I have a bit of an odd problem with KTorrent on the shared broadband access at home (using a wireless and wired router).
Whenever I am running KTorrent there, neither myself nor my 2 housemates on their computers can access websites with the error 'unknown host blabla.com' or 'cannot connect to host blabla.com'. As soon as I switch KTorrent off, it's fine again. Any ideas?

I'm using KTorrent 1.1 official release. Is it fixed in one of the newer versions?

KT doesn't mess with system settings, so this is certainly weird.

What ports have you got forwarded, and what ports is KT using ?

I recently setup a WLAN and we haven't experienced any of this, so maybe you could try the SVN version, and see how that goes.

I checked the ports KTorrent is using ('netstat -p | grep ktorrent') and they're all 5 digits, so no problem there. Refreshing the page a few times generally gets the page eventually, so I have the feeling that it might just be that my housemate is choking our connection as he uses bittorrent heavily. Will have to have some words.

Slightly off-topic: How much more advanced is the SVN version compared to the officially released client? I might check out the SVN version.

There have been quite a few changes in SVN. We added some new features like UPnP, files get stored at their final location from the start, we now allow plugins and have moved existing stuff like the search to a plugin.

Obviously there are lots of bug fixes and minor improvements.

Running the SVN code has it's risks though, new features usually mean new bugs.

I'm having a problem running the SVN version. I followed the instructions on the KT website to get the SVN version. Downloaded and installed it into a folder 'KTorrent' in my home directory using user permissions only, so as not to corrupt the official client in case anything goes wrong .

Code: Select all

svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/network/ktorrent
cd ktorrent
svn co svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/branches/KDE/3.5/kde-common/admin/
svn cat svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/extragear/network/Makefile.cvs > Makefile.cvs
 
make -f Makefile.cvs
./configure --prefix=$HOME/KTorrent
make
make install

No errors in the compilation, but when I run the compiled ktorrent binary in $HOME/KTorrent/bin, the client starts up ok and begins transmitting data, but I have no plugins (no search ). However, I get the following error message:

Code: Select all

dom@localhost ~/KTorrent $ bin/ktorrent
kio (KMimeType): WARNING: KServiceType::offers : servicetype KTorrent/Plugin not found

What's the problem? Do I need to do 'make install' as root? Will that conflict with KT 1.1 I have already installed on the system?

You need to run make install, this will install all plugins and the desktop files so that KT can find the plugins.

djpearman wrote:Do I need to do 'make install' as root?

Yes, you'll need to install as root.

Will that conflict with KT 1.1 I have already installed on the system?

Well, it won't. It'll just overwrite all 1.1 files and you won't have that version anymore. You should, though, uninstall KT 1.1 with your package manager. That way your package system won't hold references to 1.1 which is 'overwritten' by SVN version.

I have noticed that whilst running ktorrent (latest CVS version), that after about 3 mins all internet access will slow down. I tested this by running a ping to a well known site (bbc.co.uk). Most pings were in the order of 16ms with no packet loss, however after a few mins of ktorrent it goes to about 1200ms with about 30% packet loss on average. This affects all traffic (POP3, SMTP, HTTP, FTP etc...) . I can post a link to an ethreal trace if it would help. The problem is very reproduceable.

Have you tried to limit KT download speed? Try some experimenting with limits on download/upload speed and number of connections. See how it goes then

Looks like KT is using up all the bandwith, what kind of internet connection do you have ?

I had a simmilar problem with Azureus.

When a BT client downloads data it is doing so from about 5 different hosts - and to that it have at least 15 more idle connections.

A web browser use 1 or rarly 2 connections.

And how the TCP protokoll is working it gives each connection the same badwidth.

A lot of trafik on a TCP network can not only slow down the host generating the trafik but other nodes on the network as well.

The sulotion is easy - you simpely set a download/upload speed limit i KTorrent of about 80-90% of what your internet connection can do.

ricce_n wrote:I had a simmilar problem with Azureus.

When a BT client downloads data it is doing so from about 5 different hosts - and to that it have at least 15 more idle connections.

I've had similar problems here, though not with KTorrent.

When using Azureus (never again!), the official client or the latest beta, the connection just siezes up solid. Using ports 6681-6690 forwarded correctly through the firewall. Every machine on the subnet becomes unable to resolve DNS/make outgoing connections. The torrent continues to come down just dandy.

What's really odd is that BitTornado works just fine.

I might try seeing how many outgoing pipes are being left open. It may be that my ISP limits the number of concurrent connections made, or possibly even my Netgear router can't handle that many through NAT

George wrote:Looks like KT is using up all the bandwith, what kind of internet connection do you have ?

I have 512k/256k ADSL connection that's shared between 3 people in my house. I think it's just down to saturating the connection, as my housemate uses bittorrent and other p2p programs quite a bit. So, it's not a KT issue

We both have download and upload limits set, but I think the sum of the two limits is greater than the available connection bandwidth.

As for the CVS version, I haven't got round to getting it working yet. Status quo on that atm due to rl business.

djpearman wrote:

George wrote:Looks like KT is using up all the bandwith, what kind of internet connection do you have ?

I have 512k/256k ADSL connection that's shared between 3 people in my house. I think it's just down to saturating the connection, as my housemate uses bittorrent and other p2p programs quite a bit. So, it's not a KT issue

We both have download and upload limits set, but I think the sum of the two limits is greater than the available connection bandwidth.

Depending on how your ADSL connection is distributed to the 3 of you, your best bet would probably be to use the QOS network traffic-shaping tools that are available within the kernel. I haven't got any links available to give you right now, but it's the best way to keep everything working efficiently.

What it does, basically, is distribute & prioritise your upload-bandwidth according to your specifications, so constant streams like torrents can use as much bandwidth as is available, but are obliged to give up bandwidth to higher priority traffic, like email & web-browsing, which are usually less constant & transmitted in short bursts...

...It may even fool torrent-clients that limit download speeds according to upload-capping, by allowing you to leave the client's upload-rate as 'unlimited' - but that's just a guess.