More Speed Please!

This is one that everyone asks about at some point in time. I remember a few years ago asking this very question when I first started using the BitTorrent. Clearly you want to download your data at the quickest speeds you can. Why download at only a few Kb when your download capabilities are in the hundreds of KB if not thousands? Currently I am downloading at 100KB which is far from my max of around 900KB.

 I am reasonably happy with this, not because of the speed I am getting, but because of what I am downloading. But, before I go any further with this I suppose I should point out something that many P2P users fail to realise. BitComent, Azureus, BitLord, uTorrent, and Official to name but a few are client applications which connect your machine to a network of other computers so that you can share your files. None, of these clients dictate the speed of your downloads, or uploads, beyond allowing you to set bandwidth throttling*.

Some client's creators and websites suggest that they can produce faster downloads by only connecting you to the faster uploaders. Actually, this is already built into the BitTorrent Protocol which is what we all use to communicate and share with each other through BitTorrent Clients like BitComet. So ignore such claims, also never purchase a BitTorrent Client.

In this image you can see that we are downloading 10 files. Well in fact we have ten files to download but only 7 of the files are active. On the right we can see that some of the files' Seed to Peer ratio is poor, and in one case the torrent has no seeds connected at all and showing a health of 0%. Oooo, that's pretty bad isn't it? Well not necessarily, all it takes is one person to connect to the network for that 0% to become 100% and for my 0kb download speed to jump to 900Kb. In fact whilst I have written this the previous speed I showed you in the first image has jumped because of 1 person joining the network and offering nice upload speeds.

  Yes, now I am downloading at nearly 5 times the speed I was half an hour or so ago. So how do you get more speed? Well there are three main considerations, after ensuring your have setup your client properly and you have an unrestricted connection to the internet, that is your ports are properly forwarded. You can tell that by the StatusStrip in BitComet, at the bottom right it should show you a green icon with connected or your IP address, it may be showing orange/yellow saying your are blocked. This is problematic and will reduce your speed as it means you can only make outward connections. Inward connections tend to be faster so you really do want to have your ports forwarded properly. However, you have everything set up properly and you are downloading at dialup speeds... this can't be good. Well actually yes it can be good.

I love old B-Movies, especially old Sci-Fis, like "When two worlds Collide" and "The Day the Earth Stood Still", and and... oh so many films, so little time. I digress. Ok, imagine someone gets hold of a very old B-Movie, which is now public domain (of course), and creates a torrent for the file and uploads it to my favourite tracker (whichever one that may be) well, that's wonderful, I tell all my buddies at the B-Movie convention (never been, don't even know if one exists - I am not that geeky). Yay! they all shout and rush home to download the movie. 200 avid fans now start downloading the film at a tiny 0.1Kb a second. Say what? Why so slow?

Well remember there is only one seed, the original uploader, and 200 hundred peers, downloading from that one person. He has an upload bandwidth spare of 20kb 20kb/200 people =  0.1kb per person. But hey, you are still getting to download some incredibly rare film, it costs you nothing more than time. If you want it now - go to the original owners and buy the rushes, if they have them - should only cost you a few thousand dollars.

After a week, you may notice your speed jump up to 2kb. This is because a few people have logged off their machines, or decided to wait until there are more peers to seeds. Others have been lucky and got the film first because they have never logged off during the week. I personally never log off, that avatar you see of me, is not actually an avatar - that's how I really look. So as time passes more people get the film and because they are not leeches continue to share the film... meaning that more and more speed is available to them. Untill all 200 have the film providing a whopping 4MB potential download speed for anyone who decides to download the film later.

Very popular downloads that have just been released tend to have slow download speeds, rare items with few seeds, also have slow download speeds. Searching around can more than double your speed. What you are always looking for is the torrent of the file you want with the highest seed to peer ratio to get the fastest download speed you can.

Finally, when youc onnect to the internet, it is most likely through a provider, such as AOL, BT, AT&T etc... Well many of the ISPs really dislike P2P because it uses such large amounts of bandwidth. My ISP has a contention ration of 20:1 for domestic Broadband, that is up to 20 people share the same single broadband connection. All ISPs employ such contention ratios, though most do not admit it. Recently in the UK a number of ISPs were discovered and rightly punished for having more people sharing the bandwidth than they stated. Thus further reducing their users speeds. As a result of the high bandwidth costs involved in allowing people to use P2P most ISPs throttle the bandwidth available for such protocols. You may see a number of clients connected to your system with DHE and DHEv2 as part of their client name. This is a protocol obfustication, psuedo-encryption, technique that is employed to trick ISPs into thinking your are not using P2P software and therefore helping you to bypass their bandwidth throtteling - allowing you fuill speed connections and downloads. DHE and DHEv2 do not work too well, and should only be used if you really really need to. The reason DHEv2 has been developed is because ISPs now recognise the algorithm adopted in DHE to obfusticate the data packets sent.

One other thing that determines your download speed, is your upload speed. That's right, you dont' share, we don't share. Many hard-core P2P users will ban your IP if you leech. Leeching is bad and is absolutely wrong on a peer-to-peer file SHARING system. Imagine this, if you will...

Once upon a time, it was decided that everyone in the world would shout as loud as thery could up to the stars, and then listen to hear if there was a reply. At the time everyone was to shout - the Earth was totally silent. Instead of shouting, everyone listened to see how loud everyone else would be.

In context, the moral of that story is, if we all share at our highest upload speeds, then we will all download at our highest download speeds. So if you want fast downloads, and your ISP is not blocking you, your ports are forwarded correctly and you are not downloading a file with a poor seed to peer ratio then make sure you are sharing at your highest upload speed. Go on, be a devil... share on the BitTorrent file sharing service.

Another thing to consider which many users forget is the source of the data file you wish to download. Even though most people have permenant (Broadband) connections to the internet, not everyone shares all the time, in fact, I would guess that about 50% or more of us do not.  So if th data file you are downloading is likely to only be found in Japan, then it is reasonable to assume you will get your best speeds when most people in Japan are online! So consider where the file you are downloading is most liekly to be and be prepared that when that country is sleeping so will your downloads.