my account and it said i dl 5gigs of stuff but when i checked my files, it was about 4.3gigs. anyone know what happened? btw im with home 4 so upload shouldnt be counted or is it for torrents?

Griffinz writes...

btw for some reason i swear my upload is counted as my download quota as i checked my account and it said i dl 5gigs of stuff but when i checked my files, it was about 4.3gigs. anyone know what happened? btw im with home 4 so upload shouldnt be counted or is it for torrents?

Your files dont take overhead into account.

Griffinz writes...

hey does any1 know a good setting for utorrent?

How do you mean?

Slick was right about the other stuff – overheads.

RasCas writes...

as it switches to off peak they slow down, i'll be lucky if i can get 100kb/s on a ADSL2 connection.

I have just checked some off-peak torrent d/ls from last night.

Between 2 and 3 am I was getting about 1.2Mbit/s on an ADSL connection.

So, doesn't seem to be a general problem.

Do you find it's at a constant rate during off peak? Might be the utorrents limiter feature.

It doesn't matter if a torrent has 10 000+ seeders when a properly configured client will only connect to 80-200 peers per torrent anyway. Most likely the peers you have connected to set their client to seed at less than 1kbyte/s (Big Pond users) and therefore you will get very poor speeds.

A good client for booting low seeders is Azureus as you can right click on a peer that is seeding at a low speed and ban them, thus allowing a new peer (hopefully one that shares) to connect.

So, just because the tracker says there are x amount of seeders, that doesn't mean they are all sharing. BP customers that have downloaded 100% of a file will be classed as a seeder by the tracker/client, but nearly 99% of the time will not be seeding the file.

maybe its got something to do with every other torrentor that schedules their torrents for offpeak downloading starting up at that similar time? eg network hammering??

would be interesting to see if offpeak sees a big increase in constant traffic???

Slick007 writes...

Your files dont take overhead into account.

ummm whats overhead?? sorry i dont know these terms

Griffinz writes...

ummm whats overhead?? sorry i dont know these terms

tcp overheads